Top 10 Rip Off Brands More Popular Than the Original

Where do you turn when you want strangers on the internet to give you money? Kickstarter, of course. The crowdfunding platform has become massively successful since it was launched in April 2009, bringing in more than $8.5 billion in pledges. However, it wasnt the first company to use this business model. Indiegogo was founded more than a year earlier, in January 2008. It has also seen its share of success the site has raised over $2 billion in pledges since it launched. But today its better known as the platform that controversial projects jump to when they get kicked off of Kickstarter.

Not only was this product a rip-off, the company also copied the originals advertising style. If you watched TV in the mid-2000s, you definitely remember fast-talking Vince Offer and his infomercials. And you probably noticed that they were an awful lot like the work of another pitchman, Billy Mays. Mays came onto the scene in 2000, advertising OxyClean. In 2007, Offer showed up with a similar style and an ad for an absorbent cleaning towel called the ShamWow. This towel just happened to be identical to another product advertised by Mays, the Zorbeez. Mays was none too happy about the obvious copycat. And the Zorbeez wasnt the only product Offer would steal from Mays. The Slap Chop was a clear imitation of Mays Quick Chop.

In 1947, Kiddicraft toy company owner Hilary Page patented a design for hollow plastic bricks that could be snapped together. In 1949, Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the LEGO Group, began manufacturing an extremely similar product which he called Automatic Binding Bricks. Christiansen openly acknowledged that he copied the Kiddicraft design, but since LEGO bricks were only sold in Denmark at the time, they werent a direct competitor to Kiddicraft. However, LEGO later expanded into international markets, including England. The company claims that it received Kiddicrafts blessing to start selling LEGO in the UK in the late 50s, since Kiddicraft had trouble marketing their own bricks. Today, LEGO has taken over the world, while Kiddicraft has faded into obscurity.

You might remember that during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, Zoom skyrocketed to the top of the video conferencing market. From February to March 2020, its user base doubled. But Zoom had only been around since 2011, whereas its competitor Skype was developed in 2003. So how did Zoom outpace Skype so easily? You can blame Microsoft. Skype was incredibly popular when Microsoft bought it in 2011, but the tech giant immediately started making changes to the app that bogged down its performance. Hoping to compete with apps like Snapchat, the company introduced emojis and other features that impacted call quality and usability. By 2020, millions of users had abandoned Skype because they were fed up with the poor performance and dropped calls.

These robots in disguise were a staple of 80s childhoods, but they werent the first transforming toys on the scene. Tonka introduced GoBots in 1983. They were inspired by robot toys from Japan but had a few important differences. The Japanese versions were mech suits controlled by people and didnt have names. GoBots, on the other hand, were sentient machines that had their own character names. Hasbro, eager to jump on the toy robot craze, introduced Transformers toys in 1984. The launch included a Marvel comics series tie-in and an animated TV show, which premiered just nine days after GoBots own cartoon. Thanks in part to a massive marketing push, Transformers soon overtook GoBots in popularity. Hasbro ultimately bought out GoBots in 1991.

In the 1960s, Kellogg and Post were the biggest names in shelf-stable foods. In 1964, Post announced a new product that would be hitting shelves in a few months: a fruit-filled breakfast pastry called Country Squares. The execs at Kellogg apparently thought this was a brilliant idea, because they immediately stole it. They hired a Keebler employee named, coincidentally, Bill Post, to develop a nearly identical product as fast as possible. Just four months later, Kellogg released Fruit Scones, which it soon renamed to Pop-Tarts. They were an immediate hit. Post changed its product name to Toast'em Pop Ups the following year, and while theyre still around today, theyve never come close to matching the success of Pop-Tarts.

If youve been on social media for more than a decade, you know that Instagram wasnt the first platform to introduce a disappearing content feature. That model was spearheaded by Snapchat in 2011 and was immediately popular. By May 2012, the company estimated that 25 snaps were being sent on its app every second. Of course, anything that successful is bound to have imitators. Instagram introduced Stories in 2016, and people immediately compared it to Snapchat. In fact, CEO Kevin Systrom admitted that the new feature had been copied from Snapchat. Today, Instagram Stories has more than twice as many daily users as its predecessor.

Franklin Mars founded the Mars Candy Factory in 1911, and nearly 30 years later, a disagreement with his son would lead to the creation of the companys most famous product. In the 1930s, Forrest Mars wanted to expand the business into international markets, while his father didnt. The two became estranged, and Forrest moved to Europe. There, he developed Maltesers, which Hershey would soon copy and rebrand to Whoppers. Forrest also discovered a British candy called Smarties, small pieces of chocolate with a candy coating. When he returned to the U.S., he partnered with Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey president William Murrie, to produce their own version of Smarties. They named the product M&Ms to represent the names Mars and Murrie.

Its no secret that this game is a blatant rip-off of the board game Scrabble, which has been around since 1948. Words with Friends was released as an iOS game by Zynga in 2009. Stealing games that already exist and rebranding them is basically Zyngas M.O., and its even been sued for copyright infringement. One of its early successes, FarmVille, was almost identical to another pre-existing game, Farm Town. The company has then turned around and threatened to sue other developers for copying its ideas. Perhaps most absurd of all was when Zynga released board game versions of Words with Friends. They were available in standard, Luxe, and To Go editions, just like Scrabble classic, deluxe, and travel editions.

There are plenty of knockoff brands of chocolate sandwich cookies in the grocery store today, and you might be surprised to learn that Oreo is one of them. The original was a cookie called Hydrox, which was introduced by Sunshine Biscuits in 1908. Nabiscos Oreo came along in 1912 and didnt hide the fact that it was imitating Hydrox. Because Nabisco was a larger company with wider distribution and more money to devote to advertising, Oreo soon surpassed Hydrox in sales. Its gone on to become the best-selling cookie on the planet. Hydrox was discontinued in 2003, but in 2014, a small company called Leaf Brands acquired the trademark and has attempted to mount a comeback.

Which of these rip-off brands do you think deserves its popularity? Let us know in the comments below.