Like, some of them (Anki, Jibo, Mayfield, Asimo, Reach) were 100% toys, and were always going to be at the extreme end price-wise trying to compete with increasingly "smart" toys being manufactured by regular toy companies with regular toy company processes, volumes, and margins.

Others (Rethink, Willow, Schaft, Blue) were trying to do something really ambitious and potentially provide B2B value, but were never far enough along to have a compelling value proposition for the end users they were targeting. They were never fast enough or reliable enough to be competitive with the minimum wage labour that they would have displaced— if robots are hard, then mobile robots are harder, and mobile manipulators are the hardest of all.

I think the saddest story in here is still Starsky, because they weren't in either of these groups: they really did have a clear value proposition, and they were technically there as far as delivering on it. The market needs what they were offering; they seemingly just ran out of runway at a time when investors were too starry-eyed about vaporous promises of L4 autonomy to want to back a company working on a viable hybrid solution.

(Disclosure: I work for a B2B mobile robotics company)