THE ORIGINAL McDONALD'S FAILURE

Back in the day, you couldn't go wrong with the original McDonald's menu. With two entree choices -- hamburger or cheeseburger -- there wasn't much room to experiment. Nowadays, there are lots of choices. Many introductions to the McDonald's menu have been successful. Take the Big Mac: "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun." Other chart-topping hits include the Egg McMuffin and Chicken McNuggets, which quickly won the hearts of customers and keep fans hooked. But in 50 years of experiments, there were bound to be some mistakes. Some new items failed because customers just didn't like change. In other cases, a menu item didn't sell due to ineffective marketing or simply because it didn't appease many customers' taste buds. Many concoctions have come and gone from the McDonald's menu, proving that sticking a "Mc" prefix in a sandwich's name won't make it sell.The first flop was actually founder Ray Kroc's brainchild. The Hula Burger Pineapple on a bun? Catholics didn't really go for Kroc's vegetarian sandwich. McDonald's founder, Ray Kroc, was a brilliant businessman -- when he kept out of the kitchen. After buying the business's rights from the McDonald brothers, he expanded into new geographic markets but soon discovered a problem with the sales in regions with large Catholic populations. In the early 1960s, it was still popular for American Catholics to abstain from meat every Friday. Kroc had high hopes for his nonmeat option called "The Hula Burger" -- grilled pineapple with cheese on a bun. He positioned his burger to compete against the Filet-o-Fish sandwich, which was invented by a Catholic franchisee. The Filet-o-Fish won hands down while the Hula tanked. Since then, American Catholics have relaxed their traditional Friday custom. It's still popular to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent, however, and McDonald's typically discounts the Filet-o-Fish sandwich during that time to boost sales. Kroc managed to stop his Hula Burger short and avoided reaching national embarrassment.