It was a beauty industry dream that quickly turned into a nightmare. Project Orion, the revolutionary mascara launch that promised to take the world by storm, ended up being the biggest flop in cosmetic history. But how did it all go so wrong?
The idea behind Project Orion was simple: to create a mascara that was not only long-lasting but also volumizing and curling, all in one fell swoop. And the team behind it was top-notch, with some of the best chemists and cosmetic specialists in the game.
The trouble started early on in the testing phase, when they realized that the formula they had developed was prone to exploding. Yes, exploding. Picture this: women all over the world, blissfully applying their mascara in the morning, only to have the tube burst in their hands, leaving them covered in a sticky black mess. Not a good look.
But the team persevered, determined to make Project Orion a reality. They tweaked the formula, tested it extensively, and finally felt confident enough to move forward with a launch.
And then the birds happened. Yes, you read that right. Birds.
You see, Project Orion had an ingenious marketing strategy. They would release a flock of doves at the launch event, all of them wearing little fake lashes to showcase just how transformative the mascara was. What they didn't account for was that doves, being birds and all, tend to fly around. And when you've got a bunch of birds flying around a room filled with people, some of them are bound to have accidents.
The launch was a disaster. Birds flew into walls, crashed into tables, and yes, pooped on some of the attendees. Meanwhile, the team behind Project Orion watched in horror as their dream crumbled before their very eyes.
But surely that was the end of their troubles, right? Wrong. It turns out that the formula they had developed was also a nightmare to remove. Women complained of having to scrub their eyes for hours on end just to get the mascara off, with some even resorting to using industrial-strength cleaning products.
And then there was the curling issue. Project Orion had promised to deliver voluminous, curling lashes, but what they didn't mention was that those curls were permanent. Yup, you read that right. Women were left with lashes that looked like something out of a cartoon, with some even having to cut them off in order to regain some semblance of normalcy.
In the end, Project Orion was a complete disaster. It was pulled from shelves just a few weeks after its launch, with the team behind it left scratching their heads and wondering how it had all gone so horribly wrong.
But hey, at least we got some good memes out of it, right?
