Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  Sometimes you make something so awful that internet comedy writers make articles about the worst thing ever, and that’s the only time your product is mentioned again.   So here are some of the worst things ever.

Movie

Zyzzyx Road – Many a film buff will tell you what the worst movie of all time is, and probably how Michael Bay directed it.  Some will even get into complex equations to justify why it sucked so bad, including how many theaters it was screened in versus box office take, compared to world wide gross minus marketing costs and various other things that will reaffirm why this person has never touched a boob, even if they’re a girl.  All of that is subjective, however, as we can assure you, very objectively, Zyzzyx Road is in fact the biggest bomb of a movie ever.  It was in theatres for 6 days, in Dallas.  6 people paid to see it.  It grossed $30, $10 of which was refunded by the director to the make up artist and her friend who paid to see it.  According to wikipedia this worked out to a loss of 99.9985% of production costs, something that Michael Bay and Uwe Boll working together on an adaptation of Antique’s Roadshow starring Renee Zellwegger, Ben Affleck and Chris Klein probably couldn’t pull off.

On a more grand scale, the biggest money loser of a film ever was The Adventures of Pluto Nash.  While Zyzzyx Road only made $30 at the box office, it only cost $1.2 million to make.  Eddie Murphy’s epically unfunny and horrifying Pluto Nash, however, somehow managed to lose almost $93 million dollars, which is the film equivalent of giving accidentally locking the door behind you in a prison shower.  The country of Kiribati’s GDP is less than what this movie lost.

Video Game

Atari 2600’s E.T. – Considered one of the worst video games ever made, E.T. for the Atari 2600 infuriated a generation of children who had no idea what the fuck was going on.  An awkward, pixilated E.T would randomly run from pit to pit or teleport for no discernible reason whatsoever to some new god forsaken blobby location and not once was an even plausible explanation for any of this given.  Over and over again you’d levitate with the speed of a geriatric mall walker in your never ending quest to phone home only to have some asshole G-man steal your phone away from you anyway.  There was no sense to it other than the likely hunch the game was designed by someone strung out on gasoline and prescription sleep aids.

So in love with this awful abomination of a game was Atari that they skipped audience testing and just ordered millions of copies, because apparently at the time the President of Atari was a man whose head was so far up his ass he could see out his own mouth again.  While initial sales were alright, the fact the game sucked balls couldn’t be overcome and Atari was left with millions of unsold copies which it is speculated ended up in an El Paso landfill.  Whether or not that’s 100% true doesn’t change the fact that after this game was released Atari posted a financial loss of over $500 million.

Has every video game website ever written about this video game fiasco already?  Yes.  But we’re not a video game website, so it’s new to us.

Sport

XFL - Anyone who hasn’t blocked the memory of the XFL from their minds is aware that this half assed attempt at football was pathetic at best.  The lame as shit brainchild of WWE boss Vince McMahon, who apparently was stupid enough to believe the hype he writes for himself, thought he could branch into legit sports by making some manner of ultra cool football.  What he got was mostly second string talent and a broadcast on NBC that managed pull in a 1.5 rating share, which, at the time, made it the least watched show on primetime network television ever.

Demonstrating a total lack of understanding about the difference between sports and “sports entertainment,” the XFL succeeded in giving the few viewers it had everything no one ever wanted in a football game, including color commentary from the likes of Jim Ross, Jesse the Body Ventura and Jerry the King Lawler, rules that even the players didn’t fully understand and a generally loathing from nearly all media outlets.  NBC dumped the XFL like a hot potato laced with the herpes simplex virus and the league died soon after.

Car

The Ford Edsel – In the 50’s, Ford learned first hand what it means to overhype your run of the mill forgettable car as though it were Jesus himself returned on four wheels with a roomy ashtray and bucket seats.  The Edsel managed to cost Ford $350 million at the ass end of the 50’s, which in today’s cash is probably enough to get your average New York governor upwards of 100 hookers.  Launched on “E-Day,” it was supposed to be the most amazing thing in cars since someone noticed there was enough room in the back to conceive a child.  People literally lined up around the block to see it when they were shipped to dealers.  The Edsel was Star Wars: Episode 1.  And as with Episode 1, it sucked balls.

When people finally saw the car they noticed, rather than being awesomely outfitted with lasers, jet packs and disease free porn stars, it was pretty much a Ford Mercury.  But with an ugly grill that some people thought looked like a vagina.  Dealerships couldn’t even get people to test drive it. The car had a habit of falling apart as well, something the people who actually liked it enough to pay for one soon found out.  Sales were slow going at first so, in a brilliant marketing move, dealerships held draws for a free pony for anyone who test drove the car.  An actual, breathing, eating, shitting pony.

Sales were less than 50% of what was expected in year one, worse in year two and by 1960, Ford axed the Edsel altogether.  The announcement caused values of Edsels to plummet, including ones still on the lot.  Ford issued vouchers to customers so they could cash in for a better Ford product and gave credits to dealers.  The remaining Edsels and their ponies were shipped to Detroit and turned into pet food.

Drink

New Coke – Arguably New Coke is not the worst soft drink ever made.  After all, Mello Yello and Pepsi Blue made it out to market and we’ve heard rumors some people actually swallow Mountain Dew on purpose.  On the other hand, New Coke may be the only soft drink that ever managed to provoke the general public to hold actual protests, pouring bottles in the streets, provoking a stadium full of Astros fans to boo commercials and even making Fidel Castro use it as an example of what was wrong with America.  No matter what shitty flavor Fanta comes up with next, odds are not a lot of communist leaders are likely to trash talk it.

Even though a number of taste tests showed people actually liked the flavor of new Coke and sales were initially pretty good, all the negative press from those who hated it with an inexplicable fiery passion couldn’t be overcome.  Over 400,000 calls and letters came into Coke headquarters, several of which were probably threatening serial fistings if Coke didn’t get changed back.  It took Coca-Cola all of three months to decide the idea of New Coke was about as smart as trying to fellate the exhaust pipe of a bulldozer and switch back to the original formula.

Dot Com

Webvan.com – People like to be wistful about those carefree days of yore when everyone had a dot com and you could buy a coffee and a few hookers with poor English skills for a nickel.  Oh, the late 90’s were a magical time.  And the magic was extra sparkly for Webvan.com, because nothing is more special than running a business with absolutely no experience or even common sense.  Webvan decided to forgo building any kind of infrastructure, hoping that it would just work itself out and instead put effort into dropping $1 billion on building warehouses, spending more on delivery vans and a shitload of extravagant office crap including over 100 $800 dollar chairs.  All of this to support a grocery delivery service in 10 cities.  Unsurprisingly, Webvan failed in ways any other failure can’t even comprehend when it turned out customers weren’t interested in buying things like truckloads of fist sized diamonds or clones of Jesus or whatever it was that would have been necessary to stop a company that delivers groceries from going bankrupt after wasting over $1 billion.