Failures: Iconic Brands That Flopped (New Coke, Anyone?)
When Coca-Cola Forgot Who They Were
Picture this: you’re sipping your favorite Coke on a warm summer day in 1985 when suddenly, your beloved brand announces they’re changing their century-old formula. By 1985, Coca-Cola had been losing market share to diet soft drinks and non-cola beverages for several years. Blind taste tests suggested that consumers preferred the sweeter taste of the competing product Pepsi-Cola, and so the Coca-Cola recipe was reformulated. The American public reacted negatively, and New Coke was considered a major failure. What followed was perhaps the most spectacular product failure in American history. The company was flooded with up to 8,000 calls a day from dissatisfied consumers and received some 40,000 complaint letters. CEO Roberto Goizueta got a letter addressed to “Chief Dodo, The Coca-Cola Company.” Talk about a wake-up call that left executives scrambling for damage control!
Crystal Pepsi: The Clear Mistake
In 1992, Pepsi was convinced that what consumers wanted was a caffeine-free, clear version of its iconic soda. But Crystal Pepsi didn’t last two years before it was yanked from shelves. The concept seemed simple enough – take everything people love about Pepsi and make it look like water. What could go wrong? Everything, as it turns out. In an interview with Thrillist, the former Pepsi marketing executive who came up with the idea called it “probably the best idea I’ve ever had — and the most poorly executed.” Sometimes the best intentions pave the road to corporate hell. Crystal Pepsi was billed as a health alternative, but the colourless drink was too far removed from the product people already knew and loved, and production was halted.
McDonald’s Tries to Get Fancy
In 1996, McDonald’s decided to broaden its target demographic by introducing a burger, Arch Deluxe. The mustard-mayonnaise sauce was supposed to appeal to adult tastes. However, even a $100 million advertising campaign couldn’t convince grown-ups to eat the burger. The failed product was soon discontinued, and its marketing campaign is now considered to be one of the most expensive flops of all time. The irony was thick as a McDonald’s milkshake. Here was a fast-food chain famous for Happy Meals trying to convince adults they needed a “grown-up” burger. McDonald’s spent over $200 million on an ad campaign which pushed the Arch Deluxe as “the burger with the grown-up taste,” showing a commercial where kids hated it. Since the fast-food chain’s core market was and pretty much still is families, this wasn’t a wise move and alienated their younger customer base.
When Toothpaste Tried to Feed You
Imagine opening your freezer and seeing a Colgate lasagna staring back at you. Yes, you read that right. In 1982, Colgate came up with the weirdest brand extension idea. They decided to sell frozen dinners! This plan backfired, probably because consumers couldn’t help but think that the Colgate food tasted just like their toothpaste. No company launches a product thinking that it will decrease sales of their other products, but Colgate should’ve seen it coming. Their toothpaste sales plummeted after the launch of the kitchen entrees line. It’s the perfect example of how brand association can work against you. When people think “minty fresh” every time they see your logo, maybe don’t venture into the world of beef and pasta.
Pepsi Blue: Berry Bad Decision
In 2002, Pepsi launched its Pepsi Blue drink to compete with Vanilla Coke. Despite being heavily promoted, this new beverage flopped. It was supposed to taste like berries. However, consumers said it tasted more like cotton candy with a berry-like aftertaste. The drink’s bright blue color was supposed to make it stand out on shelves, but it ended up looking more like something you’d find in a chemistry lab than a refreshing beverage. PepsiCo launched the berry-flavoured soda Pepsi Blue in 2002 but, despite relentless promotion from the likes of Britney Spears and the New York Mets, sales of the blue beverage were disappointing and the drink was axed in 2004 in the US and Canada, although it is still sold in parts of Asia. However, despite its previous flop, Pepsi brought the drink back to American stores for a limited time in 2021.
Life Savers Soda: Missing the Target
But the same cannot be said for the Life Savers Soda that hit the market seven decades later. While the drink — served in a cylindrical bottle decorated with the same red, yellow, green and orange stripes as the candy wrapper — fared well in taste tests, it failed to catch on with consumers in th 1980s who thought it would be too sweet and was like drinking candy from a bottle. The logic seemed sound: people love Life Savers candy, so why not create a liquid version? Unfortunately, translating the experience of sucking on a hard candy into a drinkable format proved impossible. Sometimes the magic of a product lies in its original form, and trying to recreate it elsewhere just doesn’t work.
Heinz Gets Colorful and Fails
In a conference room somewhere, an executive must have thought, “You know what would make ketchup more fun? Colors!” In 2006, Heinz unveiled EZ Squirt Ketchup, offering the already beloved condiment in purple, green, or teal, housed in what looked like a school glue container. The result was pretty darn unappealing and after a six-year attempt to make EZ Squirt happen, it was discontinued, according to Bored Panda. There’s something fundamentally wrong with purple ketchup on a burger. Our brains are hardwired to expect certain colors from certain foods, and when that expectation is violated, we reject it instinctively. Heinz learned this lesson the hard way after years of trying to make rainbow condiments a thing.
Orbitz: The Lava Lamp Drink
Companies always seem interested in finding the next great beverage and in 1997 Clearly Canadian placed its bets on Orbitz, a soda that, as Bored Panda points out, seriously resembled a lava lamp. A carbonated beverage accented with flavored gel orbs, the gimmick tanked with consumers and was ousted from stores. The floating gel balls were supposed to create a unique drinking experience, but they ended up being more off-putting than appealing. However, according to reviews, its taste wasn’t worth the hype. People began comparing the beverage to cough syrup and the gel balls only made the taste worse. Sometimes innovation for innovation’s sake just doesn’t work.
Keurig’s Cola Confusion
Remember that time the coffee kings at Keurig tried to edge their way into the soda market? Neither did we, until Delish reminded us of the 2015 venture that dissolved in less than a year. The site says consumers simply couldn’t wrap their heads around Keurig and cola in the same way they could with coffee. The concept of pod-based soda never quite clicked with consumers who were perfectly happy opening a can or bottle. Sometimes the convenience factor isn’t enough to overcome consumer habits and expectations. Keurig learned that their brand power had limits, and those limits didn’t extend to fizzy drinks.
Ore-Ida’s Funky Fries Fiasco
In yet another case of brands trying to turn a product another color when it really served no purpose, Ore-Ida introduced their Funky Fries. What made them so funky? Oh, some were bright blue, some were cinnamon-flavored, and others were chocolate-flavored. CNN reports they hit shelves in 2002 and were promptly pulled from stores in 2003. Blue french fries? Chocolate-flavored potatoes? The very idea makes your brain short-circuit. French fries have one job: to be crispy, salty, and golden. When you mess with that fundamental expectation, you’re asking for trouble.
Gerber Singles: Baby Food for Adults
Baby food giant Gerber had achieved so much success with their jarred stuff for the kiddos, they took a stab at marketing their puréed meals to college kids and those looking for a quick meal for one. They called them Gerber Singles and they came in flavors like Beef Burgundy and Blueberry Delight. Not surprisingly, even students on a budget weren’t willing to eat a meal of mush. CBS News reported the product hit shelves in 1974 (and were retired shortly thereafter). There’s something deeply unsettling about eating pureed adult food from a jar. College students may be desperate, but apparently not desperate enough to resort to baby food marketed to adults.
Cosmopolitan Yogurt: Magazine Meets Dairy
If you thought Colgate taking the plunge into the freezer section with frozen entrees was a bit of a leap, consider this: Cosmopolitan magazine once branded a line of yogurt. Eat This, Not That! says the product hit the refrigerated section in 1999 and, not surprisingly, wasn’t received well. The connection between fashion magazines and dairy products is tenuous at best. Cosmopolitan apparently drew a connection between the magazine’s sex and relationships content and food fetishes, which ‘logically’ meant that branded yoghurts would sell. Sometimes corporate logic defies all reason, and this was one of those times.
Tropicana’s Packaging Panic
In early 2009, PepsiCo rolled out a new carton design for its popular Tropicana orange juice as part of a broader effort to improve the marketing for some of its biggest brands. The company ditched its recognizable orange with a straw sticking out of it on the package in favor of a design with a large glass of juice and the words “100% Orange.” Just six weeks after its debut, PepsiCo scrapped the redesign and went back to the classic look. Consumers were complaining it made the product look generic and made it hard for them to differentiate the kind of juice that was inside the package. Another likely reason for the abrupt change: Tropicana sales plunged by 20% after the packaging overhaul, costing the company millions of dollars, according to AdAge. Never underestimate the power of familiar packaging – sometimes change isn’t progress, it’s just confusion.
The Lessons We Never Learn
These failures teach us something profound about human nature and consumer behavior. There are a host of reasons why new products don’t last: the public didn’t want it, the item didn’t resonate with the brand, the company was too early or late in the product cycle, or it just didn’t taste good. But perhaps the most important lesson is that consumers form deep emotional connections with their favorite brands and products. The problem, though, is that the company had underestimated loyal drinkers’ emotional attachments to the brand. Never did its market research testers ask subjects how they would feel if the new formula replaced the old one. When companies ignore these emotional bonds, they do so at their own peril. But the outcry against the move came in no small measure from consumers resisting those same forces, which they saw usurping their personal prerogatives over even the mundane elements of daily life.
What’s your take on these epic food failures? Did any of these products surprise you with just how spectacularly they bombed?
