The 10 Biggest Commercial Flops Of All Times!

[Videoskooter]

Marketeers have compiled a Hall Of Shame for products by big companies that miserably failed:

1. Ford Edsel (Too Stylish or just fugly?)
2. DeLorean - DMC-12 (Good car-bad manager?)
3. IBM - PCjr (Too expensive compared to Atari and Commodore)
4. Levi’s - Type 1 Jeans (Ever seen somebody wearing these?)
5. Apple - Lisa (Outmarked by IBM)
6. McDonalds - Arch Deluxe Burger (The hamburger for the rich-bad idea?)
7. Pepsi - Crystal Pepsi (No caffeïne was a bad idea)
8. Polaroid - Instant Home Movies (Ever seen one?)
9. Coca Cola- New Coke (The old Coke was great so why make a new one?)
10.Sony Betamax (1979) (Beaten by the VHS-crew)

[Graham_Start]

The Betamax was hardly a "miserable failure". Early on it had a large share of the market; it was only when VCRs really began to take off that VHS won because it was cheaper and offered longer recording times.

Elcasette, ATRAC, DCC cassette, DataPlay, DVD-A, DivX, and those things that looked like laserdiscs but were played with a stylus... now those were miserable failures. Coke's recent launch of Dasani in the UK was a miserable failure. Nokia's N-Gage was a miserable failure. But a videotape format that was on the market for over a decade, a variant of which continued to be used in broadcast for years after, a failure? Hardly.

[Graham_Start]

Originally Posted by Videoskooter

3. IBM - PCjr (Too expensive compared to Atari and Commodore)

It wasn't so much competition with Atari (who had zero success with their home computers at the time) and Commodore as it was the fact that the PCjr had key functions removed so that it wouldn't cannibalize sales of proper PCs. In other words, they deliberately made it suck.

Originally Posted by Videoskooter

9. Coca Cola- New Coke (The old Coke was great so why make a new one?)

Initially, sales of the new coke were massive as everyone tried it out. The amount of publicity that Coke gained over this (as well as when they switched back) was more than even their multi-million-dollar marketing budgets could've got them. Some cynical people believe that the whole thing was a deliberate publicity stunt, although one of the higher-ups at Coke said words to the effect of "No, we weren't that smart".

[needlefingers]

The Lambada.

[Nano]

OK I'm reading that this part of the forum has 9,999 posts so I'm happy to write post number 10,000 Just to say that the title of this topic made me think of Hollywood movie tanks, so I'll add some I remember:

-HUDSON HAWK (Bruce Willis jumpin' on his big ego)
-ISHTAR (Beatty and Hoffman trying to be funny in the desert)
-LAST ACTION HERO (like Arnie said in the movie "big mistake!")
-HEAVEN'S GATE (however the 4-hour version resurrected in some movie festivals so who knows)
-HOWARD THE DUCK (I actually kinda liked this George Lucas flop)
-ONE FROM THE HEART (ditto about this failed Coppola musical)
-GANGS FROM NEW YORK (eeeeechhhh! )

So many bombs, so little time...

[JussiK]

Originally Posted by needlefingers

The Lambada.

Lambada was huge in Europe. Tv specials, dance displays in variety shows, dance competions, Lambada skirst, and of course music compliations that sold extremely well. There was a surge of all kinds of ethnically flavoured dance records like Zouk Machine's fab "Maldon" that made the club scene very interesting, too. And loads of money changed hands, so it was a success story all around. The track that started the craze is STLL being played at weddings.

[needlefingers]

I stand corrected. I didn't see it explode in the United States, but it may well have found "pockets of success" here also.

I apologize to all the Lambadians around the world.