However, most of the items listed below are ones that had high expectations, large amounts of money or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Obviously, due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations", there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop".
Two examples: David McReynolds ran for President of the United States in 1980 and 2000 on the socialist ticket, but came nowhere near winning. However, he would never characterize his campaign as a flop because he ran for president in order to get his causes recognized, without any hope of being elected. But the creation of New Coke is generally regarded indisputably a "major flop".
A separate discussion of movie flops provides examples and rationales.
These are aircraft which were technically sound, but failed in the marketplace. For aircraft which failed to work at all see 'Flops in science and engineering'.
A scientific flop may be something that took years of man-hours and a lot of money to complete (or perhaps never completed) and ended in failure.
Entertainment
Musical comebacks gone horribly awry
Flops in sports
Flops in television
Turkeys (Flops in theatre)
Flops in film
A movie is most likely a flop if it doesn't perform as expected. A major movie flop might barely (or not even) make back the money it took to finance it. In extreme cases it might put the studio out of business.Commercial Flops
Aviation Flops
Automotive Flops
Computing Flops
Video Game Flops
Miscellaneous commercial flops
Flops in science and engineering
Political flops
USA Presidential campaigns
French elections
Canadian elections
UK elections
See also