Never having owned one of their samplers, I know Akai by their odd, double-wide effects. Much like Zoom's foray into single-effect stompboxes, it never really took off, but Akai had some really cool pieces of gear: if you were looking at just the right time, you could buy them dirt cheap, as every store had them in a "blow-out sale!" section.
In 1999 or so, they offered a multi-mode distortion with an expression pedal (cool!), a multi-function wah, a tape-echo simulator and loop recorder (well before emulating tape/analog was in fashion), and dynamically controlled phaser: all in all, inventive, far-out pedals that, by and large, sounded great. They followed that up with a 5-band compressor pedal (what a beast) that was completely mindblowing... and no one bought this stuff.
For me, these things are warm memories-- their echo is still in production (I love mine), they made my favorite synth pedal, and their phaser was the first phaser I ever owned. All in all, these pedals are wonderful gear.