Worst product ideas ever??

Since fast food is a prevelant subject on the worst food ever, has anyone won or known someone to win at McDonald's Monopoly by collecting the necessary properties?

I don't know a soul who has won...

Coke Classic may have been a bad product idea but it was certainly a great marketing ploy! How many people realized that during the shuffle from Coke to New Coke to Coke Classic the formula was changed from natural sugar to corn syrup? That was probably the entire reason for that fiasco in the first place. I'm sure pretty soon we'll see another new Coke product the equivalent of Pepsi Throwback with them reintroducing natural sugar!

Myth. By 1980, 1/2 of Coke's sweetner was HFCS and was growing each year. The switch to 100% HFCS was complete about 6 months before the New Coke fiasco.

Worst product ever? I think the "Classic Coke"/"New Coke" bifurcation tops my list....but as far as a product that remains on the market which I JUST DON'T GET, is McDonald's "McGriddles"....

See, now for me, McGriddles are the fast food equivalent to crack. It's the only McDonalds product I still eat. I have no idea why they taste so yummy. (And it fills me with shame. )

My vote for big ideas that fell flat... "Trickle down economics"

I have no idea why you think McGriddles taste so yummy either...

...on the flip side, as far as a product that was launched and failed -- but which I thought WAS a good product -- was KFC's "Spicy Crispy Chicken"....I realize there's an antipathy toward KFC by many on this board, but when prepared correctly, that was an awesome product (no bias, even though I was the Product Manager at the time)....it never caught a foothold among "non-urban" KFC locations, and remained in the market only a few years, but (IMHO) possessed a flavor and spice level that was far superior to their Original Recipe and Extra Crispy variants.

Since fast food is a prevelant subject on the worst food ever, has anyone won or known someone to win at McDonald's Monopoly by collecting the necessary properties?

I don't know a soul who has won...

From the NYTimes (summarized), re-printed on Wikipedia:

St. Jude's Children's Hospital
In 1995, St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee received an anonymous letter postmarked Dallas, Texas, containing a $1 million winning game piece. Although game rules prohibited the transfer of prizes, McDonald's waived the rule and has made the annual $50,000 installments.[8]

Hopefully most of you never saw this one. Developed by Papetti Egg about 10 years ago. The Egg Dog.
Just imagine a hard cooked egg in cylindrical form about the size and shape of a 4X1 hot dog. On a stick. Didn't quite find a home at any of our customers.

To the best of my knowledge, these are sold by several companies to the food industry (minus the stick); it's cheaper, faster, and easier to slice the log for salads then to start hard-boiling from scratch.


The all-time "best" example of worst ideas is Chevrolet exporting the Chevy Nova to Latin America. Who would buy a car whose name translates as "won't go"?

Since fast food is a prevelant subject on the worst food ever, has anyone won or known someone to win at McDonald's Monopoly by collecting the necessary properties?

I don't know a soul who has won...

From the NYTimes (summarized), re-printed on Wikipedia:

St. Jude's Children's Hospital
In 1995, St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee received an anonymous letter postmarked Dallas, Texas, containing a $1 million winning game piece. Although game rules prohibited the transfer of prizes, McDonald's waived the rule and has made the annual $50,000 installments.[8]

Sounds like and inside job that kills two birds with one stone. McDonald's prints one winner so people see a visible winner and McDonald's is the good guy who bends the rules for the Children of St. Judes. Meanwhile, those kids chasing the prizes become obese and uncompetitive at dodgeball. Solution: Ban dodgeball.

Marketing aside, by FAR (!!!) the worst product is Aspartame, the "sweetener" found in thousands of sugar free products (including virtually every "Diet" soft drink). Aspartame is actually a neuro-toxin and exposure has been linked to many neurological conditions. I have personally experienced health related issues with this additive and can not ingest any product containing Aspartame.

If you want to scare yourself, just "Google": "Reactions to Aspartame"

I've pasted below a paragraph from an article I recently read. If anyone wants to read the entire article the link is: http://www.newswithviews.com/NWVexclusi ... sive15.htm

In reality, aspartame is a drug, not an additive in the sense many people associate with that word. It interacts with other drugs, has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG, and is a chemical hyper-sensitization agent. Dr. John Olney, who founded the field of neuoscience called excitotoxicity, attempted to stop the approval of aspartame with Attorney James Turner back in 1996. The FDA's own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and violated the Delaney Amendment which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause Cancer. Detailed information on this can be found in the Bressler Report (FDA report on Searle).

So much talk of McDonald's on here. Does anyone remember the Mc Pizza? I don't believe it was ever served in Louisville, but it was available for years in certain stores in certain markets. I had one at an out door mall in Kalamazoo, MI back in 1993 and it was awful. They also used to have them at the Rock and Roll McD's in Chicago.

Since fast food is a prevelant subject on the worst food ever, has anyone won or known someone to win at McDonald's Monopoly by collecting the necessary properties?

I don't know a soul who has won...

oh jeez......that reminds me.....back when i was in college......taco bell had some deal going on with their gorditas and/or chalupas.......for the movie Godzilla.......each gordita/chalupa had a letter on it and if you spelled out GODZILLA ....you won a million bucks or something........oh man.....taco bell is right across the street from the university i attended and my sister, brother, and brother-in-law, and myself (we all went to school together) were there ALL the time.......we ate wayyyyyyyyy too many of those things......i mean......EVERYDAY.....between EVERY class......we crossed the street.....they were only 99 cents too.....and we were collecting millions of these stupid letters.......and the sad thing......at one point we were ONE letter away......so we kept on......sigh........the higher education must have not kicked in yet to teach us that it was all crap.........lol.......


on another note.....about the worst product......i think Uncrustables is one of them.....silliest thing to me.....of course i have bought them.....once.....and only to teach my girls that it really isnt much.......

[Robin Garr]

The all-time "best" example of worst ideas is Chevrolet exporting the Chevy Nova to Latin America. Who would buy a car whose name translates as "won't go"?

Alas, this golden oldie is a wonderful story, but it's an urban legend.

http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

Back in the '80s, there was a very short-lived fad for "lite" wine. It didn't last.

Someone came up with another "lite" wine. Chateau St. Thomas out of Plainfield IN came out with a line of wine's called Slender, that uses Splenda for sweetner. They have a sweet red, white and a blush.

They put them in the bags that people got at the Oscars, and we were immediately slammed with requests for it.

All this talk of "light wine" makes me a little ill...

They may in fact still make it, but I remember a new product when carb-phobia was spreading like wildfire called "1.6" or "1.9"... referring to the number of carbs per glass of wine. I have no idea what it tastes(tasted?) like but I have this distinct feeling that unless you're a brittle diabetic, if you're counting thirds of a gram of carbohydrates in your wine you probably need a second and maybe third glass of it anyway.

(I say this half tongue-in-cheek as I know that carb-counting has been a very successful method of weight loss for many, but to me, a glass of wine, like ice cream, is one of those things you just have to splurge on.)

All this talk of "light wine" makes me a little ill...

They may in fact still make it, but I remember a new product when carb-phobia was spreading like wildfire called "1.6" or "1.9"... referring to the number of carbs per glass of wine. I have no idea what it tastes(tasted?) like but I have this distinct feeling that unless you're a brittle diabetic, if you're counting thirds of a gram of carbohydrates in your wine you probably need a second and maybe third glass of it anyway.

(I say this half tongue-in-cheek as I know that carb-counting has been a very successful method of weight loss for many, but to me, a glass of wine, like ice cream, is one of those things you just have to splurge on.)

One of the worst selling wine ideas ever was the low carb wines. Even those who were really counting carbs avoided those wines. We brought them into our store, and ended up sending all but 2 or 3 bottles back to the distributor

Big n' Tasty-neither big nor tasty

The Big n'Tasty is actually the only McDo burger I'll touch.

non-food: The Ford Pinto
Food?: the McRIb Sandwitch, not a spelling error.They tried it in 2 different decades if
memory serves me correct, no takers.
Okay,I tried one the first time out of the gates.I still get ill thinking about the "meat" goo shaped like ribs.