I love the story of the 303 totally failing at its original purpose and having an unexpected second life as a coveted synth for electronic music.
What other pieces of gear had an unexpected successful second life?
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I mean, this is the 808 story, right? Pilloried for not being able to reproduce acoustic drums like the LM1 and discontinued after only 4 years. The super low prices on the used market helped make it a staple, especially in hiphop
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…casio vlt1…one of it’s bleep n beep drum pattern presets became basically a complete charts top hit later on…
while pretty much all early roland instruments were considered crap before modern electronic music styles became a thing…
commodore’s c64 chip alone even founded a whole genre later and gave birth to elektrons first sonic idea…
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There’s tons of them. As @reeloy said it’s almost too easy with Roland.
TX81Z - Babyface kept 2 permanently set to the LatelyBass preset in his studio in the 90s. So cheap and ubiquitous at the end of Yamaha’s FM dynasty it was a rite of passage for budding synthesists to learn FM on in the 90s and aughties. Also the OG polyphonic microtonal gateway drug.
Juno 60/106 - A good chunk of Warp Records and later Oneohsix Point Never used them as a cornerstone of their sound.
SH101 - A bit overshadowed by the 303 as the acid machine but way more capable - see: A Guy Called Gerald (“Voodoo Ray”), Squarepusher (all of Big Loada).
MC202 - For a while this was simultaneously the poor man’s 303 and the poor man’s SH101 but with an overpowered sequencer, loved by folks from Autechre to Alessandro Cortini.
SP-1200 - A practical solution to meet technical limitations with an identified market. It met a slightly different market very, very well. Our species will fawn over the converters, output stages, sequencer, and UI until we go extinct. Pete Rock and RZA caught the first wave, but a steady stream of love letters has been written by vets and rookies alike, e.g. Jel’s 10 Seconds.
Volca Beats - It’s not “coveted” per se or even out of manufacture, but I’ll be a bit meta here and just name-drop Second Woman 
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This is not quite the same sort of thing, but this topic makes me think of how the early proto-synths/electronic studios that people like Stockhausen were using were made out of more generic electronic test equipment and such… so in a sense, some of the earliest “synths and drum machines” were already on their second life, insofar as they were being used for music at all
Edit:
Also, kind of in the same vein of a first life being a second life, Wikipedia says about the MPC:
“Linn anticipated that users would sample short sounds, such as individual notes or drum hits, to use as building blocks for compositions. However, users began sampling longer passages of music”
…although I can’t find a source ATM for this claim about Linn’s intentions… but this seems to resonate with my knowledge of how digital sampling tech was being approached in its early days.
And this kind of brings up the idea of early hip-hop in general for me… for example looping a break using two identical records on a DJ turntable set-up… kind of repurposes the turntables as a drum machine…? maybe… I hope these speculations aren’t too off topic.
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I don’t know instrument history that well, but the MS-20?
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Basically any of the TR machines (at least in my view) for that matter. I could be entirely wrong, but I don’t think any of them were a major commercial success during their initial release cycle. Maybe they broke even for Roland or had a small profit, but it seems like none of them really took off in popularity until a few years later in the 2nd hand market.
Maybe I’m full of it? That’s my impression anyway.
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…linn’s mpc fingerdrumming pad concept never had a second life…they were an ongoing classic right from their get go, still going strong…
in fact, the most copied basic userinterface meets functionality of all electronic history…
never forget the day, when native instruments stopped truu inventing and started to grow into a full blown copy cat…
and korg’s ms range also just moved on, sliding in preference simply from genre to genre, never growing old…
but hey…try to imagine what would have happened if stuff like ableton/bitwig were already a thing in the 90ies…
Yeees, and I can’t see a mention of it without invoking the dual-weilding SH-101 legends that are Bicep
The monomachine, still wish I got my hands on one before the massive price spike 
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Casio Mt-40=Sleng teng/Dancehall
In a way Orgon Enigiser. That clip with the Northern Electronics dudes made 10000 US techno dudes want one and they got disgustingly expensive.
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Speak & Spell - kids toy used on many records for vocals, then later circuit bent and used for glitchy sounds.
Plus circuit bending in general. Old Casios, and other toy/kids keyboards or other electronic toys used for music.
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