It’s official. The Microsoft Kin is as dead as Betamax video cassette player. In only 5 short months the originally dubbed “Project Pink” phones managed to go from the latest and greatest to afterthoughts in the brutal world of smartphones.

The KIN ONE was first available for $49.99, and the KIN TWO for $99.99, but by June had dropped to $0 and $50 (with a 2-year contract of course) respectively.

Now Verizon has reportedly halted all Kin sales and begun shipping back any that remain unsold.

They never really caught on, and in a crowded smartphone marketplace competition is fierce.

“The Kins are misbegotten, crippled creatures compared to pretty much every smartphone on the market,” noted a PCMag review. “They’ve been priced as smartphones, with smartphone data plans, and they’re being sold as smartphones, so the comparisons are fair.”

Personally, I can say that I’ve never even seen or heard of anybody who had one. Can you?