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The biggest brand product flops

Tesla's Cybertruck

Tesla's Cybertruck

Over the years, there have been thousands of products made by famous companies that turned out to be complete flops.

Well-known companies monopolizing their market aren't always lucky with the outcome.

From an embarrassing demonstration to weird items unrelated to the products they are famous for, these companies are examples of how some things are better left on the drawing board.

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Evian: Water Bra

As we know, Evian is a business known for producing and selling mineral water.

It was established in 1789 by a French patrician in the village of Évian-Les-Bains.

In 1978, Evian became the first natural spring water brand introduced in Canada and the United States.

With such high success within the mineral water market, you would assume the firm knew a thing or two about water products.

Well, that was not the case.

In 2005, Evian wanted to expand into the clothing market.

The merge between water and clothing somehow led to "the water bra"

The company designed a bra to cool down women down during the hot summers.

The pads were filled with mineral water, and it even had a filter funnel that let women control the water to suit their preferences.

It doesn't stop there.

The bras even had a pouch to hold a small water bottle.

Evian advertised the benefits of the water bra' as toning and shaping your body and its cooling feature.

However, as you can guess, the product was unsuccessful and discontinued shortly after its launch.

A lesson in sticking to what you know.

Tesla: Cybertruck

The founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, is an entrepreneur, architect, and industrial designer specializing in transportation from Earth into space.

He's also the owner of Twitter now called X, a process that has so far led to him losing billions and causing chaos in the social media company.

Tesla was born in 2003, initially aiming to create environmentally friendly electric cars.

The company has been incredibly successful and helped turn Musk into the world's richest person at one point.

However, there have definitely been some bumps in the road.

In 2019, the company introduced its CyberTruck.

The Cybertruck wasn't an all-around failure, but it did have an embarrassing demonstration back in 2019.

Tesla's website says how they built the Cybertruck for maximum durability and passenger safety.

The materials used to make the car are Ultra-Hard 30X Cold-Rolled stainless steel and armor glass that can't break.

Unforunately, having confidently stated the glass couldn't break - it did.

At an event to kick off the Cybertruck in 2019, Elon Musk began the durability demonstration by blasting a sledgehammer into the car's body.

He then proceeded to throw a giant metal ball at the apparently indestructable armored glass.

Franz von Holzhausen, the lead designer, threw the ball twice, and the car's window smashed both times.

Elon Musk confessed there was "room for improvement" and explained that the sledgehammer had created an imperceptible crack in the glass.

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New Coke

"New Coke” came out in 1985, and proved to be one of the biggest flops in business history.

In a strange move, the company decided to remove “old” Coke from the market rather than alongside the new product.

This led to the company receiving more than 400,000 complaints from customers.

This was before emails, so people were phoning in or writing letters to vent their anger at the decision.

New Coke was rebranded as “Coke II” but was eventually scrapped.

The change didn’t last long, with the original drink returning to the market as “Coca-Cola Classic.”

Some people speculated this was a cynical marketing ploy as the "classic" version sold 10 times as much as the "new" variety.

The company then tried a rebrand, replacing “New Coke” with the imaginatively named “Coke II” in 1992.

It was suggested that one of the reasons Coke was keen on the new brand was that it was a lot cheaper to make and would’ve saved around $50 million a year in production costs, although Coca-Cola has never admitted this.

Coke II was discontinued in 2002.

Speaking in 1995, then-CEO Roberto Goizueta said: “We set out to change the dynamics of sugar colas in the United States, and we did exactly that — albeit not in the way we had planned.

“But the most significant result of ‘new Coke’ by far was that it sent an incredibly powerful signal … a signal that we really were ready to do whatever was necessary to build value for the owners of our business.”

Coca-Cola remains enormously popular, and the company is hugely successful.

And the company can even laugh at itself, calling the fiasco “one of the most memorable marketing blunders ever” and even tells the story on its website.

Image: Ron Raffety (Flickr)

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