I had a couple including one USB one that I later modified to use to scan regular bar codes.
I pulled up Wikipedia to look up who created them, and apparently he changed his name after they failed. He was also on Curse of Oak Island searching for gold and was involved in ballot shenanigans in the 2020 US presidential election where he was notable for supposedly inventing a machine to find bamboo fibers on ballots.
The one that was by me still kept a whole section in the back dedicated to electronics components and soldering kits until the bitter end. The rest of the store was crappy RC cars and cell phones, though.
They closed down before I decided that I want to learn to solder and do electronics stuff for fun. Shame, but when I do eventually jump into it, it’s going to take more planning on my part so I have stuff on hand vs. just popping out to the store when I need something.