Times Companies Went Scorched Earth on Each Other

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

I wish I remembered more of the specifics, but in the Blu-ray label niche, The Farmer (1977) has to be one of the most controversial films…for reasons that have little to do with the actual film.

First, I remember Bill from Code Red used it as a dangling carrot for his customers. A remastered version was much sought after and he promised to release one for months…and months…then years.

At some point Bill’s brother, Walt split off to form his own label, Scorpion Releasing. This complicated the rights issues to who could release The Farmer.

Sides were taken and I want to say it was the online retailer Diabolik who sided with Walt. Diabolik then put everything from a Code Red allied label Dark Force on clearance and said nothing from them would ever be restocked.

It’s a fairly interesting story and there was even a Facebook group dedicated to the release of The Farmer at one point. Unfortunately, to get through any interesting parts of the conflict you have to sift through tons of minutia and 5+ year old Internet flaming to make sense of it.

My summary may not be entirely accurate, but it’s a very condensed version of the details. The epilogue of the conflict is that The Farmer was eventually released by Scorpion Releasing and both Bill and Walt have passed away from unrelated medical issues.

[Mozenrath]

Coca Cola maintains that the whole "New Coke/Coca Cola Classic" thing was not planned, and I believe then giving it cost them an ENORMOUS amount of money, rolling out New Coke, only to have to backpedal within a scant few months, and all the distribution and manufacturing costs they had to undertake.

But, there are no such big denials about Tab Clear. Tab was (is? Do they still make it?) Coca Cola's diet brand before they rolled out Diet Coke, and had its own niche, but certainly not big enough to necessitate a gimmick clear soda. But, it DID allow them to undermine Crystal Pepsi, and they were glad to have Tab Clear bomb if it meant they could also help kill Crystal Pepsi. It wasn't Crystal Pepsi's only hurdle, but it certainly aided in their demise.

[schma]

This isn't quite on the level of companies but I remember in the early 2000s Garth Brooks signed an exclusivity deal with Wal-mart where they would be the only ones selling his new album. My friend was working at HMV and she let me know that they had returned all their stock of Garth Brooks albums and whatnot upon hearing this. Now at the time Garth was not the juggernaut he had been in the 90s but it was still a significant step from both parties.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

The 1983 North American home computer price war. Jack Tramiel wanted revenge for Texas Instruments taking over the calculator market so moved heaven and earth to drive them out of the home computer market with absolutely brutal price cuts that hurt the entire market, Commodore included. TI went from having a third of the market to quitting after losing a hundred million dollars in a price war driven by pure spite, Tramiel would be fired by Commodore and would end up buying Atari, who were also weakened by the price war. The lower end home computer market never really recovered with even Tandy swapping to PC clones and both Commodore and Atari struggled to get retailers to work with them to sell the Amiga and ST after Tramiel's Tramieling.