List of miscellaneous commercial failures

This article covers failed commercial products and services with no specific theme. For commercial failures with a more specific category along with other types of flops, see the disambiguation page Flop.

This is a list of miscellaneous commercial failures which don't really have a specific theme.

Retail flops

Builders Square: Kmart's idea of a big name hardware store, similar to The Home Depot and Lowe's. Builders Square was never able to keep up with Home Depot and Lowe's, which were established companies, and despite a huge investment by Kmart, Builders Square went out of business in 1999.
Iceland: Iceland, an otherwise successful British supermarket chain, attempted to go up-market by stocking only organic own-labels, a plan that backfired after its core market of low-incomers couldn't afford it. Iceland regained its former customers after recruiting working-class popstar Kerry Katona as a promotional tool.
Dixie Square Mall: Illinois' first shopping mall that opened in Harvey, Illinois. The mall thrived for a few years before closing in 1979. The mall is famous for being the mall used in a chase scene in The Blues Brothers. The mall was left to rot and still stands today, completely abandoned. Today, the mall has a strong fan following devoted to covering its deteriorating condition.
Ralphs/The GIANT: Ralphs, a Southern California supermarket chain, launched a warehouse club brand in August 1986, but was unable to compete with more established clubs while confusing patrons of their traditional grocery stores.
Old Chicago: A bold concept of a shopping mall and indoor amusement park, Old Chicago opened in exurban Chicago, Illinois in 1975. Plagued by structural faults left over from its hurried construction, small fires, its distance from Chicago, not to mention a lack of any big-name department stores, the complex shut down only six years later in 1981, by which time the amusement rides, as well as most of the retailers, were already long gone. The enormous building sat decaying for a few more years as investors searched in vain for a new use for it, before it was finally demolished in 1986. Old Chicago's concept was successfully redone in the Mall of America.
Speedblock: A company that planned to build new houses from concrete, similar to a process they had used in Europe. Closed in 1998 after a failed NASCAR sponsorship.
Washington Commons: An attempt to revitalize Port Plaza Mall in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It failed after the APAC Customer Services lawsuit.
The Tricorn Centre: Shortly after being built in Portsmouth, England in 1966, it was voted one of the ugliest buildings in the country. It suffered from severe building design and construction problems while steadily housing less and less business, becoming effectively derelict by the 2000s. The centre was destroyed in 2004.
The Warner Bros. Studio Store: Similar to The Disney Store. Went bankrupt after only 10 years in business.

Consumer electronics flops

Betamax VCR system: Sony's proprietary recording technology produced a sharper picture than the competing VHS system, but initially could only record for 1 hour. Also, by not licencing the Betamax format, it was overwhelmed in the marketplace by the many competing, licenced VHS manufacturers. Although a failure in other markets, the Betamax format achieved some success in parts of Asia.
Digital Compact Cassette: A format introduced by Philips, which lost out to Minidisc and CD-R. A similarly ill-fated attempt to improve on the compact audio cassette was Sony's much earlier Elcaset system.
DIVX: DIVX was a take-off on DVD and was a pay-per-view service. DIVX backer Circuit City, a retail electronics giant, lost about $200 million over the fiasco. (Not to be confused with DivX, the video codec.)
e-book devices: Between 1999 and 2002, a number of companies, notably Gemstar, jockeyed for control of this supposedly vast, lucrative market, believing that readers would pay hardcover prices for a severely limited number of book titles in DRM-encrypted formats that tied each electronic copy to a unique serialized hardware device. In 2002 the "e-book are dead" meme became widespread. In 2003, Gemstar pulled the plug on its servers and Barnes and Noble ceased offering e-book content of any kind.
Flexplay and ez-D: Flexplay and ez-D are "self-destructing" DVD-compatible discs, which turn black and become unplayable 48 hours after the package's seal is broken. Disney's Buena Vista announced the product in 2003 with much ballyhoo and test-marketed it in Texas. But even top-tier Disney titles such as "Pirates of the Caribbean" "didn't turn out to be an item that our customers were looking for", according to a chain of groceries in Austin, Texas that dropped the product shortly after introduction. Priced at about $7, the value proposition, compared to a DVD—0.01% of the lifetime at 50% of the cost—was apparently not compelling to potential customers.
Kodak disc cameras (1982–1990): Although advanced in technology and automated-processing-friendly, its aspheric lenses could not overcome the limitations of the tiny 8x10mm negative, smaller even than the Minox. It was introduced at the same time as easy-to-use, inexpensive 35mm cameras were becoming available. People liked the cameras but hated the pictures, the graininess of which was obvious.
Segway HT: The Segway scooter was released among unprecendented hype as being a product that would revolutionize not only transportation, but the world. Investors expected hundreds of thousands of units to be sold, generating billions of dollars in sales in the first year. While novel and technically advanced, people scoffed at the high US$5,000 price. In reality, the Segway sold around only 10,000 units in its first few years. Despite this start, Segway has been steadily growing, and has recently expanded its dealer network. Though not yet ubiquitous, Segway has been gaining popularity.
Xelibri: A cellphone brand launched by German electronics giant Siemens in 2003, in an attempt to boost the lagging market share of its regular Siemens-branded mobile phones. The concept behind the brand was to emulate the haute couture and fashion accessories industry, creating and marketing two strictly limited seasonal collections per year. Thus Xelibri hoped to convince customers to replace their phones more often and own multiple devices at the same time, e.g. matching them to their moods and clothes in the way people buy and use shoes or handbags. The principally interesting idea to sell well-designed "fashion phones" via exclusive retailers and fashion stores (somewhat comparable to Nokia's Vertu brand, but less high-priced) was marred by using slightly outdated technologies and materials that did not match to the price point of the phones, and highly unusual user interfaces. After just two collections, each with four phone models, the Xelibri phones department had to close shop. It is believed that Siemens lost about 70 million US dollars in the production and marketing efforts around the Xelibri brand.

Television Commercial Flops

Political Ads

1993 Chrétien face ad - The 1993 Chrétien face ad was an attack ad broadcast on television during the 1993 federal election in Canada by the Progressive Conservative Party against Liberal leader Jean Chrétien. Many felt that the ad focused on Chrétien's facial deformity, caused by Bell's palsy. The resulting outcry is considered to be a classic example of voter backlash from negative campaigning.

2006 Liberal Party attack ads - The 2006 Liberal Party attack ads were seen as so blatantly offensive and absurd, they were not condemned so much as ridiculed. Voters, as well as Liberal MPs such as Keith Martin and John McCallum, were angry with the implication in one ad that a Conservative win would result in the military threatening civilians and civil liberties. Two national newspapers ran parodies of the ads, and Canadian and American comedy shows did as well. The ads played during the Liberal Party's decline in polls, forcing them to continually defend them instead of making policy announcements, and were widely seen as a desperate and laughable tactic which backfired, contributing at least in part to their defeat on election day.

Other Commercial Flops

Burger King launches Herb: The "Herb" campaign by Burger King was one of greatest food related marketing flops of 1985. The campaign centered on the faceless, and unseen "Herb", a male character that was constantly being admonished for being himself. Viewers were invited to join the fun for looking out for the feckless character. One of the reasons why the campaign failed was that Burger King didn't even bother to tell people what Herb looked like. The net effect was an inside joke that people found more annoying than engaging. Advertising Age magazine called the Herb campaign "most elaborate advertising flop of the decade". Herb's face was revealed in the New York segment of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, later renamed World Wrestling Entertainment ^*) 's Wrestlemania 2 Pay-Per-View event, where he served as guest timekeeper in the Rowdy Roddy Piper Vs. Mr.T main event.
Disney's California Adventure: A theme park located in the former parking lot of Disneyland, was constructed on a thin budget and did not meet the public's perceived quality standards of Disney's theme parks. Despite the fact that the park was underdeveloped compared to its neighbor, it shared the same admission fee as Disneyland. The reduced value offering made the park sparsely attended, becoming a continuing running gag on The Simpsons.

Apple's eWorld online service: Based on America Online's software and designed as a more modern replacement for the aging AppleLink service, eWorld lasted from June 1994 to March 1996. eWorld failed due to its high price, indifferent marketing by Apple and the rising popularity of Internet service providers at the expense of proprietary online services. In September 1995, eWorld had only 115,000 subscribers, compared with AOL's 3.5 million at the time. A promised Windows version never materialized. (Coincidentally, AOL itself had begun as "AppleLink Personal Edition" and was designed as a consumer-oriented alternative to AppleLink.)
Happy Family Midge: A doll with a removable "pregnant" belly containing a tiny baby. The doll was part of Mattel's "Happy Family" line of toys, featuring dolls of older married characters. Some people mistakenly decided the doll was from the teen-fashion line of Barbie dolls and promoted teen sex. Mattel soon added a cardboard cutout of Midge's husband to the packaging, then pulled it altogether.
Iridium: A system of 66 satellites set up for global mobile phone service, Iridium proved to be too expensive for wide use. Though Iridium was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and has left the consumer market, their network was licensed by the US and UK militaries for use in Iraq. According to USA Today, the company has been profitable since the end of 2005.
Lollapalooza 2004: Tour had to be cancelled this year due to weak ticket sales. This came only a year after organizer Perry Farrell revived the tour and caused the Lollapalooza brand to shift to a two-day destination festival rather than a nationwide tour.
The Millennium Dome: A commercial and public relations disaster, it now lies empty in Greenwich in London. However, it is now being renovated as a sport and concert facility, and will be used as a venue for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Penn Central Transportation: This product of the 1968 merger of the New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad became bankrupt in 1970 and merged to become part of Conrail, a government corporation, on April 1, 1976.
Persil Power: This laundry detergent catalyst was intended to help remove tough stains from clothes. In addition to not being particularly successful in terms of sales, it proved to have corrosive effects which could easily render clothes unwearable after a few washes (due to the high amounts of manganese used in the powder).
Railtrack:Set up as the UK's rail infrastructure company as part of railway privatisation, it failed to maintain the railway network to a satisfactory standard and was implicated in a number of high profile disasters, most notably the Hatfield rail crash. The Hatfield crash led to a massive track renewal programme and the high costs led to the collapse of Railtrack's share price. It was forced into special railway administration (a form of administration) on 7 October 2001 and later sold to Network Rail. The parent group, RT Plc, went into liquidation on 18 October 2002.
Schlitz: In the early 1970s a new company president cited market research showing that most beer drinkers couldn't tell one beer from another as a reason to move to a cheaper method of brewing a leading beer. However, drinkers did believe that a beer made more cheaply tasted worse, especially when it had less head than it used to, and by the time the company went back to the old formula in 1979 the damage done was so great it had to be sold to Stroh Brewery Company three years later in the wake of a strike.
Teledesic: Bill Gates was a major investor in this proposed network of hundreds of satellites to provide Internet access.

References

Commercial failure lists