Many great science fiction novels present us with futures where capitalism has gone awry. Huge, international companies run the world, buying and selling anything they like with reckless abandon. Well, the future is now, ladies and gentlemen, because the food and drink companies we view as nothing more than the providers of our delicious treats are much more powerful than you realize. For example, did you know that…

10 They Break Down Language Barriers

Imagine you’re in a foreign country. You don’t know the city, you don’t know the people and most unnervingly, you don’t know the language. It’s hot and you are dying for a Coke. But how do you order one when you don’t know how to speak to the shopkeeper? Cultures differ drastically, even with the simplest of things. So what possible chance do you have of guessing how to order your desired fizzy beverage? Apparently you just say ‘Coca-Cola’. An international survey revealed that the words ‘Coca-Cola’ were the second most universally understood term on the planet, losing only to the positive affirmation ‘OK’.

9 They are Multiplying Rapidly

Sometimes it seems like a new fast food or café chain opens every day. Well it seems that way because it’s true. KFC is planning to open one hundred new stores every year in India until 2015. In the last few years McDonalds has opened an average of one new store every day in China. Between 1987 and the mid 2000s Starbucks opened an average of two stores every day. They famously were ridiculed for what seemed like too rapid a growth and many stores were closed down. But that didn’t seem to phase them, at the end of 2012 plans were announced to open more stores in America—approximately 3000 more.

8 They have Economies Bigger Than Countries

GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product and countries are often ranked this way, with the list giving rough ideas and estimations of a nation’s wealth. But the GDP of developing and third world countries aren’t just dwarfed by the GDPs of large Western nations—they’re sometimes significantly smaller than the GDP of individual companies.

In 2010, McDonald’s’ revenue was larger than the country of Latvia’s entire GDP. Oman, a small country bordering Saudi Arabia has a GDP smaller than the revenue of Pepsi, with a difference of over two billion dollars.

7 They Feed Our Armies

Surely one of the worst things about living on an army base would be the food, right? Not if you like Burger King. In the 1980s, Burger King received a major contract with the US Army and Air Force and to this day just about every key Army and Air Force base plays host to a Burger King restaurant.

And that isn’t just the bases located in America, even the Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan has one. Though it was closed in 2010 due to suggestions that it took up space that could be used for mail or ammunition, a drop in soldier morale brought about the BK’s return in 2012. And if the soldiers get tired of Burger King? Not an issue, there’s also a Popeye’s Chicken and a Pizza Hut.

6They Have Absurd Amounts of Products

Most people know that Coca-Cola don’t just make Coca-Cola. There’s Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Vanilla Coke, heck even Coke two was a thing. And on top of that, Coke also distributes Dasani bottled water, Vitamin water, and Poweraid. So with all the diet, new flavors and sugar free options of their most known drinks the number of beverages the company actually has on offer rises pretty dramatically, but how many drinks would you guess they sell worldwide? Twenty? Fifty? Try three and a half thousand.

5 They are Bigger Than Religion

Religion is relatively universal. It frequently transcends languages and is present in some way all over the world. Individual pieces of religious symbolism, however, are apparently not as recognized around the world as fast food symbolism.

In various studies the McDonalds ‘golden arches’ logo was more recognizable than the Christian cross. Other studies as well as scenes from the 2004 film ‘Supersize Me’ have shown that most American children will recognize fast food mascots such as Ronald McDonald and Wendy but will be unable to identify religious characters such as Jesus.

4 They Give you the Illusion of Choice

Who would you rather give money to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut or Taco Bell? Well it doesn’t really matter because all three are owned by the same company: Yum! Brands Inc.

Many familiar companies have a hand in a much more varied range of products than you would expect. Pepsi Co owns Quaker oats, which means it owns a huge variety of cereals, rice snacks, pasta dishes and even baking mixes. Pepsi also owns several chip companies and even some types of coffee.

But hey, maybe those types of products aren’t your thing, so you’re gonna completely ignore Pepsi by sitting home and enjoying a nice cup of Lipton Tea. Yeah, you see where this is going: Pepsi owns Lipton too.

3 They’ll Completely Change their Product

Most products have a certain demographic. If what you’re selling doesn’t match everyone’s needs there’s not much you can do right? Well, most fast food companies are happy to completely change their image, even if it make them unrecognizable.

For example, KFC is hugely popular in China, but it’s not KFC as you might know it. Chinese KFC stores often serve shrimp burgers, fried dough sticks, egg tarts and soy drinks as well as a huge list of other foods specific to China.

What if you’re a company wanting to open a store in a country where the food you are famous for is religiously banned? No problem, just get rid of it completely. Many Indian McDonald’s stores don’t sell beef or pork products at all. In fact the first vegetarian only McDonald’s is set to open in India within the next year.

2 They Convinced us Water is Bad

Water is pretty essential to the whole ‘being alive’ thing, which is why most people have it on tap, basically for free. And that’s bad for companies trying to sell you beverages of their own.

Robert S. Morrison, chairman of Pepsi Co., apparently said that tap water was his company’s biggest enemy, and the H2NO campaign planned to do something about it.

Founded by Coca-Cola, the H2NO operation sought to dissuade people from ordering (free) tap water in favor of more enjoyable (that is, profitable) beverages. It’s aim was to convince people tap water was boring, and what’s worse is that it started to work. Olive Gardens restaurants took part in the campaign, attempting to convince people to avoid tap water and drink soda instead.

It worked.

1 They Want to Hire Everyone

Are you a teenager living in Brazil? If so, you probably work at McDonalds. McDonalds has gathered a huge following amongst the youth of Brazil, to the point that the company has become the leading private-sector employer, with over 36,000 Brazilians working under the name. Of those employees almost 90 percent are under 21 years old.

But don’t think those astonishing numbers are specific to Brazil. McDonalds announced plans to hire more than 75,000 new employees in China over the next year. In America fast food companies are also the go to job for youngsters, in fact it is estimated that one in eight people have been employed at McDonalds at some point in their lifetime.

Scott tweets @frigginboom. He also friggin films himself.

From toy makers to airlines, many companies have dealt with financial troubles at some point in time. Included in this list are 10 companies that are so popular that you would not have expected them to have once been on the brink of bankruptcy.

Related : 10 Fascinating Histories of Iconic Products

10Fed Ex

The Founder and CEO of Fed Ex once saved the company with nothing but luck. Frederick Smith created the company with a combination of loans, inheritance money and funding. With the money, he purchased eight planes with which he shipped packages across the United States. No other business was operating this way at the time. Instead, their method of transportation was mostly trucks. This worked out for Smith, until jet fuel charges began to rise. Unable to cover the cost of fuel whilst maintaining the pricing strategy, Fed Ex was down millions of dollars. Smith had two choices: either he could file for bankruptcy, or he could take the final $5,000 in the company’s budget and use it to gamble in a Las Vegas casino. I’m sure you guessed which option he chose.

Within a week, he had $32,000, which was enough to refuel the planes and complete the deliveries. $24,000 was the amount needed to pay the oil companies for the jet fuel. Whilst Smith’s gamble had prevented the company from collapsing for only a week, the limited time allowed him to seek out additional funding and eventually grow the company into what it is today.^[1]

9 Lego

One of the most popular toy companies in recent years has not went without its troubles. It experienced a series of problems between 1998 and 2003. After the drop in profits and the threat of bankruptcy, a new CEO took over and paired up with George Lucas and his production company. This allowed them to produce Lego sets based on Indiana Jones and Star Wars. This decision likely saved the company. Instead of generic ‘pirate ship’ or ‘construction site’ sets, they moved on to make movie themed products. It is difficult to imagine that a toy company that went on to earn millions through their movie franchise alone was once on the brink of collapse. The company is now more successful than ever, meaning that we can all continue to accidentally stand on those tiny bricks and be in pain for years to come.^[2]

8 Sega

When Sega was in threat of bankruptcy in 2002, the then-President Isao Okawa donated all of his stock to the company, in order to save it. He was towards the end of his battle with cancer, which killed him shortly after his donation. Their troubles had been caused by the decision to end production on Dreamcast, their latest console. The release had been underwhelming, leaving them at a loss of 80 billion Yen. Okawa’s personal fortune of 85 billion yen made up for the hit that the company was about to take. If only Sega could convert Sonic coins to Yen – they would have solved their issues a lot sooner!^[3]

7 Apple

1997 was a terrible year for Apple. The iPod, which went on to become the company’s flagship product, had not been invented yet. Had an unexpected company not decided to invest in Apple, then we may never have had a convenient way to carry our music around with us. We may have had to do something else to distract ourselves on the commute. When Apple ran into some financial issues, Microsoft invested $150 million to save it from having to declare bankruptcy. Microsoft is the last company you would expect to save Apple, as they are their biggest competitor. It ultimately turned out to be a great business decision, as Microsoft made a huge profit off this investment.^[4]

6BMW

In 1948, BMW began to create luxury cars. This was a move away from their usual affordable automobiles, a huge risk for the company. After all, Mercedes-Benz dominated the luxury car market. In 1951, the BMW 501 was released and it was priced at 4 times the average wage of a citizen. Very few cars sold, leaving the company close to bankruptcy. The Quandt family, most notably Herbert Werner and Harald Quandt, German industrialists and the sons of members of the Nazi party, made a large investment in the company which saved it. This investment did not come free, however, as the family demanded a restructuring of the company, with new managers put in charge. Now, BMW is well known for making luxury cars, but had it not been for the job-losing decision to change the company’s focus, then they would not have the same great reputation.^[5]

5 Six Flags

Despite having a reputation for being a place of joy, Six Flags has went through some dark times. In June 2009, it filed for bankruptcy, after falling $2.4 billion in debt. On top of this, it had to pay $300 million to its stockholders in August of that year. With less than two months left to make up the money for these payments, Six Flags had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. It had had a relatively good year besides the debt, as it profited $275 million from the 25 million visitors so far that year. A few months later, the company returned thanks to its lawyers arranging a restructuring of the debt. It now continues business, with a series of theme parks and water parks across America. It sure was a “rollercoaster” of a journey.^[6]

4The Walt Disney Company

The early years of The Walt Disney Company was by no means a perfect fairy tale. Disney was at the brink of bankruptcy twice, once in 1920, when their financial backer went bankrupt himself and again in 1937. The creation of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ was a huge financial burden for the company. It was their first feature length film, but it required a $1.5 million investment from Walt Disney and a bank loan in order for it to be completed. Looking back, it was a huge risk, because had it failed, then Disney would not have become the household name that it is today. ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ went on to make $8 million at the box office, which is especially good considering how it was released during the Great Depression.^[7]

3 American Airlines

American Airlines once found its self in such a bad situation that it was removed from the New York Stock Exchange. The stock had fallen to 20 cents per share and in its entirety, the company was worth $90 million. It may seem like a lot of money, but ‘The Wall Street Journal’ put this into context by appropriately comparing it to “less than the typical list price of a new passenger jet.” The company has since returned to the New York Stock Exchange, with a value of $300 million. Had it not been for a large amount of investors buying the stock cheap, American Airlines may have went the same way as Eastern Airlines and Pan American World Airways. A partner for Pinnacle Investment Advisors purchased roughly $50,000 of shares in the airline, which resulted in a huge profit for him, after the company returned strong.^[8]

2 Tesla and SpaceX

It is incredibly difficult to believe that the company that once sent a car into space was once bankrupt. In the beginning, Elon Musk feared that his companies would fail. He was so sure of this, in fact, that he did not take money from investors. Instead, he opted to fund the company with his own money, which he had a substantial amount of due to the sale of his company PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002. He continue to fund it until 2008, when the financial crisis almost destroyed Tesla and SpaceX. Without any other options, Musk shut down operations, being essentially bankrupt for a few hours. That is when, at the last minute, he secured a $50 million investment in time to save the company. Daimler invested in Tesla and SpaceX, despite themselves being in financial trouble. Whilst this money saved the companies from being closed down, it was not a permanent fix. He still had to work hard to ensure their continued existence. Musk is quoted as having said “we only narrowly survived … we actually closed the financing round on Christmas Eve 2008. It was the last hour of the last day that it was possible.” Only 10 years later, he had sent a car into orbit to the tune of ‘Starman’ by David Bowie.^[9]

1 Etch a Sketch

This children’s toy would not have been as iconic as it is today, had it not featured in a popular Pixar movie. Etch a Sketch was on the brink of bankruptcy in 1999, when the creators of Toy Story 2 approached them. The scene in question featured an Etch a Sketch for only 12 seconds, but this appearance revived the popularity of the product. It allowed the company time to seek financing, with which they moved production of the toy from Ohio to China. This cut down production costs and prolonged the life of the company. They were not the only product which appeared in Toy Story 2 (obviously, a movie about toys would be pretty dull without toys in it.) Barbie and Mr Potato Head were also written into the script, but neither of them were as reliant on this appearance as Etch a Sketch. Thanks to Toy Story 2, it was named one of the top toys of the century in 2008. Who knew that an appearance in third highest grossing movie of 1999 could make you so popular?

Etch a Sketch belongs at the top of this list because unlike the other companies featured, they produced something which was a typical household item. It did not need batteries or make any noise, so it became a popular gift for parents to buy. Had the business went bankrupt and the toy disappeared from shelves, it would still be remembered as a part of many people’s childhood memories. Few people would remember one of many airlines disappearing, or a production company who had only made one movie in the late 1930s. The escape from the brink of bankruptcy allowed Etch a Sketch to be exposed to many more generations of children, brightening their childhood with two dials and a hundred little lines.^[10]

Would you believe it if a random person told you that Samsung manufactured machine guns? Or that Volkswagen makes sausages, Toyota sells prefabricated homes and Apple once sold clothes? We did not make any of that up. They are all true.

See Also: Top 10 Famous Companies With Unexpected Origins

You see, while we often associate established brands with certain products, like Lamborghini with sports cars and Sony with electronics, these conglomerates often have other businesses they do. Oftentimes, they just veered off into some other market that is totally unrelated to their core business. At other times, they just happened to be part of a larger multinational that is into things we would not expect.

10 Volkswagen—Ketchup And Sausage

Volkswagen has been making and selling sausages for over 43 years. The sausages are so popular and successful that Volkswagen calls them its “most popular product without wheels”. We think Volkswagen should have actually called it cars its “most popular product ‘with’ wheels” since it actually sells more sausages than cars. In 2015, it sold 5.8 million cars and 7.2 million sausages.

That got us thinking. Does that make Volkswagen a carmaker that sells sausages by the side or a sausage company that sells cars by the side?

The sausage, which the company calls currywurst and brands with the German phrase “Volkswagen Originalteil” (“Volkswagen original parts” in English), is made at the company’s main factory in Wolfburg, Germany. Cars are also made at the facility in case you are wondering. The sausages are made of pork and offered in two different lengths. There is also a vegetarian version.

Volkswagen entered the ketchup business in 1997. Its ketchup is thicker than regular ketchup and flavored with spice and curry. The sausages and ketchup are wildly popular and sold at Volkswagen factories and partner supermarkets in Germany. German dealerships also present a pack to customers who buy new Volkswagens from them.^[1]

9 Apple—Clothes

Apple is renowned for its computers, phones, iPods and lately, financial services. However, if things had gone according to plan, we would have added clothes to the previous sentence. Yes, Apple sold clothes and even launched a clothing line way back in 1986.

What do you think they called it? iShirt? Maccap? No, they called it The Apple Collection. The Apple Collection included t-shirts, sweatshirts, caps and hats. The merchandise either had the former colorful Apple logo or the word “Apple” imprinted on them in some funny looking, old school font.
The clothing line was not Steve Jobs idea. He had left Apple a year earlier. John Sculley was the CEO of Apple at the time. So, we think he came up with the idea. Apple stores did not exist at the time, so Apple sold the clothes exclusively through mail order. The clothing line was later discontinued due to what we think was poor sales.^[2]

8 Samsung—Machine Guns

When we think Samsung, we think televisions, home appliances, semiconductors, anti-Apple lawsuits and maybe exploding phones. Machine guns are one thing we definitely do not think of. This is even though Samsung actually manufactures machinegun systems for the South Korean military.

While most people do not realize, Samsung is actually an international conglomerate with interest in construction, vehicle manufacturing, theme parks, helicopter engines, hospitals, real estate, luxury hotels, textiles, chemicals, weapons and lots more. These machineguns are not your regular human-operated machineguns but artificial intelligence powered weapons capable of independently engaging enemies without a human operator.

The aptly named Samsung SGR-A1 sentry gun is the product of a joint venture between Samsung Techwin (one of Samsung’s sister companies) and Korea University. It is equipped with cameras, rangefinders, illuminators, voice recognition and a machine gun and multiple grenade launcher that allows it to automatically track, identify and engage enemies.

However, Samsung denies that the weapon will engage targets on its own. Rather, it passes information about any intruder to an operator, who determines whether it should fire or not. The weapon is currently deployed at the 250-kilometers-long Korean Demilitarized zone, which despite its name, is one of the most militarized regions of the world. There are no reports that the weapon has killed anyone yet.^[3]

7 Porsche—Honey

Porsche is renowned for its sports cars, luxury sport utility vehicles, sedans and honey. You probably did not see that last part coming. Porsche keeps bees and sells their honey. Porsche entered the beekeeping business in May 2017 when it set up a bee farm in Saxony, Germany. The farm launched with 1.5 million bees split into 25 colonies.

Those bees produced 400 kilograms of pure honey by December. Porsche put the honey in jars, slammed the name Turbienchen on them and sold them at its customer care shop in Leipzig, Germany. The honey sold out within days, prompting Porsche to add another 1.5 million bees as it attempted to double its output the following year.

Porsche did not go into the beekeeping business for money but for preservation purposes. Bees are crucial to German agriculture and are protected by law. Despite this, Germany still loses massive amounts of bees to disease and pesticide every year. In fact, Germany currently has a shortage of bees. Porsche’s is only trying to increase Germany’s bee population.^[4]

6 Cosmopolitan Magazine—Yogurt

Cosmopolitan is famed for its colorful fashion, entertainment and lifestyle magazine. However, at the turn of the century, it got famous for selling yogurt, cheese, clothes, watches, sunglasses and cafés, which it called lifestyle centers. The so-called lifestyle centers helped women keep fit and offered advice on their emotional issues.

The first pack of the aptly named Cosmopolitan yogurt (or Cosmo yogurt for short) appeared in supermarkets in 1999. Like the magazine, the yogurt and cheese were targeted at women between the ages of 15 and 44. It was low-fat and was made in partnership with MD Foods. However, the yogurt barely survived for two years before it was discontinued over poor sales.^[5]

5 Lamborghini—Off Road Vehicles

Lamborghini is world famous for its powerful and aesthetically pleasing sports cars. But did you know that Lamborghini originally made tractors? Lamborghini only started building sports cars after its founder, Ferruccio Lamborghini, got into a spat with Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Lamborghini’s major competitor, Ferrari.

While Lamborghini still makes tractors, they are not the weirdest thing to have rolled out of their factories. That title should go to the odd-looking off-road vehicle called the Lamborghini LM 002. Lamborghini actually made three off-road vehicles. The first two were the Cheetah and the LM 001. Both were prototype vehicles and never made it to the market.

However, the plans of the Cheetah and the LM 001 were merged to create the LM 002, which was exhibited at the Geneva Auto Show in 1982. The LM 002 went into production four years later. In terms of power, the LM 002 was the sort of thing you would expect from Lamborghini. It was an all-wheel drive with a powerful V12 engine that went from zero to 100 km/h in just 7.8 seconds.

However, we wish we could say the same thing about the design. For one, the car looks very odd. Some standard Lamborghini features like leather seats and air conditioning were also optional. Did we also mention that it had a cargo bed?^[6]

4 Virgin Group—Virgin Cola

Sir Richard Branson has many businesses operating under his multinational conglomerate, Virgin Group. His businesses are as diverse as you can imagine. He has airlines, gyms and hotels amongst others. He also offers communications, healthcare, financial services and so on. But Sir Branson has also ventured into more unexpected terrains in the past. Like when he launched Virgin Cola in 1994.

Curiously, Virgin Cola was almost successful—until Coca-Cola ran it out of business. To be fair to Coca-Cola, Sir Branson fired the first shots when he drove an armored tank over cans of Coke to advertise his new drink. Coca-Cola executives got the message. Sir Branson wanted to displace them to become the dominant cola brand in the market.

Coca-Cola retaliated by offering mouthwatering deals to stores that stocked on Virgin Cola. In exchange, the stores stopped buying Virgin Cola and bought Coke instead. Virgin Cola sales declined everywhere except in Bangladesh where it remained popular. However, the Bangladeshi cola market was not profitable enough for Sir Branson who promptly discontinued the drink.^[7]

3Toyota—Prefabricated Homes

Toyota has been making prefabricated homes since 1975. It manufactured the homes under its Toyota Motor Corporation brand until 2004 when it was spun off to create the Toyota Housing Corporation. Like its cars, Toyota homes are very sturdy and can even withstand earthquakes. However, it is unlikely we will ever live in one since they are exclusive to Japan.

The homes do not come cheap though. They cost between $200,000 and $800,000 depending on what the buyer is getting. This made Toyota Housing Corporation set up a side business offering loans and other financial services to people interested in buying its homes. There are speculations that Toyota has sold over 250,000 homes since it got into the business.^[8]

2 Peugeot—Peppermill

Peugeot is one carmaker that has always managed to escape our attention. The French automaker rarely makes the news. When they do, it is always about their cars and never about their peppermills. That is even though Peugeot has been making peppermills long before it started building cars.

The original Peugeot was a flourmill until 1810 when it divested into the manufacture of tools, clock parts, sewing machines and other steel products. The coffee mill and peppermill followed in the 1840s. The first car came much later.

Peugeot still makes peppermills today. Its peppermills are considered one of the best in the world and are said to last for a lifetime. Interestingly, many buyers do not realize their peppermill is the product of the Peugeot motor company. This is despite the fact that the peppermills and cars share the same name and logo.^[9]

1 Sony—Insurance

Despite what you think, Sony is not an electronics company. Sony is an insurance company that makes electronics by the side. Ok! In truth, Sony is a conglomerate with interests in several businesses including music, entertainment, insurance, banking and advertising. However, Sony makes most of its profits from insurance. 63% of its profits the last time we checked.

Sony’s electronics division, which is what made Sony a household name here in the west, is currently unprofitable. Yet, the multinational would rather lose hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars yearly than sell or shut down its electronics division. As its former CEO Kazuo Hirai once said “Electronics has a future. And it is in Sony’s DNA”. Sony electronics division hopes to make a comeback someday.^[10]

In the cutthroat world of big business, even the mightiest companies can stumble—and when they do, the results can be spectacularly costly. These aren’t just minor errors; they’re monumental blunders that incinerate billions of dollars, turning what seemed like brilliant strategies into legendary failures.

In this list, we’ll explore ten of the most staggering examples of companies that set cash on fire. These stories aren’t just about financial losses—they’re about the hubris, miscalculations, and unforeseen challenges that can derail even the best-laid plans. As you read, you’ll see how quickly things can go wrong when billions are on the line and how these colossal mistakes are powerful lessons in the unforgiving arena of global business.

Related: 10 Legitimate Business Industries That Seem Like Scams

10 Gateway’s Rapid Expansion

Gateway Inc., once a household name in the personal computer industry, offers a classic example of how rapid growth can spiral into a costly mistake. Founded in 1985, Gateway quickly captured the market’s attention, with sales skyrocketing to over $1.1 billion by 1992 and revenue peaking at $6.29 billion in 1997. But in its race to grow, Gateway stumbled. The company’s aggressive expansion led to sprawling manufacturing facilities and a bloated executive team, all while quality control took a backseat.

As Gateway continued to push for growth, the cracks became impossible to ignore. Shipping delays, poorly assembled products, and frustrated customers began to tarnish its reputation. Adding to its troubles, Gateway’s misguided attempt to break into the consumer electronics market only stretched its resources thinner, leaving the company vulnerable as rivals like Dell and HP capitalized on the booming laptop market.

In a desperate bid to stay afloat, Gateway acquired eMachines in 2004, but by then, the damage was done. The company was sold to Acer in 2007 for a fraction of its former glory. Gateway’s story is a powerful reminder of how unchecked growth and strategic missteps can turn success into a financial disaster.^[1]

9 Xerox’s Squandered Opportunity

Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was a cradle of innovation, developing groundbreaking technologies like the graphical user interface (GUI) and the computer mouse. These inventions had the potential to revolutionize the tech industry and could have positioned Xerox as a leader in personal computing. However, despite having a goldmine of ideas, Xerox failed to turn these innovations into commercial successes, effectively letting billions slip away.

The disconnect between PARC and Xerox’s headquarters in New York—roughly 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) away—played a significant role in this missed opportunity. While the engineers at PARC were pushing the boundaries of technology, Xerox’s leadership was deeply rooted in their core photocopier business. This gap in focus and vision prevented Xerox from seeing how these innovations could be the future of computing.

In the end, companies like Apple capitalized on the technologies Xerox pioneered. Steve Jobs famously recognized the potential of the GUI and incorporated it into the first Macintosh, a move that helped shape the future of personal computing. Xerox’s failure to execute on its own innovations stands as one of the most significant billion-dollar blunders in tech history—a cautionary tale of how even the best ideas can fall flat without the right strategy and vision.^[2]

8 Iridium: From $5 Billion Blunder to Surprising Salvation

Iridium’s tale is one of colossal ambition, monumental failure, and an unexpected second chance. Launched by Motorola in the 1980s, the $5 billion Iridium satellite network was supposed to revolutionize global communications with its 66 low-Earth-orbit satellites. But by the time it debuted in 1998, the technology was already outdated. The phones were bulky, the call rates sky-high, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. Iridium quickly became a textbook example of a billion-dollar blunder, leading to its bankruptcy in 1999.

Just as Iridium was about to be scrapped, aviation executive Dan Colussy saw an opportunity where others saw only failure. With a little help from the Pentagon, which recognized Iridium’s unique value for military use, Colussy bought the entire system for just $25 million. Instead of letting it crash back to Earth, he repositioned Iridium as a niche service for remote and military communications, turning what was nearly a total loss into a strategic win.

Iridium’s revival is a rare case of a billion-dollar mistake being salvaged and repurposed. What started as an enormous financial misstep ended up becoming a valuable tool for specialized markets, proving that even the biggest blunders can sometimes be saved with the right vision and a bit of luck.^[3]

7 Zynga’s $200 Million Misfire

In 2012, Zynga made a splash by acquiring OMGPOP, the creators of the hit game Draw Something, for $200 million. At the time, Draw Something was the talk of the town, and Zynga saw it as a perfect addition to its gaming portfolio. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. By the time the deal closed, the game’s popularity was already declining, turning what seemed like a brilliant move into a costly misfire.

The acquisition quickly ran into trouble. Cultural clashes between Zynga and OMGPOP created internal friction, and what should have been a smooth integration became a struggle. Less than a year after the acquisition, Zynga shut down OMGPOP, laying off most of the staff and closing the New York office. While Zynga retained some assets and intellectual property, the deal ultimately failed to deliver the expected returns.

Zynga’s experience with OMGPOP is a cautionary tale of how even well-intentioned acquisitions can go wrong if the timing and execution are off. The $200 million gamble didn’t pay off, highlighting the risks involved in chasing the next big thing in the fast-moving tech world.^[4]

6 Microsoft’s $1 Billion Kin Catastrophe

In 2010, Microsoft launched the Kin One and Kin Two, two phones that were supposed to redefine social media for teens. Billed as “the next generation of social phones,” the Kin was meant to capture a new market segment. But just six weeks after hitting the shelves, Microsoft pulled the plug, marking one of the biggest and quickest flops in cell phone history. The Kin ended up costing Microsoft nearly $1 billion, making it a textbook case of setting cash on fire.

The Kin’s downfall was a mix of bad timing, internal power struggles, and strategic missteps. Originally part of “Project Pink,” the Kin phones were supposed to run on a unique operating system. However, after internal conflicts, Microsoft forced a version of the Windows Phone OS onto the devices, leading to delays and a final product that didn’t impress. Add to that a confusing pricing model and lackluster features, and it’s no wonder the Kin failed to find its audience.

Microsoft’s Kin debacle wasn’t just a financial disaster—it also led to the departure of key executives and tarnished the company’s reputation in the mobile market. It’s a stark reminder that even a tech giant can burn through a billion dollars in the blink of an eye if the execution isn’t right.^[5]

5 Groupon’s $6 Billion Blown Deal

In 2010, Groupon had the chance to make tech history by accepting a $6 billion offer from Google. But in a move that left many stunned, founder Andrew Mason turned it down, convinced that Groupon had even greater potential on its own. At the time, the daily deals site was riding high, and Mason’s decision seemed like a bold bet on the future. However, what looked like confidence soon turned into one of the biggest billion-dollar blunders in tech.

As competitors crowded into the daily deals space and the initial excitement around Groupon faded, the company struggled to maintain its momentum. The market was saturated with similar services, and Groupon’s growth began to stall. Meanwhile, the $6 billion offer from Google became a what-if scenario that haunted the company as its stock value plummeted and its early promise dwindled.

Rejecting Google’s offer, which could have been a financial windfall, ended up costing Groupon dearly. Instead of capitalizing on the moment, the company’s refusal to sell marked the beginning of its decline. It’s a stark reminder that sometimes the biggest mistake isn’t the deal you make—it’s the one you walk away from.^[6]

4 Webvan’s $800 Million Slip Up

In the late 1990s, Webvan set out to revolutionize grocery shopping with its bold vision of home delivery. Backed by a staggering $800 million in capital, the company was determined to bring groceries straight to your door. But instead of becoming the next big thing, Webvan went down in flames, becoming one of the most infamous disasters of the dot-com bubble. This billion-dollar blunder resulted from a perfect storm of poor decisions and misguided ambition.

Webvan’s first mistake was trying to be everything to everyone. They targeted a mass-market audience with premium services, hoping to outprice competitors like Safeway while offering Whole Foods-level quality. But that strategy attracted price-sensitive customers who weren’t willing to pay for the luxury. Next, Webvan sunk millions into building a complex, high-tech infrastructure from scratch—distribution centers, conveyor belts, delivery algorithms—you name it. It all sounded impressive, but it was a money pit that never paid off.

The final nail in the coffin was Webvan’s rapid, reckless expansion. Before they had even figured out how to make it work in their own backyard, they were rolling out in cities across the country, burning through cash faster than they could make it. By 2001, the dream was dead, and Webvan was bankrupt, its assets being sold for pennies on the dollar. Webvan’s story is a classic example of how to set $800 million on fire—one bad decision at a time.^[7]

3 LeEco’s Billion-Dollar Gamble

LeEco, the Chinese tech giant, once set its sights on outshining Netflix, Tesla, and Apple. Under the ambitious leadership of founder Jia Yueting, the company aggressively expanded into streaming services, smartphones, electric cars, and smart TVs. With billions of dollars at its disposal, LeEco appeared poised to dominate the global market. But instead of building a tech empire, it found itself engulfed in financial chaos, burning through billions in what became a textbook case of overreach.

LeEco’s downfall wasn’t just about overambition—it was a perfect storm of poor planning, increased competition, and regulatory hurdles. The company spread itself too thin, investing heavily in various sectors without securing a solid financial foundation. Despite the bold vision, LeEco’s financial house of cards quickly collapsed. By 2017, the company faced massive layoffs, plummeting stock prices, and creditors demanding payment, leaving its grand dreams in ashes.

LeEco’s billion-dollar blunder serves as a stark reminder that even with deep pockets, unchecked ambition without a clear strategy can lead to spectacular failure.^[8]

2 Daimler-Benz’s $36 Billion Misstep with Chrysler

In 1998, Daimler-Benz made headlines by acquiring Chrysler for a staggering $36 billion, aiming to create an automotive giant that could rival the world’s best. But what was supposed to be a match made in corporate heaven quickly unraveled into one of the most notorious billion-dollar blunders. The two companies were as different as oil and water—Daimler-Benz, a symbol of German luxury, and Chrysler, a scrappy American carmaker known for its affordable vehicles. The cultural and operational chasm between the two was too vast to bridge, leading to a merger that never found its footing.

Instead of realizing the anticipated synergies, the merger became a textbook case of corporate incompatibility. Daimler-Benz was reluctant to integrate its premium components with Chrysler’s more budget-conscious offerings, fearing it would tarnish the Mercedes-Benz brand. Meanwhile, Chrysler struggled with its own issues, including rising costs and declining demand, which only deepened the financial woes of the union.

By 2007, the once-celebrated merger had deteriorated so badly that Daimler was forced to offload Chrysler for less than $5 billion, a fraction of the original purchase price. What was intended to be a bold step towards global domination ended up as a costly lesson in the perils of mismatched corporate marriages.^[9]

1 Microsoft’s High-Stakes AI Investment

In a bold move, Microsoft poured $19 billion into artificial intelligence within just three months, with much of that going toward building and leasing data centers. This massive investment highlights the company’s commitment to leading the AI revolution. However, the financial return on this gamble remains uncertain, and the lack of immediate, significant revenue has some investors questioning the strategy.

Microsoft’s leadership has been upfront about the challenges, emphasizing that AI is a long-term play rather than a quick win. While they remain confident in the transformative potential of AI, the sheer scale of the investment has raised concerns about whether the company can maintain investor confidence in the interim. Despite these concerns, Microsoft’s broader AI strategy, which includes various investments and acquisitions, continues to be a central focus for the tech giant.

Only time will tell if Microsoft’s ambitious AI bet will reshape the industry or serve as a reminder of the risks inherent in such large-scale investments.^[10]

Many companies still exist today that supported the Nazis leading up to and throughout WWII. While there are dozens of companies that fit the bill, each of these remains an important company in and out of Germany. Many contributed to the war effort by designing and building weapons and equipment, while others benefited from slave labor.

While each of these companies supported the Nazis in one way or another, not all of them did so willingly. Pressure was put in place to force numerous companies into submission, which should be considered when considering their actions leading up to and during WWII. That said, the companies that unforgivably employed slave labor crossed a rather significant line.

The following ten companies, presented in alphabetical order, all helped the Nazis in one way or another and continue operating to this day.

Related: Top 10 Discoveries That Wouldn’t Exist Without Nazi Germany

10 Associated Press

The Associated Press is the standard-bearer for modern journalistic integrity, but during the lead-up to WWII, the AP was there, supporting Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. In the 1930s, the AP entered into an arrangement with the Nazis to continue reporting in Germany despite every other respectable agency having been kicked out of the country. This made the AP the sole legitimate reporting agency in Hitler’s Third Reich.

The AP maintained access by establishing a mutually beneficial arrangement with the Nazis. To accomplish this, the AP promised not to publish anything negative about the Nazis. One of the ways the AP managed this was by hiring pro-Nazi reporters and publishing Nazi propaganda. Some of this propaganda was negative toward Jews and filled with all manner of horrendous lies.

When news of the AP’s WWII activities came to light, a spokesperson told The Guardian, “AP rejects any notion that it deliberately ‘collaborated’ with the Nazi regime. An accurate characterization is that the AP and other foreign news organizations were subjected to intense pressure from the Nazi regime from the year of Hitler’s coming to power in 1932 until the AP’s expulsion from Germany in 1941.”^[1]

9 Audi

Audi is known worldwide as one of Germany’s greatest luxury car brands, but it has a sordid past. During WWII, Audi, which operated under the name Auto Union during the conflict, hashed out a deal with the Schutzstaffel (SS) to use concentration camp inmates for production. A report published in 2014 found that Audi used more than 3,700 enslaved workers taken from seven labor camps operated by the SS.

On top of the company’s use of camp-based slave labor, Audi benefited from an additional 16,500 forced workers not taken from concentration camps in Zwickau and Chemnitz. Another 18,000 worked in Bavaria, where some 4,500 people died toiling for the company. Nearly one-fifth of Audi’s “employees” during WWII consisted of concentration camp inmates, the majority of whom were of Jewish descent.

Additionally, anyone who was disabled or otherwise incapable of performing their duties was sent to concentration camps for execution. Audi responded to the revelation, admitting the modern leadership of the company was unaware of the full extent of its shameful past. The company established a fund in the early aughts to compensate Nazi slave laborers and their descendants.^[2]

8 Bayer

Bayer is a leading multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company operating today, but its actions throughout the 1930s and ’40s significantly differ from their modern operations. During WWII, Bayer belonged to the IG Farben conglomerate, which heavily supported the Third Reich. With ethical and legal limitations frozen by the Nazis, Bayer took advantage, testing drugs on unwilling human subjects in the Dachau, Gusen, and Auschwitz concentration camps.

Bayer worked through much of the conflict in Auschwitz, overseeing a chemical factory where human experimentation took place in Birkenau, at the women’s camp hospital. There, Bayer scientists purposefully infected patients with diphtheria, tuberculosis, and many other diseases. In addition to crossing this moral and ethical red line, Bayer also employed over 25,000 slave laborers.

Bayer’s involvement in the Holocaust came to light in 1999 following a lawsuit targeting the company. The suit accused Bayer officials of bribing Nazis to gain access to concentration camp inmates for human testing experiments. The suit included names like Dr. Koenig and Dr. Mengele as beneficiaries of these actions, effectively tying Bayer with the so-called “Angel of Death” and the horrors brought by other unscrupulous Nazi collaborators.^[3]

7 Chase National Bank

These days, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., is one of the world’s largest consumer and commercial multinational banks. Leading up to World War II, Chase National Bank conducted business with the Nazis through a special program involving the sale of a unique version of the Reichsmark called the Rückwanderer (Reborrowing). Chase sold Rückwanderers to American citizens of German descent, but it wasn’t exactly on the up and up.

The Nazis used Chase to sell Rückwanderers to Americans at a discounted rate, and it was able to do this because the purchase of a Rückwanderer was backed by currency taken from Jews and refugees fleeing the Nazis. Chase was fully complicit in this, helping the Nazi government amass more than $20 million ($427 million in 2024), and it wasn’t the only controversy involving the bank.

Chase also aided the Nazis in blocking the French from accessing their accounts from the States, helping the Third Reich sidestep the United States sanctions on Nazi assets. On top of that, the head of Chase in Paris worked hard to block Jewish funds and property, ultimately benefiting the Nazis through this action. Chase’s involvement was finally exposed when The FBI declassified records of Chase’s actions during WWII.^[4]

6 Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank (DB) is one of the largest commercial banks in the world, and it’s a primary money manager for Germans today. Leading up to and during WWII, DB was there to help the Nazis navigate the waters of international sanctions and defense spending. DB was fully integrated into the Nazi government, firing any Jews who worked for the bank. Part of DB’s actions during the lead-up to WWII involved the seizing of Jewish assets and turning them over to the Nazis.

As the Nazis spread across Europe, DB took advantage, taking control of banking institutions in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, and elsewhere. Additionally, DB facilitated the sale of gold stolen from European Jews, which helped fund the Nazi war effort. DB’s WWII crimes came to international attention when the bank attempted a merger with a U.S. company.

Once revealed, the bank’s chairman, Rolf-Ernst Breuer, said, “We deeply regret the misery and injustice suffered and… we acknowledge the bank’s ethical and moral responsibility.” Perhaps Deutsche Bank’s most pivotal violation of human rights came during the war when it loaned the Nazis the money to construct the IG Farben facilities and the Auschwitz concentration camp using stolen Jewish gold.^[5]

5 Ford & General Motors

General Motors (GM) and the Ford Motor Co. are American companies, so most people might not consider their involvement during WWII to be nefarious. After all, Ford and GM, like most companies, manufactured military machines for the American war effort. Still, both automakers were involved overseas through their many subsidiaries, which controlled 70% of the German auto market in 1939.

These subsidiaries did what Ford and GM did for America, only they retooled their plants to support the local war effort, i.e., they built stuff for the Nazis. Not only did these subsidiaries engage in war production, but they also did what many companies in Europe did at the time: They used a large slave labor force to work in their factories, and many of these enslaved personnel were Jews.

GM’s fully-owned subsidiary, Opal, built trucks and aircraft used in the Nazi war effort. When the U.S. Army liberated these factories toward the end of the war, one report found that Ford’s German branch served as “an arsenal of Nazism, at least for military vehicles.” The Army determined that the parent company (Ford) consented and was complicit. Despite this, both companies insisted they lost control of their German plants in 1941 and denied any culpability.^[6]

4 IBM

IBM is an American company that developed computers leading up to and during WWII. These computers were considerably archaic compared to whatever you’re reading this article on, and they used punch cards for programming. In 1933, IBM sold 2,000 punch card machines to the Nazis, and the Nazi government used them to produce 1.5 billion index cards.

This was a monumental use of early computing effort, and the Nazis didn’t use it to keep track of bullets or ball bearings. Instead, the Nazis utilized IBM computers to create cards used to track and manage all of the people enslaved and executed during the Holocaust. These cards tracked Jews and other minority groups throughout Germany and Nazi-controlled parts of Europe, making the Nazi murder machine incredibly efficient.

IBM became involuntarily and quasi-voluntarily complicit in the wholesale slaughter of Europe’s Jewish population. Nazis used their IBM “Death Calculators” to determine the number of Jews they could efficiently remove from ghettos daily for shipment to concentration camps. At the time, IBM’s Polish subsidiary, Watson Business Machines, helped liquidate that nation’s Jewish population, so the company’s hands are far from clean.^[7]

3 Mercedes-Benz

Germany had numerous manufacturers supporting the war effort leading up to and throughout WWII, and Mercedes-Benz was one of many. The company was known as Daimler-Benz AG at the time, and it worked closely with the Nazi government. The company’s board included numerous Nazis, and once the war broke out, Daimler-Benz became the Nazi’s leading manufacturer of armaments. While this wasn’t entirely unexpected, the means of manufacture were problematic.

To fuel the Nazi war machine, Daimler-Benz did what most companies did during WWII: It used a massive force of slave labor for manufacturing. These enslaved people were primarily Jews but also prisoners of war and other marginalized groups targeted by the Nazis. During the war, Daimler-Benz “loaned” its enslaved laborers to other companies in exchange for money, so it was fully active in the Nazi slave trade.

After the war, Daimler-Benz didn’t try to hide its involvement in Nazi activities and embraced the “Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future” initiative. In 1988, the company agreed to pay $12 million into a fund managed by the West German Red Cross designed to pay reparations to thousands of former slaves and their families.^[8]

2 Porsche

Porsche didn’t come into existence until 1950, but the company existed before this, and it was one of Hitler’s most prolific suppliers of his war machine. This was done through Porsche’s founder, Ferdinand Porsche, who designed cars for Hitler leading up to WWII. When the conflict broke out, Porsche continued designing for Germany, only switching to building tanks and off-road vehicles.

Porsche’s success at this time could be attributed to two things: Hitler adored the man, and he fully embraced using slave labor in his factories to meet the Führer’s demands. Porsche not only utilized slaves to build everything from cars and trucks to tanks and more, but he did so actively and with the full knowledge that his “employees” were forced to live in rat-infested quarters with minimal food and terrible treatment.

Porsche enjoyed massive profits, and the company that grew from these efforts became a multinational car company that is respected worldwide. Those who labored and died producing Porsche’s Nazi war machine saw little compensation after WWII. Porsche hasn’t fully admitted its involvement, though it supplied €2.5 million to a German reparation fund. Ultimately, Porsche avoided prosecution for his actions during WWII. Still, his reputation bears the stain of his involvement in the Holocaust.^[9]

1 Volkswagen

Most people know that Volkswagen created the VW Beetle for Hitler, but the company’s involvement in the Nazi war effort went way beyond that. When the war broke out, Volkswagen switched to military production, which most companies did at the time. This was true in Germany, the United States, and elsewhere, so war production isn’t why Volkswagen crossed numerous lines through its actions during World War II.

When Volkswagen’s Fallersleben plant opened, the war broke out, leading to the production of several military vehicles. Additionally, VW manufactured the V-1 flying bomb, which made its factory an ideal target for the Allies. This was problematic because VW employed a massive force of slave labor in the production of its vehicles and weapon systems. Volkswagen’s workforce consisted of approximately 70% forced laborers, who numbered in the thousands.

The laborers were “supplied” by the Schutzstaffel (SS) from nearby concentration camps. As you can imagine, living conditions were inhumane at best. Investigations into the company’s activities during the war determined the company “let babies die” in horrid conditions throughout WWII. In 1998, the company established a reparations fund consisting of $12 million to compensate its WWII victims ($23 million in 2024).^[10]

Well-known companies dominating their market don’t always have lucky stars on their side. From failed Halloween-themed products to weird items unrelated to the merchandise they are famous for, these 10 companies are examples of how pushing the boundaries can prove embarrassing.

Top 10 Failed McDonald’s Products

10 Tesla: Cybertruck

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, is an entrepreneur, engineer, and industrial designer who revolutionizes transportation on Earth and into space. Elon Musk started Tesla in 2003 and aimed to create environmentally friendly all-electric cars. Tesla’s total revenue has increased from 204.24 million U.S dollars in 2011 to 21461.27 million dollars in 2018. But there have been some bumps in the road.

Although you cannot fully classify this product as a complete flop, the Cybertruck did have an embarrassing demonstration in 2019. Tesla boasts on their website that they built the Cybertruck for “ultimate durability and passenger protection.” The materials used on the car are Ultra-Hard 30X Cold-Rolled stainless-steel and armor glass that will not shatter. But shatter it did.

For the unveiling of the Cybertruck in a 2019 event, Elon Musk started the durability demonstration by slamming a sledgehammer to the car’s body. Next was to throw a large metal ball at the impenetrable armor glass. Lead designer Franz von Holzhausen threw the ball twice, and twice the car’s window smashed. Elon Musk admitted there was “room for improvement” and later explained that the sledgehammer had created an invisible crack in the glass.

9 Apple: Macintosh TV

Apple was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. These two college dropouts wanted to make computers small enough for the home and office, and they ended up building an empire. Today Apple has many popular products like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac computer. They grew from annual revenues of eight billion U.S. dollars in 2004 to over 270 billion dollars in 2020.

While Apple is well-known for their technological prowess, they are not immune to unsuccessful product ideas. Among their many failed products is the Macintosh TV. It was meant to be a hybrid TV and Mac computer but ended up too expensive, lacking enough storage, and lacking standard video output ports. Apple introduced the Macintosh TV in October 1993 and within four months terminated it in February 1994.

8 Coca-Cola: Diet Coke Plus Green Tea

The Coca-Cola Company was founded in 1892 and is one of the world’s largest non-alcoholic beverage manufactures. They introduced the first bottles made from recycled materials and invented the six-pack in 1932. While Coca-Cola has been successful in many ways and with many flavor variations, not all their products have global popularity.

Despite being a soda company, Coca-Cola tried to cater to health-conscious consumers with their Diet Coke Plus line of products. One product, in particular, the Diet Coke Plus Green Tea, was launched in Japan in 2009, hoping to be a big hit. It contained tea antioxidants that can reduce inflammation and prevent certain cancers.

Japan is known to consume green tea at over 600 grams per person. This fact made it easy to market the drink there. However, Coca-Cola didn’t deliver on the product’s taste, so it never made it globally, including no appearance in the United States.

7 Colgate-Palmolive: Kitchen Entrees

If a brand is known for one product, it doesn’t mean it can easily extend into another market. This case was true for Colgate-Palmolive when they did a test run for their Colgate Kitchen Entrees in 1964. At the time, the company wanted to get into the 4.2 billion dollar convenience food field. However, it failed to gain momentum for its dried chicken and crabmeat entrees. Consumers thought of personal hygiene with Colgate, not TV dinners, so the Kitchen Entrees were never officially launched.

Currently, in 2021, Colgate-Palmolive is the second leading personal care brand worldwide. It has a brand value of 17.4 billion U.S. dollars. It seems sticking to toothpaste and toothbrushes was a wise choice!

6 Burger King: Halloween Whopper

McDonald’s is not the only burger kingpin that has made meals that flopped over the years. In 2015, the Burger King Halloween Whopper proved out of place in the Home of the Whopper when customers reported unpleasant side effects. The burger’s black bun represented the Halloween spirit but led to green bowel movements the next day. As a result, what customers found in their toilet bowls became more popular than the burger’s taste.

The following year, there was no Halloween Burger to be found. But why did it turn feces green? In children and adults, eating food coloring can result in green bowel movements. Our stomachs don’t absorb most food coloring. When dye colors such as blue or purple mix with our yellow-green stomach bile, the result can be green feces.

5 BMW: The M1

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, commonly known as BMW, is a German car and motorcycle company founded in 1916. Today it is the leading luxury car brand worldwide. The company’s local revenue in 2020 was 99 billion Euros despite car sale drops due to COVID-19.

Although always well-known for its well-designed, reliable luxury cars, BMW didn’t start with a reputation for supercars. In 1978, the company failed to make a dominating sports car for the race tracks. The M1 was unable to compete with the Porsche cars that ruled European racing at the time. For example, in the 1979 Le Mans, France race at Circuit de la Sarthe, Porsche cars finished first to fourth, and the BMW M1 came in sixth. BMW built a limited number of M1 cars and discontinued the line by 1982.

BMW has not given up on developing supercars and recently launched the popular i8 sports car in November 2013. This car is a plug-in hybrid that sold about 28,000 units in 2020 before BMW discontinued it the same year. But this time, not due to lack of popularity.

4 Amazon: Fire Phone

A lot of us have bought something on Amazon, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic while in quarantine. This e-commerce company offers a wide variety of products ranging from retail to pantry items. In 2020, Amazon was the leading e-retailer in the United States with almost 386 billion dollars in net sales.

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon may be the king of e-commerce, but their 2014 Fire Phone burned to the ground. The phone was too expensive at $200, designed more for Bezos than the consumers, and entered the smartphone market too late. In 2014, Apple and Android already had at least eight generations of smartphones. Another reason for its failure was the limited number of apps compared to competitors. The Amazon app store had approximately 240,000. In contrast, Google Play had over 1 million apps in 2014.

The unsold Fire Phones cost Amazon $170 million within three months, and phone companies significantly dropped the retail price. For example, after two months, AT&T offered a deal of 99 cents for the Fire Phone with a 2-year contract.

3 Donald Trump: Trump Steaks

Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, is well known for his business empire, including finance and real estate. However, among his successes, he has multiple failed ventures under his belt. One is the Trump Steaks released into the market in 2007. Trump sold the steaks only on QVC and the Sharper Image website. The latter is known for selling electronics, home furnishings, and personal care items more than food. This discrepancy in selling platforms most likely contributed to the failure of the product. The Sharper Image website also decided to discontinue the steaks after only two months.

2 Frito Lay: Cheetos Lip Balm

Charles Elmer Doolin invented Cheetos in the 1940s, and by 1961 when the Frito Lay Inc. company was formed, it had annual revenues of $127 million. Cheetos was one of the largest snack food brands produced by Frito Lay. They dominated their market, so why go out of their comfort zone?

While you can expect cheesy fingers after eating a bag of Cheetos, not everyone enjoys deliberately smearing cheese on their face. Frito Lays found this out the hard way in 2005 when they released their Cheetos Lip Balm. The company quickly discontinued the product after numerous negative reviews. For example, one customer left a review explaining it “smells like moldy cheese. It doesn’t moisturize well either. An overall thumbs down.”

1 Evian—Water Bra

Evian is a company known for mineral water. It was founded in 1789 by a French nobleman in the town of Évian-les-Bains. In 1978 they were the first natural spring water brand imported in the United States and Canada. With such a success story in the mineral water market, we would assume they would generate water products that make a splash. But this is not the case.

In 2005, Evian decided to expand into the clothing market with a Water Bra. Evian designed the bra to cool down breasts during the warmer months with pads containing mineral water. There was a filter funnel that allowed women to top off the water to their preference levels. The bra also featured a pouch to hold a miniature water bottle. Evian marketed the water bras’ benefits as toning and shaping your body to be beach-ready in addition to its cooling feature. However, the product was unsuccessful and discontinued not long after its launch. Today, Evian still has no clothing products on their website.

Top 10 Apple Failures

About The Author: Sara enjoys research, art, and seeking a sustainably fun life, balancing physical and mental health. Read more on how she explores, learns, and balances all her interests at www.saramenges.com.

If you want to feel justified in patronizing a company with a dubious history, calling any negative story against them a “conspiracy theory” should fit the bill. The main problem is that the term, which is rumored to have been coined by the CIA for this exact purpose, is a convenient way to discount valid concerns by associating them with crackpots and conmen.

Still, it’s common knowledge at this point that some companies do participate in shady transactions from time to time—which makes these conspiracies even more jarring. But whether it’s a crackpot tale or the truth staring you in the face, the conspiracies are unavoidable. Here are 10 powerful companies tied to conspiracy theories.

10 Bayer

Bayer is best known for inventing aspirin. Founded in 1863 by Friedrich Bayer, this company started as a small, three-person dye company. It eventually became a pharmaceutical Goliath selling aspirin, phenobarbital, and heroin. Yep, heroin, or as they called it at the time, a “non-addictive cough suppressant” for children. Post-WWI hard times forced Bayer to temporarily merge with several competitors to form IG Farben. IG Farben was the company that infamously produced Zyklon B for the Nazis. They were one of their biggest contractors in WWII, and even ran their own concentration camps. 

Today’s Bayer invests heavily in research and development, which allows them to constantly release new products. But not everyone is willing to let go of their Nazi connection. A fair bit of suspicion remains as to what they’re selling nowadays. In 2016 Bayer merged with Monsanto and is now intimately involved with pharmaceuticals and agriculture worldwide. It probably didn’t help their reputation much after it came out that Bayer knowingly infected thousands of their own customers with HIV. (Don’t worry, it was in the ’80s).

9 NutraSweet

The NutraSweet company is a subsidiary of GD Searle, spun off specifically to rebrand the chemical Aspartame. Aspartame, more commonly known as NutraSweet, was discovered by GD Searle in 1965. NutraSweet is 200 times sweeter than sugar with practically 0 calories. Unfortunately, its approval process was pretty shady.

It was initially banned by the FDA after a 1980 Board of Inquiry found that this potent excitotoxin led to a high chance of “inducing brain tumors.” This did not please Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Secretary of Defense under Reagan as well as Chairman of GD Searle. Rumsfeld publicly vowed to “call in his markers” to get the ban reversed. With the help of the new FDA Commissioner, fellow Reagan appointee Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., they immediately arranged to have the ban overturned. (Hull went on to do public relations for both GD Searle and Monsanto, which purchased GD Searle in 1985.) 

Considerable political power was leveraged into getting NutraSweet unreservedly approved for the US food supply, regardless of reports of serious negative health impacts. Today, you’ll find Aspartame in pretty much any gum, diet soda, or children’s vitamin sold in the US. Aspartame is even added to some milk brands. 

8 DeBeers

If you ever proposed to someone and decided to show your love by giving them a diamond, you can thank DeBeers for giving you that idea. Started by businessman Cecil Rhodes in 1880, DeBeers is a billion-dollar diamond business with a wild history. It is responsible for the marketing campaign convincing people to buy expensive diamond engagement rings. DeBeers was also hard at work artificially restricting their own supply of diamonds in order to set prices. But wait, you say, aren’t diamonds really valuable? Nope.

“Diamonds are intrinsically worthless.” -DeBeers Chairman Nicky Oppenheimer.

It’s not even disputed that DeBeers is in the habit of fixing diamond prices; they even pled guilty to it back in 2004. While DeBeers today is more focused on the brand and brick-and-mortar store aspect, their horrible history in South Africa, price-fixing, the nefarious ad campaigns and connection with the Oppenheimer family lead many to question the current state of diamonds, and whether that rock on her finger is really worth two-months salary.

7 Dominion

Americans take their elections very seriously, and when it’s over, we want everyone to come to a consensus on what happened and go home. Obviously, it rifles some feathers when that doesn’t happen and people will come up with anything to explain why the results were wrong. A perfect example: Dominion Voting Systems. 

Dominion Voting Systems is an election services company whose machines are used in many states across the US, including a majority of swing states. Accusations of impropriety have plagued the company since the 2020 election. There are theories that China secretly owns Dominion, the machines can switch votes, and there were reports of senators warning of integrity concerns back in 2019. Dominion seems more than ready to fight back against these conspiracy claims with defamation suits.

6 Volkswagen

Most of the conspiracy-laden companies on this list were at least started by a hard-working businessman before the controversies started. But the Nazi Party straight up founded Volkswagen on May 28, 1937. They called it Volkswagenwerk, meaning The People’s Car Company. Hitler wanted a German competitor to Henry Ford and his Model T — an affordable car that could be mass-produced and show the might of Nazi Germany.

And so with the help of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche and Volkswagen, the VW Beetle was born. After the war, Volkswagen re-dubbed the car the Beetle and became a top-selling auto importer for the United States.

Since then, they’ve enjoyed a fairly benign reputation and the company was even considered a leader in green technology. Except on September 2015, the company sold nearly 600,000 cars designed to circumvent emissions tests. In response to the scandal, Volkswagen Head of US Ops Michael Horn blamed the over half-a-million fraudulent cars on “a couple of software engineers.” We don’t know how far up the fraud goes, but it’s alleged that Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn not only knew what the engineers were up to but authorized the cover-up himself. 

5 Nestle

When I think Nestle, I think of chocolate — I don’t think of bottled water. But water sales are actually huge for Nestle, despite activists urging them to stop. Besides issues from creating plastic waste, Nestle actually lobbied the World Water Council to change their definition of clean water as a “human right” to a “human need,” and promptly got into the business of buying up clean water supplies around the world in order to sell the water back to the populous at huge markups. These practices have fueled a lot of speculation that Nestle has plans to privatize water. 

Nestle was also a big player in the baby formula market, creating ad campaigns that sold it as a healthy alternative to breast milk. When demand in the States faltered, they started marketing formula to Africa in the 70s, which happened to coincide with a huge uptick in infant fatalities. The WHO and UNICEF traced the millions of baby deaths from malnutrition and diarrhea to increased use of formula as now-dependant mothers had only contaminated water available to mix it. Nestle responded by blaming the mothers of the infants who died. Not a great look, Nestle.

4 Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is one of the most recognized brands on Earth. Everyone knows soda isn’t good for you (even after they took the cocaine out of it), but we still drink it anyway. The soft drink behemoth spends millions in brand recognition, in addition to charity, outreach, and public relations. If you’re like me, you’ve seen their vending machines in schools.

Much like the cigarette companies in the 60s, many people are convinced that Coca-Cola, and the rest of “Big Sugar,” are modern-day Marlboro. The conspiracy goes that they secretly fund non-profits to tell Americans that we should focus on exercise, rather than what we eat and drink, to fight obesity. 

It’s not the fact that soda consumption continues to fuel the obesity crisis, but it’s the concerted effort Coke has put into hiding those facts. The company has a history of bribing health officials into keeping quiet and pointing the finger at dietary fat.

3 Google

The first in and best dressed, Google took over the internet search engine market and became synonymous with looking up “stuff.” Don’t believe me? Google it! Between Google, its video-share titan of a website YouTube, and their parent shadow-company Alphabet (don’t speak its name!—it’s like Voldemort or Fight Club or other things you shouldn’t talk about), there are conspiracy theories here aplenty!

Frankly, when a corporation has Don’t Be Evil as the company model, and then drops it, you just know they’re sus. And as many conservatives and anti-establishment voices contend, Google, through the banner of search optimization, is able to silence viewpoints, ideas, and speech that its executives don’t want to spread. In conjunction with whistleblowers, suspicions of Google’s treachery continue to rise.

And then there’s Project Dragonfly, the code-name for the search engine Google built for China. This search engine is specifically designed to track its users and censor any information that the Chinese Communist Party does not want its citizens to know about. Google wasn’t too happy when leaked internal memos shared what they were up to. Though Google now says that they abandoned their work on the project, not everyone is convinced. After all, how much can be believed from a company that sells your data while lying about it?

2 Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood provides health and family services to hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. Yes, those services include abortions, but abortions are legal and considered a normal part of modern healthcare by most Americans. So where’s the conspiracy? In short, it was no secret that Planned Parenthood Founder, Margret Sanger was a militant advocate for eugenics.

The conspiracy comes in how hard her loyalists worked to keep her more self-described motivations a secret. But as her own writings and past speeches (including keynoting for the KKK) became common knowledge, Planned Parenthood was forced to distance themselves from their founder.

They removed her name from their buildings and acknowledged their “contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color” and Ms. Sanger’s well-documented “racist legacy.” If only it ended there. Unfortunately, allegations of for-profit abortion schemes have put Planned Parenthood in a dark light. A history of whistleblowers jailed over their claims only adds fuel to the fire. 

1 Monsanto

Could this list end any other way? Monsanto has pretty much the worst reputation of any company ever and it seems well-earned. Founded in 1903 by John Francis Queeny and named after his wife Olga Monsanto, the company started making the sweetener saccharin. They were the only company outside of Germany to do so. Soon after, Monsanto started its upward climb by producing much nastier stuff, like PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange (a defoliant—a chemical used to remove leaves from trees and plants—used in the Vietnam War that resulted in half a million babies with birth defects). 

Lawsuits eventually ensued, and Monsanto got into the Bio Agriculture business, discovering the pesticide Glyphosate, a.k.a. Roundup, and making genetically modified crops that were resistant to it. Though the EPA initially determined Glyphosate was carcinogenic after reports surfaced linking it to cancer, the EPA later claimed it is not. Many remain convinced that Monsanto covered up the link.

In 2016, Bayer purchased Monsanto, the company that is now the world’s largest seed supplier. Theories abound that Monsanto has secretly taken control over the global food supply and the seed banks. And then there’s the Bill Gates connection. Claims that 500,000 Monsanto shares were bought by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have created even more fodder for the paranoid (or the well-informed). After all, if you control the crops, do you control the world?

It is amazing how quickly a rumor can spread in today’s world of social media, but don’t be fooled into thinking urban legends are a new phenomenon. Word of mouth has always been an effective tool in flaming the fires of controversy. A juicy story always finds an audience, often with disastrous effects. Here are a list of rumors that nearly destroyed companies reputations.

10 B.S. Myths We Believe Because Of Advertising

10 Pop Rocks and Coke

Those who grew up in the 80’s will never forget the first time we heard the tale of John Gilchrist, the actor who played Little Mikey in the Life cereal commercials. For me it was my cousin while we were sitting on the swings at the playground behind my house. He told me Mikey was dead, had in fact died when his stomach exploded after he ate Pop Rocks candy and then drank a Coca-Cola. The carbonation of the soda caused the candy to expand too rapidly and the stomach just couldn’t contain it.

It was never clear where the story found its start, but it moved through the masses like wildfire. People were daring one another to try it, and children were forbidden from purchasing the crackling candy treat!

The fact that none of this was even remotely true didn’t seem to matter, and Pop Rocks sales began to feel the sting. General Mills, the parent of Life Cereal, decided it was time to take action. The launched a national ad campaign to show that little Mikey was still very much alive, a campaign that only helped to further the rumor mills as now people began to claim he was not the real Mikey but a look-a-like.

Eventually the story was discredited, but not before doing its damage. Pop Rocks candy was discontinued for a while in the mid 80’s but luckily for us it has since made a comeback.

And the safety of this fun filled candy? Well it has been thoroughly tested by the FDA and even the MythBusters took a shot at this long-lived rumor finding it to be totally without merit.

9 Bubble Yum and Spider Eggs

In 1976, Life Savers introduced the first soft chewing gum to the market. Bubble Yum! We all know it and we all love it, but there was a time when Bubble Yum was feared from coast to coast!

Bubble Yum hit the market and was an instant hit quickly becoming the number one gum in the country. But with popularity often comes concern and people began to question how they made it so soft? When the public didn’t get the answers they were looking for, well, they simply made them up.

It was 1977 when the story first found root. With such a soft texture it was inconceivable that science couldn’t have made such a breakthrough, right? Obviously, there could only be one possible explanation. The company had to be using spider eggs to give the gum that light, stringy consistency.

It was a silly rumor, but it managed to catch hold and the public began to freak! Sales took a hit as people stopped began to avoid Bubble Yum. Life Savers tried to dispel the rumors, but the tale of arachnid laced gum was moving quicker than their PR department could. In a quote to People Magazine, Life Savers’ president William Mack Morris said that, “Fighting the rumor was like punching air.”

Life Savers was in a pickle and they had to do something to keep their profits from falling. They launched a full-page ad in newspapers across the country with a headline that read “Somebody is Telling Very Bad Lies About a Very Good Product.” It was a Hail Mary, but it worked! The story was debunked, the people were relieved, and Bubble Yum continued to live to blow another day!

8 Taco Bell mixes its beef with the family pets

Who doesn’t love Taco Bell? Seriously, you’re out late, you get hit by the munchies and then you see it, a glowing bell beacon shining on the horizon.

Taco Bell has been around since 1962 but in 2011 a rumor began that nearly brought this fast food Goliath to its knees.

It is believed the rumor started because of Taco Bell itself after releasing a statement that their meat was 88% beef. In January of 2011 a class action lawsuit was brought against the company stating false advertisement. They claimed that calling their product “beef” was misleading as they used a meat mixture and that it was 65% additives, preservatives and binders.

Taco Bell fired back maintaining their product was “88% beef and 12% secret recipe”.

The story might have died there, floating in the Abyss of frivolous lawsuits had the Weekly World News not run a satirical article regarding the whole ordeal. In the article they claimed to have investigated and discovered Taco Bell was importing cat and dog meat in from China!

The restaurant released its ingredients to the public and the FDA confirmed that it consisted of beef, water, Mexican spices and other flavors, all of them Fido free. The law firm who had filed the suit dropped faster than Taco Bell could serve up a Crunch-wrap Supreme leaving its fans, once again, safe to make a run for the border.

7 Snapple and the KKK

In the mid 90’s Snapple found itself the center of a few rumors. The first I remember well as I was in high school and it was the sort of rumor that flourishes in High School. The rumor involved Snapple bottles and certain parts of the male anatomy getting stuck. While I cannot attest to the validity of these rumors, nor can I speak on the origin of them, I can talk about another rumor that befell this tasty beverage company.

It all started when Snapple released its Iced tea line featuring a portrayal of the Boston Tea Party that included a Ship in a harbor. Harmless enough, or so the company originally thought, until that is, someone decided that ship in the harbor was depicting scenes of slavery. Snapple jumped on it and began changing the images as to not offend anyone, but it was too late. Word was out and the public was out for blood. You see there was a K on the side of every Snapple bottle, and since they were proudly displaying slave ships there was only one thing that K could mean. Snapple was obviously in cahoots with Ku Klux Klan.

Snapple founders, Hyman Golden, Leonard Marsh and Arnold Greenberg, went on MTV and tried to dispel the rumors stating, “How can three Jewish boys from Brooklyn support the Klan?”

They added the words “Boston Tea Party” to their labels, and the words “Kosher Pareve” to the K, a symbol that can be found on numerous products to show that a product is Kosher.

No one really knows where these stories found their origin but thanks to some quick-thinking Snapple managed to bounce back and we are still blessed with their wonderful fruit juicy goodness today.

6 Syringes in Pepsi

In 1990, a store clerk in eastern Ontario discovered something in a Pepsi bottle he at first mistook for a straw. Upon closer inspection however, the item was revealed to be syringe. The bottle was pulled from the shelf and turned over to the offices of Health and Welfare Canada. A full investigation was launched but no official resolution was reached. It was believed the likely culprit was a disgruntled employee at the EastCan Beverages bottling company Ottawa, Ontario. The incident was never repeated but it might have been the precursor to the 1993 Pepsi syringe panic. Once again, hypodermic needles and the famous red, white and blue branded cola met up, but this time to much greater effect!

In June of 1993, stories began to flood the papers regarding syringe-laden cans of Pepsi. The first came out of Tacoma, Washington on June the 9th after an 82-year-old man claimed he looked inside his can of Diet Pepsi to see if there was a prize. More reports followed, over 50 in total, all scattered throughout the country. Most claimed they found needles but there were reports of bullets, screws and drug paraphernalia.

Product tampering was quickly ruled out by the FDA. What they discovered instead was the rumor, combined with people hoping to make a quick buck at Pepsi’s expense, had set the whole thing in motion. It was believed that Pepsi Co. would have no choice but to pay out cash to keep people from taking them to court. What the would-be con artists didn’t realize was that, aside from the case in Tacoma, all the incidents had already been proven false.

In the end some twenty people were arrested, and most the others withdrew their claims. Pepsi launched a campaign reassuring customer’s their products were safe and brought the press into the plants to demonstrate that it would be virtually impossible to place objects into cans during the bottling process.

What about that first case? There were a few unsolved mysteries, like the fact that the needle was bent in a way suggesting it came from an insulin user, as they often discard syringes in a similar fashion, but neither the man nor his wife used insulin. To further add to the confusion, the can of soda the needle was discovered in was Diet Pepsi, however, the case it originated from was regular Pepsi making this one a head scratcher for the ages.

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5 Procter and Gamble Worship Satan

On March 1, 1994, the President of Procter & Gamble appeared on the Phil Donahue Show and announced that due to the openness of society, he was coming announcing his association with the church of Satan. He shocked audiences by announcing that a portion of P&G profits were also donated to the church. Phil, obviously shocked, asked the man if announcing this on national television will have a negative effect on business. The President looks straight into the camera and replies, “There are not enough Christians in the United States to make any difference.”

The problem was, no acting President of P& G was ever on Donahue. But why let a pesky thing like facts get in the way? People began looking for clues in products. They pointed at the “man in the moon” logo claiming they saw, in the swirls of his hair and beard, devil horns and a triple 6. They also referred to the thirteen stars as more proof. The company explained that the thirteen stars were an homage to the original thirteen colonies of the United States, and the man in the moon was simply popular at the time the logo was created, but it didn’t seem to help. In 1991 they modified the logo and a few years later they dropped it altogether.

That seemed to work, at least for a while, but in 1999 the whole thing started again, only this time it was said to be the Sally Jesse Raphael Show instead of Donahue. The facts were once again put under scrutiny and found to be lacking.

It was suspected that competing company Amway, had part in the rumor and several lawsuits were filed against them, and in 2007 a jury agreed, awarding P & G over $19 million dollars in damages.

4 Glass in Girl Scout Cookies

Ah, those adorable little girl scouts standing outside of Walmart peddling those addictive culinary treats. I have assumed numerous times those cookies might be laced with something, but never anything sinister! In 1985 an incident of glass being found in these delectable delights hit the papers, and then another, and another. Before long it was a conspiracy not unlike that of Pepsi. People were claiming they were cut after biting a cookie, or they opened their boxes and found a surprise syringe inside.

The FBI was called, and the great cookie recall began but oddly enough the scandal didn’t hit the Girl Scout organization as bad as some predicted. It would seem people wanted their cookies and they didn’t care about the stories. It was predicted the organization would lose over $1 million in sales, but the actual loss was closer to $300,000.00.
No pattern of tampering was ever discovered, and it was believed the incidents were pranks or people seeking attention. The Girl Scouts changed their box design to prevent tampering and everything was business as usual. Or was it?

3 The Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood

It would seem people weren’t quite ready to leave the Girl Scouts alone. In late 2015 a group of parents began to take umbrage with the Scouts when they heard that sales from their cookies helped to fund Planned Parenthood. Most likely this rumor found its beginnings in 2012 after, then CEO, Kathy Cloninger said on the Today Show that the Girl Scouts worked with various churches, YMCA’s and Planned Parenthood to help bring information-based sex ed programs to the girls. There was never any mention of financial support and when asked it was denied but that didn’t stop a series of viral videos from hitting the internet.

The flames were further fanned by an opinion piece that briefly ran from Fox News where it was discussed how someone had to turn away their neighbor when she came selling cookies because they supported Planned Parenthood.

The Girl Scout Organization let it be known that their affiliation with certain organizations is strictly educational and that one hundred percent of the money from cookie sales is retained by the them. Sales had taken a hit but fortunately they rebounded, however, this rumor still surfaces online from time to time.

2 KFC Chickens Are Genetically Engineered

In order to save money and increase the size of their chickens, Kentucky Fried Chicken began genetically experimenting on their livestock. They pumped them full of hormones and altered them to have no beaks, or feathers and to grow multiple wings. At least that was the story making its way around the internet.

The rumor grew fast, spreading across message boards and blogs probably because it had clout, citing a study by the University of New Hampshire. The thing is The University of New Hampshire never wrote that study, and the message board posts all seemed to track back to a few specific tech companies in China.

KFC filed a lawsuit against the companies for slander and won. They also sent a press release to inform the public that they in fact used suppliers that we all know such as Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson’s. The University of New Hampshire also released a statement denying any involvement with the so-called study and KFC was back in business.

1 Muslim Maccas

Granted, it would take a LOT to cancel McDonald’s, but that’s not to say that some have tried (and sometimes McDonald’s really WAS in the wrong!) The manner in which McDonald’s prepared their french fries resulted in a slew of lawsuits throughout the 1990s. Many vegetarians felt tricked into believing that the fries were an entirely meat-free product.A 1993 letter from McDonald’s, which was used in one of the lawsuits, reassured a customer that the product was “cooked in 100 per cent vegetable oil.” Indeed, vegetable oil was used. However, beef seasoning had also been used, making the fries nonvegetarian.The lawsuits were finished up in 2002. McDonald’s issued an apology and agreed to pay $10 million to various vegetarian and religious groups.

There have been a number of other high-profile cases relating to misrepresentations by McDonald’s as to what’s in their food. In one instance, a Muslim family in Alabama alleged that pieces of bacon were deliberately and maliciously placed in their McChicken sandwiches. McDonald’s believes that it was an honest accident. However, it has led to a legal case.

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About The Author: Jason lives in the suburbs of Cincinnati. He is a lover of all things bizarre and everything 80’s. His first novel, Lyric, was published last year.

Tobacco companies get a bad rap, presumably because they make profits by giving people all sorts of cancer. This article probably isn’t going to help their case, since we’re talking about nothing but the horrible depths they’ve sunk to keep cancer profitable, but it sure is interesting.

10. Free Cigarettes For Soldiers

Smoking and the military have such a close relationship, the subject has its own Wikipedia page. Soldiers love themselves some tobacco-based produce. But have you ever wondered why? Well, it may have something to do with the fact that tobacco companies long ago realized that the military represented a huge potential market, full of highly-stressed individuals with many hours of downtime.

Realizing this, some tobacco companies lobbied to have cigarettes made a standard part of a soldier’s rations, which said tobacco companies gladly provided for free. Though this may seem nice on the surface, the move was an incredibly shrewd one since, although they did give away a lot of their stock for free, they ensured that soldiers would be hooked and buying their brand, long after they left the military.

9. Suppressing The World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is kind of a big deal when it comes to matters of world health. Obviously. The WHO is incredibly powerful and respected, and able to affect change on an almost-global scale.

And tobacco companies couldn’t care less about any of that jazz. In secret documents leaked to the WHO, it was revealed that several massive tobacco companies have been undermining the efforts of the WHO for years. The range and scope of the tactics used is pretty staggering, but in a nutshell, tobacco companies threw money at things that threatened their profits until they went away. The things they wanted to go away, by the by, were the people trying to cure cancer, which makes them the exact opposite of Bill Gates.

8. Trying To Take Down China

It’s a pretty safe assumption that China will eventually run the world; sorry, Beyonce. However, standing up to the ever-present Chinese menace is a lone hero: big tobacco companies. As reported by Reuters, tobacco companies in China have deliberately resisted raising their prices, and even infiltrated anti-smoking groups, to ensure that Chinese citizens remain hooked and in turn get all of the cancer.

If that’s not evil enough for you, they’ve also refused to put health warning on their packs. Then again, if people don’t realize that the things that taste like kissing an old person’s couch are bad for you, they probably don’t know how to read anyway. Thanks for giving us a fighting chance, tobacco!

7. Paying Scientists To Play Down The Link Between Smoking And Alzheimer’s

The list of diseases and physical maladies that smoking helps cause is so long, the physical exertion of writing them all down would give us early-onset arthritis, and who wants that? Suffice to say, it’s real real long.

However, one disease that has constantly emerged in the papers is Alzheimer’s. And yet, every now and again, a paper would emerge that suggested that smoking was somehow beneficial to people suffering from the condition. When someone actually investigated this claim, they found that every single person or scientist that had made such a claim had undisclosed links to the tobacco industry. Because of course they did.

6. Making Smoking Fashionable

Smoking is cool and everyone knows it, because there’s nothing cooler than having erectile dysfunction and smelly eyebrows. Back in the heyday of smoking, Lucky Strike Cigarettes noticed that sales of their brand were lagging. So they hired one Edward Bernays to help them. Bernays noticed that Lucky Strike’s packaging was an incredibly garish green color. Realizing that people are largely idiots, he concluded that the ugly color was the reason people weren’t smoking Luckies. When Lucky Strike refused to change their packaging, Bernays decided that he’d simply make green fashionable.

Which he did, by throwing a green-themed ball. When all the biggest movers and shakers of the day were pictured wearing green, sales of Lucky Strike brand cigarettes shot up, simply because green was now awesome, because pretty people were dressed in green one night. Again, people are idiots.

5. Trying To Defraud The Government Of A Billion Dollars

Though smoking arguably causes the government untold billions in healthcare costs, it also makes it a fair chunk of change in taxes, which pay for things like roads, hospitals and policemen. Then again, it also probably pays for the things that cure all the people dying of cancer because of smoking, but we should probably digress before our heads begin to hurt.

Over in Canada, a former tobacco executive, Stan Smith, was caught red-handed conspiring to smuggle millions of cigarettes, the estimated tax on which would have been in excess of a billion dollars. Don’t worry though, because Mr Smith definitely got his just deserts, by which we mean he sold out all of his co-workers, and got off scot-free. Justice!

4. Targeting Children, Then Denying It

The argument about whether tobacco companies target children has always been hotly contested, by which we mean tobacco companies have been shady as hell about it, while hiding behind a constant shield of highly-paid lawyers.

For example, it was constantly argued that Joe Camel (a spokescamel for Camel Cigarettes) was aimed at children. Though Camel Cigarettes naturally denied the claim, critics countered with the fact that Mr. Camel was equally as recognizable to children as Mickey Mouse, and that he rode a skateboard. Camel responded by telling the critics to shut the hell up. Because that’s how you win an argument.

3. Convincing Women To Smoke, For Feminism

Back in the early days of smoking, the market was almost entirely limited to men. However, this wasn’t an ideal situation for tobacco companies, as their potential consumer base was effectively cut in half. They needed a hero, they needed a cowboy. They needed Edward Bernays. Again.

Bernays quickly got on the case, by leaking a story to the press that, during a parade, some women would be lighting “torches of freedom,” to pave the way for female equality. What he didn’t tell them was that said women were stooges, paid by a tobacco company to smoke in public. When the images of said women hit the papers, millions of women were exposed to the message that, in order for them to be equal to men, they had to smoke. So they did, because advertising totally works, if you’re willing to sell your soul to Satan.

2. Supporting Human Rights Abuse

With all the damage and death that smoking causes, how they’re made is oftentimes ignored. However, one human rights group decided to look into how British American Tobacco’s cigarettes were made, and found that they directly profited the brutal military dictatorship in Burma.

BAT countered the claims, by stating that their factory represented valuable jobs to the Burmese people, to which human rights groups responded by saying that BAT were only paying said workers 17 pence (25 cents) a day, or a third of what other comparable jobs in the area were paying. BAT quickly bowed out, and withdrew from the country.

1. Refusing To Inform People About How Dangerous Smoking Is

Nowadays, it’s virtually a universally-accepted fact that smoking is bad for your health. However, saying your product kills people isn’t a savvy business move, which is why a number of tobacco companies simply downplayed the hell out of, or outright lied about, exactly how dangerous their products were.

For example, they massively downplayed the dangers of “low-tar” cigarettes, advertising them as less dangerous than their full-tar (read: manly) cigarettes. Turns out, this was a complete and utter lie; saying low-tar cigarettes are less dangerous than full-tar ones, is like saying a shotgun blast to the chest is less harmful than one to the face.

When the government demanded that such companies issue full and frank public apologies at their own expense, Big Tobacco fought the decision so hard, that the first time you probably heard about it was right now, when we mentioned it in this article.

In movies people hire private detectives to catch cheating spouses or find missing people all the time. In real life that goes on, but they also get hired by corporate clients to investigate competitors, clients, and even their own staff members for a variety of reasons. In most cases this is probably pretty standard stuff; maybe there is a fear of corporate espionage or someone is stealing. But sometimes the reasons can be almost unbelievable. 

10. General Motors Hired Detectives to Discredit Ralph Nader

In 1965, Ralph Nader wrote the book “Unsafe at Any Speed,” which took the auto industry to task for putting profit over safety and accused them of knowingly putting people at risk in unsafe vehicles. One of his big targets was the Chevy Corsair, made by General Motors and the company was not happy at all.

General Motors responded by hiring private detectives to spy on Nader and find evidence of anything they could use to discredit him, even if that meant manufacturing that evidence. First, they tried to seduce him with a prostitute but he turned her down.  Later they attempted to discredit him by suggesting he was homosexual, harassing his neighbors and others with leading questions about his sexuality in a time when being gay would absolutely have been viewed as something discrediting. 

The detectives were caught and the whole sordid scheme came out during congressional hearings which made General Motors look even worse but did lead to the rise of seatbelts and other safety features. 

9. Progressive Insurance Spied on Customers in Church

Insurance companies have a bad reputation at the best of times and if you don’t have your own negative experience dealing with one, you probably know someone who does. So when you find out a company like Progressive took the time to spy on people in church, it definitely doesn’t help their image. 

Progressive hired detectives to go to the church of a couple who were suing the insurer and spy on them. They became church members and even joined a private support group for people who were working through serious personal issues like drug addictions and abortions. They taped those meetings to get dirt on the couple. This led to the people filing another lawsuit against the company as well as the detectives.

The head of Progressive apologized publicly but the company also denied they did anything wrong in legal filings. 

8. Pillow Pets Hired Detectives to Hunt Down Counterfeit Pillows

Pillow Pets first arrived on the toy scene in the early 2000s. They look like typical stuffed animals with the added twist that you can convert them into pillows. They became hugely popular and by 2009 they had $7 million in gross sales. As with anything popular, that fame soon brought knock offs out of the woodwork.

By 2011, US Marshals were involved in the Pillow Pet world, hunting down counterfeits. Fake Pillow Pets had been flooding the market so the company had hired private detectives to track down the source of the fakes. 

Their efforts led marshals to a New York warehouse owned by a rival toy company. The whole endeavor was kept under lock and key so the other company wouldn’t get wind of it and when marshals arrived, they seized 17,000 fakes from the warehouse. 

7. New York Ice Cream Trucks Spy On Each Other

Ice cream is a fun summer treat, but only if you’re the person eating it. If you’re an ice cream seller in New York, then the entire game can become cutthroat and brutal. In 2017, the cool world of ice cream became heated when Mr. Softee went to war against rival ice cream seller New York Ice Cream.

Both companies operate out of ice cream trucks but Mister Softee was accusing the other company of operating fraudulent Mister Softee trucks. About a half dozen detectives were employed by Mister Softee to spy on the competition in what ended up becoming so heated that the detectives were being threatened with pipes. 

New York Ice Cream, started by a previous Mister Softee employee, was accused of using the Mister Softee Logo and even their trademarked jingle. A judge ruled in Mister Softee’s favor that the competition had to stop. 

6. Lenny Dykstra Hired Investigators to Blackmail MLB Umpires

Former professional baseball player Lenny Dykstra has a checkered past which includes some arrests and challenging people to fights on social media in addition to fraud and even grand theft auto.  His aggressive behavior is nothing new, however, and he readily admits to engaging in some seriously questionable behavior even back in his heyday.

Back in 2015, Dykstra admitted that he had hired investigators to dig up dirt on major league umpires. He did it specifically towards the goal of blackmailing them so they’d be more inclined to make calls in his favor during games like widening his strike zone so he could get more walks than strikeouts. You may recognize that as cheating. Really elaborate cheating. 

He says he paid $500,000 and then points out that, after he did that, he led the league in walks for two years to demonstrate his plan worked. 

5. Uber Has a History of Hiring Security Firms to Investigate Critics

Uber has only been around since 2009 but the company has had a huge impact on the world. The ride share idea has become ubiquitous all over the globe, and the company posted $17.4 billion in revenue during 2021. They have not, however, been without scandal during that time. Accusations of sexual assault are numerous, others including obstruction of justice, unfair firing and so much more. And with all of those accusations being tossed around, maybe it’s not a surprise that the company hires investigators to look into their accusers. 

When the company was accused of violating antitrust laws, Uber hired a firm staffed by former CIA officials to look into not just the plaintiffs but the lawyers as well. The investigation was exposed, and it blew up in Uber’s face with the judge in the original case saying it gave a “reasonable basis to suspect the perpetration of fraud.”

In 2014, in the middle of what seemed to be a PR dinner with journalists and people like actor Ed Norton, an Uber vice-president openly talked about hiring investigators to dig up dirt on journalists who criticized the company. He immediately tried to backpedal after the dinner.

4. Rockstar Games Hired A Detective To Locate a Musician’s Family

As we’ve seen so far, in most cases a private investigator is hired to do some fairly unsavory work but that doesn’t have to always be the case. They’re not nefarious by definition, after all, it’s just that most things only require investigation because people are trying to dig into secrets or unscrupulous acts. However, Rockstar Games, the company behind the extremely popular Grand Theft Auto franchise, has shown that some good work can be done with the help of investigators as well. 

The Grand Theft Auto series is notable for the music they include and GTA IV included a song called “Walk the Night“ that was released by a group called the Skatt Bros. in 1979. The game was huge in ways no video game ever had been before. It broke sales records and has made over $2 billion since its release. Some Of that money filters down to the musicians whose music was featured and that meant the Skatt Bros were looking at a pay day. But the problem was that the songwriter, Sean Delaney, had died in 2003. 

The publishing shares that Delaney owned had gone to his brother, sister and a nephew, but no one knew where they were. Rockstar did right by Delaney and, rather than letting it go, they hired an investigator to track down his relatives. The investigator had to travel to the city of Orum, Utah, with a population under 100,000, to find them and make sure they got what was owed. 

3. Municipal Governments in Australia Hire Investigators to Have Sex With Prostitutes 

Imagine trying to explain your job to anyone and get them to take you seriously if you were one of the investigators hired by Australian authorities to hire prostitutes and then report back about the experience. As unbelievable as it sounds, it was a real thing, arguably funded by taxpayer money.

In 2007, officials in Sydney were looking to crack down on illegal brothers within the city. Somewhere north of $16,000 was paid over three years to get investigators to go through the entire process from beginning to end so that the council will have irrefutable evidence of the illegal acts. Brothels are legal in Australia, but they have to be legal brothels, if that makes sense. Just like you can’t have an unlicensed bar in America, you can’t have an unlicensed brothel in Australia. 

As late as 2019 investigators were still being hired to go to massage parlors and see if there were sexual services being offered in addition to the legal activities. The work involves either having acts performed by employees or, if it’s part of the job, having full sex with the employees that are being investigated. 

2. A Spanish Town Hired a Detective To Spy on Pet Owners

No one likes a dog owner who doesn’t clean up after their dog. It’s a scourge of the modern world but, unless you catch someone in the act of leaving it, there’s not much to be done about it. But for one town in Spain, that was not good enough. 

Colmenar Viejo invested money in hiring a detective back in 2014 to roam the streets undercover, complete with a camera, to get evidence The detectives job wasn’t to stop anyone if he caught them ignoring their duties as a pet owner. Instead, they would just gather proof and give it to the police. The pet owners could then expect a respectable fine of €750 after the fact.  That’s actually a mild fine compared to larger cities like Madrid and Barcelona where the fines are double that. 

The detective seemed to be a sort of last resort effort as the already steep fines had not proven to be enough to convince residents to clean up. So the added threat of people knowing they were being watched might have done the trick. 

1. A California Water District Hired investigators to Track Tom Selleck’s Water Use

California summers have been harsh for a number of years now with droughts and fires becoming more and more commonplace. Many communities have had to institute rules over water use in an effort to conserve what is available. 

Actor Tom Selleck, best known for Magnum PI in the ’80s, has a ranch in California and was accused in 2015 of using more than his fair share of water, illegally taking it from the Calleguas district. The Calleguas Municipal Water District hired a private investigator and determined that a truck from Selleck’s ranch had been tapping a hydrant on several occasions between 2013 and 2015.

Reps for Selleck said the water was from a construction site and the actor paid for it rather than stealing it, but the district pointed out you can’t just buy water from someone else like that. In the end, Selleck agreed to pay the district just over $21,000 to settle the lawsuit.