Sucked might be taking it a little far. Though it didn't work well as a game, the editors they created were really, really good. A very nice combination of user friendly and just powerful enough for creativity.

One of my biggest disappointments with the games industry is that those editors never really made their way into the industry at large. One of my greatest hopes after Spore launched was that some company would license those editors and actually build a good game around them. A Dungeon-Keeperesque game with fully editable creatures and dungeon design was a particular dream. Sadly, it never really caught on, and Spore looks to be a mostly dead end.

I thought it did well commercially, though.

"In its first three weeks on sale, the game sold 2 million copies, according to Electronic Arts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)

Unfortunately, the citation link is dead on the article. I don't know if this answers your question about commercial success. Maybe someone knows more about this data point in context of the industry.