Lumosity sold brain games as dementia prevention — the FTC fined it $2M for the ads
Ads promised the games would fight age-related decline and dementia. The FTC said the science wasn't there and hit the maker with a $2M fine.
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3,222 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDAnker's 535 power bank could catch fire — 42,000 recalled
Lithium cells inside Anker's 535 PowerCore 20K could overheat and ignite. 42,000 recalled after 10 overheating reports and one minor injury.
Read the caseBissell's Steam Shot Omni sprayed hot water — the defect it had already recalled
Bissell's new Steam Shot OmniReach could detach and spray hot water — the same burn defect that recalled 3.2M handheld Steam Shots. 1.7M units, 161 burns.
Read the caseHyundai patched the Kona EV's battery fires, then replaced 82,000 batteries
Kona Electric fires started within weeks of launch. Hyundai tried a software fix, then a fire hit a patched car — 82,000 battery replacements at $900M.
Read the caseJif peanut butter shipped salmonella — a $125 million recall
Salmonella from Jif's Lexington plant made 21 people ill in 17 states. J.M. Smucker recalled the flagship brand and took a $125M hit.
Read the caseVictoria's Secret's 'Perfect Body' campaign — petition backlash forced a new tagline
The 'Perfect Body' campaign showed one body type, ten times. A petition hit 29,000 signatures, and the tagline became 'A Body for Every Body.'
Read the caseShuanghui's lean pork was doped with clenbuterol — a scandal worth 12.1 billion yuan
CCTV's 315 expose caught Shuanghui feeding pigs clenbuterol for leaner meat. Sales collapsed, losses topped 12.1 billion yuan, and profit halved.
Read the caseDeNA's WELQ ran medical misinformation as SEO bait — 9 sites closed, ¥3.9B write-off
DeNA's health-content farm WELQ was exposed for publishing articles with no medical basis — the company shut all nine curation sites and wrote off ¥3.9 billion.
Read the caseGoogle's Olympics ad used Gemini to write a child's fan letter — the backlash pulled it
A 60-second ad had a father asking Gemini to write his daughter's letter to her hero. Critics said it taught her own words don't matter — Google pulled it.
Read the casechocoZAP sold '24-hour unlimited' gym access — every service was capped at 5–16 hours
Japan's consumer watchdog ordered chocoZAP to fix its '24-hour unlimited' ads — each of eight services had daily time caps, and paid posts ran undisclosed.
Read the caseself-portrait's launch livestream collapsed — host mispronounced the brand's own name
A KOL host who could not pronounce self-portrait's name derailed its Nov 2025 launch livestream; owner Ellassay apologised and promised process fixes.
Read the caseTokyo 2020 scrapped its Olympic logo after the designer's team was caught copying
Kenjiro Sano's Tokyo 2020 emblem was dropped a month after unveiling — a Belgian designer sued over a near-identical logo, then more copying surfaced.
Read the caseChampion's overlapping China licences bled its first distributor dry and forced it out
In 2019 HanesBrands gave BeLLE a second China licence for Champion, overlapping Yongjia's. Yongjia lost HK$86M and sold the whole business for ¥104M.
Read the caseMr. Jiang's Bean Cake / 姜先生仙仙豆糕
A 'healthy' bean-cake chain that rode the wellness-snack wave shrank from dozens of stores to just one as the health-bakery bubble burst
Read the caseBell Robot's children's coding franchise collapsed nationwide, franchisees stranded
A children's robotics-education franchise chain collapsed nationwide as the franchise model in China's edu-tech sector imploded
Read the caseTriumph defined bras for generations of Chinese women, then closed every store
The German lingerie giant that defined bras for generations of Chinese women closed all China stores as domestic brands took over
Read the caseCoCo lost 400-plus stores in six months as bubble tea commoditised
A once-iconic bubble tea pioneer lost 400-plus stores in six months as China's tea market turned hyper-commoditised and younger consumers moved on
Read the caseWill's Fitness went from 1,000-plus stores to zero in 2025
China's largest fitness chain with over 1,000 stores collapsed entirely in 2025, felled by COVID debt, refund claims, and a broken membership model
Read the caseCHAFORU went from 200-plus mainland stores to almost none
A premium Taiwanese tea brand went from 200-plus mainland stores to just 2 in 2025, squeezed between cheap local chains and luxury rivals
Read the casePeloton scrubbed its new campaign face after a resurfaced high school photo
Days after actor Hudson Williams became the face of Peloton's spring campaign, a high school photo went viral — Peloton deleted every post featuring him.
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