Random Things That Were Hugely Hyped But Then Massively Flopped (11 items)

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  (#10) Chris Gaines

  • Band/Musician

  In 1999, country superstar Garth Brooks decided to try his hand at being a rock star, as well. Brooks debuted a "greatest hits album" of his new rock alter ego: Chris Gaines (AKA Garth Brooks rocking a wig and a soul patch). What followed was collective crickets. 

  So who was Chris Gaines, other than a nearly unrecognizable Garth Brooks playing dress-up? The persona, and his elaborate backstory, were created to get Brooks fans interested in hearing the country singer perform music of a different genre, and to publicize Brooks's new movie with Paramount Pictures, The Lamb.

  Set to be released the following year, The Lamb was to star Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, and the studio figured a Gaines album would introduce the character and create buzz for the film. Instead, it just created a lot of confusion. As one reviewer put it, fans "didn't think that [Brooks] was playing a role; they simply thought he'd lost his mind."

  It seemed the world simply wasn't ready for Chris Gaines. While the album, Garth Brooks in... the Life of Chris Gaines, wasn't a total flop, it paled in comparison with the commercial success of Brooks's other albums, and failed to meet the high expectations of Paramount. Though Brooks made several television appearances as Gaines, The Lamb was scrapped, and the imaginary rocker became a bizarre blip on the radar of Brooks's career. 
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  (#2) The Opening Of Al Capone's Vaults Revealed Nothing Inside

  On April 21, 1986, millions of TV viewers tuned in live to watch host Geraldo Rivera and an excavation crew blast through concrete walls at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, supposedly to uncover a secret "vault" associated with notorious gangster Al Capone.

  Camera crews and a crowd of excited onlookers (including Mr. T) watched the spectacle from the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cadavers or wads of cash that were sure to be inside. Instead, the contents were a big fat nothing.

  The Lexington was formerly a luxury hotel, opened in 1892 and built for the World's Columbian Exposition the following year. It hosted many famous guests, such as Grover Cleveland and Booker T. Washington, before Capone set up shop in the hotel in 1928. Capone moved his headquarters into the fourth and fifth floors, and supposedly ran the place. Rumors swirled of secret tunnels and storage spaces built to accommodate "Public Enemy No. 1."

  Years before the vault opening, Chicago Tribune journalists had reported on a mysterious 6-by-6-foot concrete-filled space beneath the hotel. A masonry expert believed the shoddy job had been done in the '30s and couldn't explain why it would exist.

  In 1982, a nonprofit began the work of rehabbing the Lexington to its former glory, renewing interest in the alleged vault. A Los Angeles Times piece called it “Chicago’s equivalent of King Tutankhamun's tomb.” Tribune Entertainment picked up the story and signed on Rivera, who'd recently been fired from ABC, as the host for a live excavation.

  Rivera, too, got caught up in the hype, fully expecting the space to contain something. But after the initial blast, the dig wore on and uncovered nothing but a few small glass bottles. Rivera recalled:

  As the program is unfolding and it becomes more and more likely that I'm not going to find anything, there was a terrible, terrible sinking feeling, "My God, the whole world is watching."... As I approached the low point in realizing, recognizing that I'm not going to find anything, I thought that my public life was over.

  After the big letdown, Rivera was so worried that he skipped the after-party to go to a nearby Mexican restaurant and do tequila shots with the excavation crew. But while it may have been a huge disappointment to everyone watching, The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults topped local TV ratings history - three out of four televisions in Chicago tuned into the event, and it was huge nationally, as well. While no one found Capone's money, the ratings still made the event a lucrative endeavor.

  The Lexington Hotel was eventually torn down in the '90s.
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  (#6) Google+

  • Social networking service

  Google+, one of the search giant's attempted forays into social media, seemed like a good idea when it launched in 2011. The social network would integrate with all of Google's other services, and allow users to sort their friends into "Circles" for group video chats, or "Hangouts."

  Google+ began as an invite-only platform, a requirement the company may have kept up for too long, because too few people joined or used the social network. Google+ also had strict rules requiring real names only. Turns out, not everyone wants their actual name and email account linked to their social media. These aspects, along with an awkward user experience and interface (instead of "liking" or "favoriting" a post, you had to "Plus One" it), doomed Google+ from the start.

  Also, Google+ was simply too late to the game. By 2011, Facebook and Twitter were already social media behemoths, and Google+ didn't offer anything new. But Google didn't give up on Google+ until 2018, when a bug caused a private data leak. The company assured everyone it was no big deal - no one was using Google+ anyway.
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  (#11) The Dan-Versus-Dave Showdown Never Happened

  Before the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Reebok came up with what seemed like the perfect advertising campaign. The company had recently lost its short-lived advantage over Nike, and needed more than a typical shoe ad - it needed a pop-culture phenomenon.

  Enter Dan O'Brien and Dave Johnson, two Americans favored to win gold in the Olympic decathlon. Although both were impressive athletes in the track and field world, they were largely unknown to most Americans. Rather than focusing on one, Reebok had the idea to sign on both athletes and create the greatest national rivalry since the Cola wars: Dan versus Dave. Who might win was anyone's guess; Johnson boasted a 3-2 lead over O'Brien in direct competition, while O'Brien held a higher best score in the decathlon.

  Reebok launched a $30 million ad campaign during the 1992 Super Bowl. The ads featured both decathletes wearing Reeboks, showcased their rivaling stats, and repeatedly stated, "This summer they'll battle it out in Barcelona for the title of World's Greatest Athlete."

  But five weeks before the Olympics, at the US Olympic trials, O'Brien performed poorly in the pole vault and failed to even qualify. The advertisements quickly shifted to show O'Brien cheering on Johnson instead. Perhaps it was the pressure of becoming overnight household names; Johnson took home bronze rather than gold at Barcelona. O'Brien later did make it to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where he won gold. He was also later endorsed by Nike.

  While the Dan-versus-Dave rivalry turned into a big letdown for American viewers, it was still a highly successful advertising campaign for Reebok. O'Brien and Johnson remain friendly former competitors who keep in touch.
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  (#1) Fyre Festival

  In 2017, thousands of eager festivalgoers flocked to the Bahamas for what was supposed to be a luxury-filled weekend of partying with Instagram influencers and listening to big-name artists like Migos, Blink-182, and Tyga.

  Instead, festival attendees found themselves stuck camping out in a makeshift construction site on rain-soaked mattresses and eating cold bread-and-cheese sandwiches. The headlining acts and A-listers were nonexistent.

  It turned out that festival organizer Billy McFarland had spent a great deal of money promoting the festival (flying out famous supermodels for a video shoot) and less time actually planning it. McFarland had spent about six to eight weeks planning a seriously involved endeavor that would really take at least a year to pull off.

  While McFarland has described Fyre Festival as merely a case of biting off more than he could chew, he repeatedly lied to investors and misled ticket-buyers about the festival. He also ended up stiffing many of the Bahamian vendors who contributed their services to the event. McFarland eventually pled guilty to multiple charges of wire fraud and was sentenced to six years in prison.
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  (#3) Juicero Made An Unnecessary Product

  In 2016, Silicon Valley juice start-up Juicero launched to much anticipation after raising $120 million from investors. But just 16 months later, Juicero had run out of juice - the company became defunct in 2017.

  Juicero was meant to capitalize on the cold-pressed juicing craze. It was a Wi-Fi-connected juicer with accompanying "produce packs" that allowed for "farm to glass" juice. One simply placed their produce pack flavor of pre-chopped fruits and veggies into the Juicero, and the machine would pour out fresh juice at the push of a button. Founder Doug Evans, who likened himself to Steve Jobs, called it "the first at-home cold-pressed juicing system." The sleek $400 machine was supposed to have a pressing power of 3 to 4 tons of pressure - enough to lift two Teslas. 

  In April 2017, however, Bloomberg News released a video that showed Juicero's produce packs didn't require the accompanying $400 machine - you could just squeeze the juice packs by hand into a glass. The company hurriedly pointed out that Juicero had many uses beyond squeezing the juice; it also scanned a QR code on the pack that would tell you if your juice was expired. Or, you could look at the expiration date on the juice pack.

  Juicero quickly became the laughingstock of the start-up world and a perfect example of creating a "solution" to a problem that didn't exist in the first place.

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