Spectre Brands

38 post-mortems · 15 dead · 23 ghostsUpdated October 8, 2026

Every brand dies twice: once when the money runs out, and again when people forget it.

Spectre Brands writes the second obituary. Each post-mortem rebuilds a company from its SEC filings, court records, contemporary press and archived web pages, with charts you can check, the commercials as they aired, and original drawings of what the brand looked like.

Browse the index

Two ways a brand ends

Dead 15 brands

The company is gone: liquidated, dissolved or shut down, and nothing operates under the name today.

Pets.com, Webvan, Kiddie City, Sega Dreamcast, Quibi

Ghost 23 brands

The original business failed or shrank to a shadow of itself, but the name is still in use: as a licensed brand, a shell, a single surviving outlet, a limited re-release, or a much smaller operation under new owners.

RadioShack, Circuit City, Toys “R” Us, KB Toys, Groupon

Featured post-mortem

Pets.com

Dead Dot-com & internet · 1998 – 2000

The company’s slogan was “Because pets can’t drive.” Its business model didn’t get far either.

270 days from IPO to wind-down

Read the post-mortem

The index

38 post-mortems

Status
Category
Ended in
Cause

Dot-com & internet

Internet companies from the 1990s bubble onward.

All 7

Dead1996 – 2001Overexpansion

Webvan

Raised more than $1.2 billion, built warehouses for millions of orders, and stopped delivering on a Monday in July 2001.

$827M cumulative net loss, 1998 to Mar 2001

Pets.com

1998 – 2000

Dead
Unit economics
270 days from IPO to wind-down

Groupon

2008 – present

Ghost
A fad that faded
−84% revenue, 2014 peak to 2025 (derived)

AOL

1985 – present

Ghost
Technology shift
26.7M U.S. subscribers at the September 2002 peak; 2.2M by 2014

Kozmo.com

1998 – 2001

Ghost
Unit economics
$26.4M lost in 1999, on $3.5M of sales

eToys

1997 – 2001

Dead
Unit economics
$1.26 lost for every dollar of sales in the year to March 2000 (derived)

theglobe.com

1995 – 2001

Ghost
Unit economics
606% first-day gain on November 13, 1998, then a record

Electronics retail

The chains that sold America its radios, televisions and phones.

All 5

Ghost1921 – 2015Technology shift

RadioShack

Once a store within a short drive of almost every American. It kept the stores long after the reason to visit them had moved online.

5,289 company stores at the 2001 peak

Circuit City

1949 – 2009

Ghost
Strategy and management
567 stores liquidated in early 2009

CompUSA

1984 – 2008

Dead
Outcompeted
103 stores left to close in December 2007

hhgregg

1955 – 2017

Ghost
Outcompeted
8 straight years of falling comparable-store sales, fiscal 2009–2016

Sharper Image

1977 – 2008

Ghost
A fad that faded
40% of fiscal 2004 revenue came from one product line: air purifiers

Toy stores

Mall toy stores and the superstores that replaced them.

All 6

Ghost1957 – 2018Debt and buyouts

Toys “R” Us

The store that invented the toy superstore was still selling $11.5 billion of toys a year when it failed. Nearly every dollar it earned from operations went to interest on its own buyout.

$457M interest in its last full year, on $460M of operating earnings

KB Toys

1922 – 2009

Ghost
Outcompeted
1,322 stores in January 1999. None ten years later.

Kiddie City

1957 – 1993

Dead
Outcompeted
$100.3M lost in its last fiscal year, on $291.5M of sales

FAO Schwarz

1862 – 2015

Ghost
Strategy and management
$104.9M lost by parent FAO Inc. in fiscal 2002, on sales of $460.4M

Zany Brainy

1991 – 2003

Ghost
Overexpansion
$80.7M lost in fiscal 2000, on sales of $400.5M

Child World

1962 – 1992

Dead
Outcompeted
$334M of bank and merchandise debt it stopped paying in December 1990 (derived)

Food & drink

Drinks and packaged goods that were launched big and pulled fast.

All 5

Ghost1992 – 1994A fad that faded

Crystal Pepsi

Pepsi took the color out of cola, put about $40 million of advertising behind it and projected $1 billion in sales. Within a year the product was being reworked. The name now comes back for a few weeks at a time.

$40M estimated launch advertising, for a drink reworked within a year

Zima

1992 – 2008

Ghost
A fad that faded
−49% volume in 1995, the year after the national launch

New Coke

1985 – 2002

Ghost
Strategy and management
79 days from the new formula’s launch to the return of the old one

OK Soda

1994 – 1995

Dead
Strategy and management
1M cases sold in its test markets before Coca-Cola phased it out

Orbitz

1996 – 1999

Dead
A fad that faded
−84% Orbitz sales, first half of 1998 against first half of 1997 (derived)

Video games

Console makers and the names that outlived them.

All 5

Dead1998 – 2001Outcompeted

Sega Dreamcast

The first console with a modem in the box had the biggest launch day the industry had seen. Sixteen months later Sega stopped making it and never built a console again.

510 days from U.S. launch to the exit

Atari

1972 – 1984

Ghost
Strategy and management
$538M lost in 1983

3DO

1991 – 2003

Ghost
Strategy and management
$4.6M raised when every game and patent was auctioned

Ouya

2012 – 2019

Dead
Unit economics
7,000 copies sold of its best-selling game

Coleco

1932 – 1990

Ghost
A fad that faded
$350M of Cabbage Patch Kids sales gone in one year, 1985 to 1986 (derived)

Film & home video

Rental chains and streaming bets.

All 5

Ghost1985 – 2010Technology shift

Blockbuster

The biggest name in home video had 9,094 stores in 2004, a billion dollars of new debt and a rival it had declined to buy. One franchised store in Oregon still rents films under the sign.

1 store left, of 9,094 at the 2004 peak

Quibi

2018 – 2020

Dead
Strategy and management
198 days from launch to wind-down

Hollywood Video

1988 – 2010

Ghost
Debt and buyouts
$1.25B merger value in April 2005; liquidation was approved five years later

Redbox

2002 – 2024

Dead
Technology shift
24,000 kiosks switched off in July 2024, of 44,000 at the end of 2013

FilmStruck

2016 – 2018

Dead
Strategy and management
758 days of service, November 1, 2016 to November 29, 2018 (derived)

Restaurants

Chains that closed their last location, or nearly did.

All 5

Ghost1925 – 2022Strategy and management

Howard Johnson’s

Once the largest restaurant chain in America, with 28 flavors and an orange roof on every highway. It was sold twice in six years, split in two, and left to its franchisees.

1,040 to 0 restaurants, 1979 to 2022

Burger Chef

1958 – 1982

Dead
Overexpansion
$83M loss disclosed in 1972, on a $16M purchase

Sambo’s

1957 – 1984

Dead
Strategy and management
447 restaurants closed in under three weeks, November 1981

Chi-Chi’s

1975 – 2004

Ghost
Debt and buyouts
601 people infected at one restaurant in 2003, by the CDC’s final count

Steak and Ale

1966 – 2008

Ghost
Debt and buyouts
58 restaurants, all company-owned, closed on July 29, 2008

How the post-mortems are made

No figure appears without a source, and nothing is presented as fact that we could not check. The short version is below; the full rules are on the About page.

Read the methodology

  1. Every figure links to a numbered source: SEC filings and court records first, then contemporary press, then the Internet Archive.
  2. Numbers we calculate are labeled derived. Estimates are labeled with where they came from. Claims we could not confirm are labeled unverified, or left out.
  3. Old websites are shown as screenshots of Internet Archive captures, each linked to the original capture.
  4. Logos, ads and footage appear in historical and editorial context. Drawings are original illustrations, not official assets.
  5. Cause-of-death weights and what-if scenarios are editorial judgment and are marked as such.