Who Approved That? 7 Food Promotions Gone Horribly Wrong

Have you heard about Burger King's new Texican Whopper? The taste of Texas and a little, spicy Mexican "“ and they do mean little. The ad for the new product ran only briefly in Spain and the United Kingdom before the Mexican government demanded it be pulled. Seems they don't like having their countrymen depicted as three-foot-tall wrestlers who wear the Mexican flag as a cape. A flop? You decide. The ad has been viewed about a half-million times on YouTube. Here are a few more promotions that didn't go the way the marketing gurus had planned.

1. McDonald's gives away free virus

You wouldn't normally expect McDonald's to run a promotion giving away free Trojans (Trojan viruses, that is). In Japan, McDonald's gave away 10,000 MP3 players, fully loaded with 10 free songs. Problem is, many of them were also loaded with a QQPass Trojan virus that captured user info and sent it to hackers as soon as it was plugged into a computer. That's 10,000 folks who weren't necessarily lovin' it.

2. Hell Pizza brings out the dead

This one's kinda creepy.

New Zealand-based chain Hell Pizza ran a Halloween ad on their website depicting the skeletal remains of Sir Edmund Hillary and Heath Ledger, just months after their deaths. The spot obviously drew complaints, but wasn't pulled until November 3rd "“ definitely enough time to associate Hell Pizza with a whole lot of bad taste.

3. Pepsi's ballgame blowout

Here's one that just happened. Earlier this month, Pepsi offered to give away 250 pairs of Yankee Stadium opening day tickets. But when the Pepsi reps showed up in Times Square, instead of the 250 pairs of the promised tickets, they showed up with just 100 sets, and most were for a game in June. As one would expect, this basically led to a mob scene, with angry fans yelling "Pepsi sucks!" and pouring cans of soda out on the street. Now is this the kind of hope they were talking about?

4. Domino's has their own bailout

5. Everyone's a Pepsi winner in the Philippines

This is an honest mistake, but it's still pretty interesting. In 1992, Pepsi offered 1 million pesos to anyone finding a bottlecap with 349 printed on it. The problem"¦half a million bottlecaps got printed with 349, which would have cost 18 billion dollars. Pepsi ended up paying winners $19.00, which still cost them ten million dollars. Not only that, but bottling plants were attacked, and many Pepsi execs had to leave the country. And you thought Yankee fans could get angry.

6. McDonald's McAfrika Burger

7. Carl's Jr's winning code goes viral

And finally, file another one under the "whoops" category. A recent Carl's Jr. online promotion for a free $2.75 "Famous Star" hamburger coupon went a little too viral. 276 winning contestants were texted a passcode and a 48-hour-only URL where they could download their coupon. And as the saying goes, they told two friends"¦who each told two friends"¦and so on"¦and so on. A day later, hundreds of websites were posting the URL and passcode, and the company had to shut down the promotion. Apparently viral isn't always a good thing. [Photo credit: Adrian Lamo.]