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]

Few moments are as filled with joyful anticipation as a child counting down the days to his or her next birthday. Each night that gets the youngsters closer to their big day is a night that they go to sleep with big smiles on their faces.

Of course, it’s not just looking forward to one number giving way to another and the acknowledgement of growth and change that excites the child. It’s the gathering of friends, the fun to be had, the cake, and, yes, all the presents the child is going to get. In other words, it’s the birthday party that really gets a kid jumping for joy.

Most children’s birthday parties are fun-filled occasions. However, a few begin with fun and end with police sirens and tears on the faces of all those who attended. Here are just a few examples of those awful times when an adult didn’t get the memo about the fun and brought a gun to a child’s birthday party instead.

8 Times People Used Guns To Complain About Service

10 Chuck E. Cheese Birthday Party Shoot-out

In May 1977, the cofounder of video game company Atari opened up a restaurant/entertainment complex that would become a meeting place for giddy children for decades to come. That place, originally called “Pizza Time Theatre,” was Nolan Bushnell’s attempt to create a family-friendly video arcade at a time when they were associated with teenagers looking for trouble.

In the beginning, the entertainment was provided by a group of robotic characters. Their leader was a huge cigar-smoking rat with buck teeth and a distinct Jersey accent. His name was Chuck E. Cheese. In the 1990s, the chain officially became known as Chuck E. Cheese.

Today, the go-to location for children’s birthday parties boasts over 500 locations worldwide. In 2014, the chain’s parent company was purchased for $1.3 billion. However, all this success and birthday cake occasionally has to deal with forces beyond its control.

In late 2019, one of those forces was the temper of Marc Mathurin. His ex-girlfriend Aliyah Thomas and her two-year-old son were at Chuck E. Cheese for a children’s birthday party. They were dropped off by Thomas’s new boyfriend, David Brooks.

Not invited to the party, Brooks waited in his car in the parking lot. Ten minutes later, Mathurin exited Chuck E. Cheese and went straight for Brooks’s car. According to Brooks, Mathurin then fired a shot at Brooks. “He put the gun to my head. The barrel touched me,” said Brooks. Somehow, he escaped without injury.

After the shot was fired, the joyous occasion turned to panic and chaos. Thomas was still safe inside with her son, though not insulated from the chaos. She said, “People came running in and screaming. There was so much commotion.”

Brooks dialed 911, and the parking lot was soon filled with cops. Though Mathurin resisted arrest, police were able to subdue and put cuffs on him.

Understandably shaken by the incident, Thomas wondered if there was anything Chuck E. Cheese could do to better protect families in the future. She said, “I’m just left to wonder, what else can they do? A metal detector? More security? Did they even have a single person in charge of security?”^[1]

9 Dad Pulls Gun Out When Kids Get No Cake

Sometimes, you just plain miss out. Maybe it’s your fault, or maybe it’s someone else’s. But missing out on stuff is a part of life. The way we respond to it goes a long way toward defining who we are and how we’ll react the next time it happens.

For 48-year-old Joseph Hayes, it wasn’t so much what happened to him that triggered him so deeply, it was what his children were forced to endure in June 2011. They were attending another youngster’s birthday party when the host ran out of ice cream and cake before Hayes’s kids had any.

As this was simply unacceptable, Hayes flew into a rage. He yelled, “Y’all didn’t save my kids no damn ice cream and cake.” Then he left the party.^[2]

Soon, though, he returned with a small black handgun stuffed in the back of his pants. According to police, he approached the party host and said, “I ain’t scared to go to jail, just take care of my kids.”

That’s when the host called the police. After his arrest, Hayes told the officers that he didn’t actually bring a gun to the birthday party. Instead, he insisted, he had brought an object that looked like a gun. Either way, Hayes’s bond was set at $30,000.

8 Dad Shoots Self Doing Gun Tricks At Daughter’s Birthday Party

According to parents.com, the first question parents should ask themselves when hiring an entertainer for their youngster’s birthday party is: What type of entertainer would suit my child best?

For one father from Humble, Texas, whose daughter was turning 16, the question was a little different: What type of entertainment would he provide? Unfortunately for him, the answer was gunslinging.

At some point during the festivities, the proud father pulled out his gun and began spinning it in his hand. Somehow, the gun went off and a bullet hit him in the stomach.^[3]

He was rushed to the hospital with a single gunshot wound to his abdomen. No word on the type of gun or whether it was legally purchased.

7 Racists Crash Eight-Year-Old’s Birthday Party

On June 17, 2015, a man named Dylann Roof shot and killed nine people attending a prayer meeting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The roots of the church go all the way back to a group of free blacks and slaves in 1791. In April 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at the church.

Needless to say, the country was devastated by this racist attack. Then, about a month later, a small group of racists in Douglasville, Georgia, thought it would be a great idea to crash a black girl’s eighth birthday party.

Apparently, Jose Ismael Torres and Kayla Rae Norton, both in their twenties, were among a group of 15 people driving around Paulding and Douglas counties in Georgia (west of Atlanta) with their vehicles all decked out with Confederate battle flags. Torres and the rest of the riders were members of a group called “Respect the Flag.” Judging by their subsequent actions, that is about all they respected.

The group was threatening African Americans and yelling racial slurs as they drove from one area of Georgia to the next. At some point during their racist tour, they came upon an outdoor birthday party for an eight-year-old black girl.

The person who prosecuted the group said, “Victims and witnesses from the party, who were predominantly African American, testified to observing the group of trucks whose passengers were hurling a litany of racial slurs at them as they passed by.”

Then things got even uglier when several in the group got out of their vehicles, approached the partygoers, and threatened to kill them all—including the eight-year-old black girl. At one point, Norton retrieved Torres’s shotgun, loaded it, and handed it to him.

At trial, Torres claimed that he had the shotgun for his own protection. Then he admitted that he had lied to police about the gun and sold it before he was arrested. Months after the incident, the group “Respect the Flag” was indicted as a street gang.

At the sentencing hearing, Hyesha Bryant, one of the partygoers, testified for the victims. She said, “I never thought this would be something I’d have to endure in 2017. As adults and parents, we have to instill in our children the values of right and wrong. That moment you had to choose to leave, you stayed.”^[4]

Torres was sentenced to serve 13 years in prison. Norton got six.

6 Clueless Cops Raid Child’s Birthday Party

In 2019, the police made a terrible mistake in Chicago. While executing a search warrant, officers from the Chicago Police Department burst in on a four-year-old child’s birthday party instead.

According to Stephanie Bures, the birthday boy’s mom, police officers knocked down the door to her basement apartment, pointed guns at her family, and tore up the place. Shaken, Bures said, “It’s terrifying. Can you imagine a four- or a seven-year-old sitting and playing games with other children, then come in and be confiscated by men with guns pointed at them? I can’t imagine that.”^[5]

Apparently, the police were looking for someone who had not lived in the building for a long while.

The family promptly filed a federal lawsuit. Their attorney, Al Hofeld Jr., painted a shocking picture of the awful incident when he said, “Instead of having his family sing happy birthday to him, four-year-old TJ had Chicago police officers curse and insult him and his family with f-words and cruel jokes.”

Chicago police released a statement saying that “[they make] every effort to ensure the validity and accuracy of all information that is used to apply for and execute search warrants, [but] errors occur and it does take them seriously.”

Reverend Michael Pfleger from a nearby church offered some advice to law enforcement: “Treat the children and the houses that you are going into the same way that you treat your house or your children or want them treated.”

Officers were not wearing body cameras during the botched raid.

Top 10 People Who Shot Themselves In The Head And Survived

5 Gun-Toting Masked Man Swoops In On Birthday Party

A lot of things have changed during the coronavirus pandemic. For example, the way in which people celebrate birthdays. With friends and family unable to visit one another due to social distancing or stay-at-home guidelines, the “drive-by”—mostly associated with shootings—has recently taken on a much sunnier meaning.

In March 2020, a family in Oregon was holding a “drive-by” birthday party for a child. Friends and family were driving by the family’s house yelling “happy birthday” from their car windows and honking in celebration. Clearly, this did not sit well with the family’s neighbor.

Angry at what was taking place next door, 45-year-old Gabreial Russell slipped on a gas mask, grabbed his realistic-looking BB gun, and crashed his neighbor’s very responsible “drive-by” children’s birthday party. No shots were fired, but Russell did get off a few threatening statements.^[6]

Soon, the police were called, and they arrested Russell without incident.

Court records later showed that Russell was no stranger to law enforcement officials. In 2015, he was convicted of three counts of felon in possession of a firearm and sentenced to 13 months in prison.

4 Boing-Boing Birthday Shooting

According to Roller—a leading entertainment and leisure software provider—trampoline parks first emerged in the early to mid-2000s. Today, there are over 1,500 trampoline parks worldwide. Approximately 77 percent of attendees are under age 18.

In February 2020, a family was holding a children’s birthday party at an Atlanta trampoline park called “Get Air.” All was well until two family members got into a heated argument in the parking lot. The squabble entered the crazy zone when one man retrieved a gun from his car and started shooting. Not only was the other man in the argument shot but a bystander was also hit. Thankfully, none of the reported injuries were life-threatening.

Lieutenant Jake Smith of the Gwinnett County Police Department set the scene: “The argument kind of spilled outside between these two men, and one of the subjects went to his car and retrieved a gun. He ultimately shot at the second subject who was a family member of his.”

When the smoke cleared, 33-year-old Gregory Durell Angrum was arrested on two counts of aggravated assault.^[7]

3 Quinceanera Interrupted By Gunfire

When a girl reached age 15 in pre-Hispanic times, she was considered a woman who was ready to begin her childbearing years. In modern times, a quinceanera is more symbolic and usually involves a big party that can get expensive fast.

It is also supposed to mark the first time a young woman puts on makeup. Along with a cross, rosary and scepter, the lucky girl is gifted a tiara and shoes specifically chosen for her special day. What is not usually included in a quinceanera is gunfire.

Tell that to the folks who attended a quinceanera on August 31, 2019, at the Metroplex Event Center in Rogers, Arkansas.^[8]

According to the shooter, 27-year-old Salvador Aldaco Jorge, it was all kind of a casual, everyday thing. Jorge told police that he and a friend were hanging out behind the bar when he casually mentioned that he had an “open carry.” His friend then urged Jorge to shoot by saying, “Okay, go for it.”

After talking a little longer, Jorge took out his gun and fired two shots in the air. A security guard quickly ran over and took the firearm out of Jorge’s hand. Police estimated the damage at $1,500.

Jorge was charged with a slew of crimes, including aggravated assault, committing a terroristic act, discharging a firearm within city limits, and first-degree criminal mischief.

2 Dropped Gun Goes Off At One-Year-Old’s Birthday Party

In 2018, 73 children under age 12 were killed as a result of gun mishaps in the US. That figure includes the tragic story of a two-year-old from Maryland who found a gun on a bed while the adults in the house were asleep. The boy picked it up and fatally shot himself.

In December 2017, family and friends had gathered at the Dolaj Catering Hall in Brooklyn to celebrate a child’s first birthday. All was well until one man took off his coat.

A gun fell from his pocket, hit the floor, and discharged. The bullet pierced the right leg of a 62-year-old woman. The man quickly picked up his weapon and fled.^[9]

The female victim was rushed to the hospital where she was later announced to be in stable condition. Thankfully, the one-year-old was not hit. We were unable to confirm if the shooter was eventually apprehended by police.

1 Wanted Man In Park Was Heading Toward A Child’s Birthday Party

In Austin, Texas, in summer 2019, someone called 911 to report that a man in Pease Park was carrying an assault rifle and a large knife. The caller also said that this man was heading toward “a party with lots of kids.”

A second caller was able to give police the license plate number of the man’s car. Quickly, police identified him as 23-year-old Dalton Broesche. He had an outstanding arrest warrant in another county.

Police raced to the scene and managed to find Broesche between a trail in the park and a roadway. They detained him on the warrant and handcuffed him for safety reasons. The outstanding warrant was for assaulting his girlfriend and threatening a neighbor with a knife.^[10]

When police searched Broesche, they found several weapons, including a loaded 9mm handgun, an expandable metal baton, and two knives. The first 911 caller had mentioned that the assault rifle was an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, which police found on a footpath near a main trail inside Pease Park. The rifle was already loaded with a 30-round magazine.

Austin resident and sometime Pease Park visitor Marie Fahlgren shared her thoughts about the incident: “It’s terrifying. I have no idea what his intentions would be at a park in a safe place like this in the middle of downtown in the middle of the day with children. I have no idea.”

Broesche was charged with deadly conduct and tampering with physical evidence.

10 Everyday Things That Double As Deadly Weapons

About The Author: Domenico De Luca has been writing for 30 years—screenplays, short stories, and songs making up the vast majority of his output. Dom also writes, produces, and stars in his own homemade comedy series, Dom & Dommer. He’s also a film buff with his very own blog called so many films, so little time.