- 5/24/2025
From snack foods to social media features, some copycats manage to overshadow their predecessors. Join us as we explore the fascinating stories behind products that started as imitations but grew to dominate their markets. These brands prove that sometimes the student becomes the master!
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00:00Oreo was pretty much known as the knockoff of Hydrox. Hydrox was made four years before and
00:06was the original sandwich cookie. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our
00:10picks for the copycat products that became more successful than the brands they copied.
00:14I don't think a copycat at all necessarily means failures.
00:19Number 10. Kickstarter. Where do you turn when you want strangers on the internet to give you
00:23money? Kickstarter, of course. Not only are we officially becoming the all-in-one crowdfunding
00:28platform creators have been asking for, but we're also improving the experience for our
00:33backer community. The crowdfunding platform has become massively successful since it was
00:37launched in April 2009, bringing in more than $8.5 billion in pledges. However, it wasn't the
00:42first company to use this business model. Indiegogo was founded more than a year earlier, in January
00:472008. We help connect creators with backers and supporters from around the world who support
00:54their ideas and they can now bring them to life. It has also seen its share of success. The site has
00:59raised over $2 billion in pledges since it launched. But today, it's better known as the
01:03platform that controversial projects jump to and they get kicked off of Kickstarter.
01:07They decided to go on to Indiegogo and keep raising money because apparently Indiegogo's rules are
01:12less strict than Kickstarters when it comes to prototypes.
01:16Number 9. ShamWow. Not only was this product a ripoff, the company also copied the original's
01:22advertising style. If you watched TV in the mid-2000s, you definitely remember fast-talking
01:27Vince Offer in his infomercials.
01:29Hi, it's Vince with ShamWow. You'll be saying wow every time you use this towel.
01:33You probably noticed that they were an awful lot like the work of another pitchman, Billy
01:37Mays. Mays came onto the scene in 2000, advertising OxyClean. In 2007, Offer showed up with a similar
01:43style in an ad for an absorbing cleaning towel called the ShamWow.
01:47This lasts 10 years. This lasts a week. I don't know, it sells itself. The ShamWow sells for
01:511995.
01:53This towel just happened to be identical to another product advertised by Mays, the Zorbeez.
01:58Mays was none too happy about the obvious copycat, and the Zorbeez wasn't the only product
02:03Offer would steal from Mays. The Slap Chop was a clear imitation of Mays' Quick Chop.
02:07Hi, Billy Mays here for the original Quick Chop. The fastest, easiest, safest way to chop,
02:13mince, or dice any vegetable, guaranteed.
02:16Number 8. Lego.
02:18In 1947, Kitty Craft Toy Company owner Hilary Page patented a design for hollow plastic bricks
02:24that could be snapped together. In 1949, Ol' Kirk Christensen, founder of the Lego Group,
02:29began manufacturing an extremely similar product, which he called Automatic Binding Bricks.
02:33They need something different that will strengthen their imagination and creativity.
02:39So you're trying to put Lego into a system? Interesting.
02:43Christensen openly acknowledged that he copied the Kitty Craft design, but since Lego bricks
02:47were only sold in Denmark at the time, they weren't a direct competitor to Kitty Craft. However, Lego
02:52later expanded into international markets, including England. The company claims that it received
02:57Kitty Craft's blessing to start selling Lego in the UK in the late 50s, since Kitty Craft had trouble
03:02marketing their own bricks. Today, Lego has taken over the world, while Kitty Craft has faded into obscurity.
03:08Get building and make the world your playground!
03:11Number 7. Zoom. You might remember that during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown,
03:18Zoom skyrocketed to the top of the video conferencing market. Zoom bridges the gap,
03:22giving everyone a chance to be included, to share their ideas, and collaborate as one team.
03:28From February to March 2020, its user base doubled. But Zoom had only been around since 2011,
03:33whereas its competitor Skype was developed in 2003. So how did Zoom outspace Skype so easily?
03:39You can blame Microsoft. Skype was incredibly popular when Microsoft bought it in 2011, but the
03:44tech giant immediately started making changes to the app that bogged down its performance.
03:48What happened with Skype is the story of every large company with a lot of middle management.
03:55They didn't innovate on the product for a very long time. Hoping to compete with apps like Snapchat,
04:01the company introduced emojis and other features that impacted call quality and usability. By 2020,
04:06millions of users had abandoned Skype because they were fed up with poor performance and dropped calls.
04:11Microsoft saying that it wants to streamline all of its communication options under Teams,
04:18so it's deemed Skype to be no longer needed among its portfolio of offerings.
04:27Number 6. Transformers. These robots in disguise were a staple of 80s childhoods,
04:32but they weren't the first transforming toys on the scene.
04:43Tonka introduced GoBots in 1983. They were inspired by robot toys from Japan but had a few
04:49important differences. The Japanese versions were mech suits controlled by people and didn't have names.
04:55GoBots, on the other hand, were sentient machines that had their own character names.
04:58Super GoBots. Stax, Leader One and Psy kill Itzo separately from Tonka.
05:05Hasbro, eager to jump on the toy robot craze, introduced Transformers toys in 1984.
05:10The launch included a Marvel Comics series tie-in and an animated TV show, which premiered just
05:14nine days after GoBots' own cartoon. Thanks in part to a massive marketing push,
05:19Transformers soon overtook GoBots in popularity. Hasbro ultimately bought out GoBots in 1991.
05:25Nothing is more powerful.
05:27GoBot Power Warrior. With four power suits and spaceship, GoBots sold separately. New from Tonka.
05:33Number 5. Pop-Tarts. In the 1960s, Kellogg and Post were the biggest names in shelf-stable foods.
05:40Hey, cool things happen with the warm taste of Kellogg's Pop-Tarts.
05:44In 1964, Post announced a new product that would be hitting shelves in a few months,
05:48a fruit-filled breakfast pastry called Country Squares. The execs at Kellogg apparently thought
05:52this was a brilliant idea because they immediately stole it. They hired a Keebler employee named,
05:57coincidentally, Billy Post, to develop a nearly identical product as fast as possible.
06:01I mean, I know she loved the Kellogg's Pop-Tarts. Who wouldn't? All that nice, warm, gooey,
06:06real fruit filling in a toasted tan crust. But now I know she thinks they're cool,
06:10cause they're hot! I'm a raging inferno of emotion here!
06:15Just four months later, Kellogg released Fruit Scones, which had soon renamed to Pop-Tarts.
06:19They were an immediate hit. Post changed its product name to Toast and Pop-Ups the following
06:24year, and while they're still around today, they've never come close to matching the success of Pop-Tarts.
06:29Pop-Tarts! Crazy!
06:30Good!
06:31Number 4. Instagram Stories.
06:33If you've been on social media for more than a decade, you know that Instagram wasn't the
06:37first platform to introduce a disappearing content feature.
06:40Yeah, that's the main battle for now is Instagram Stories versus Snapchat Stories, so
06:44Facebook finally got smart and stopped trying to just copy Snapchat's entire app.
06:48That model was spearheaded by Snapchat in 2011 and was immediately popular.
06:52By May 2012, the company estimated that 25 snaps were being sent on its app every second.
06:58Of course, anything that successful is bound to have imitators.
07:00Facebook has done Snapchat's growth by creating this thing, Instagram Stories,
07:04that's very similar to Snapchat Stories.
07:06Instagram introduced Stories in 2016 and people immediately compared it to Snapchat.
07:10In fact, CEO Kevin Systrom admitted that the new feature had been copied from Snapchat.
07:15Today, Instagram Stories has more than twice as many daily users as its predecessor.
07:19I feel like this specific feature has definitely helped me get closer to a lot of people and
07:25stay connected with my friends from my old school.
07:27Number 3. M&Ms.
07:29Franklin Mars founded the Mars Candy Factory in 1911, and nearly 30 years later,
07:33a disagreement with his son would lead to the creation of the company's most famous product.
07:38You said to tell our fans Crispy M&Ms are back.
07:40Not those fans!
07:42Did you mean this fan?
07:43No.
07:43What about that one?
07:44Aye.
07:45In the 1930s, Forrest Mars wanted to expand the business into international markets,
07:50while his father didn't.
07:50The two became estranged and Forrest moved to Europe.
07:53There, he developed Maltesers, which Hershey would soon copy and rebrand to Whoppers.
07:57Forrest also discovered a British candy called Smarties, small pieces of chocolate with a candy
08:06coating.
08:06When he returned to the US, he partnered with Bruce Murray, son of Hershey President William
08:11Murray, to produce their own version of Smarties.
08:13They named the product M&Ms to represent the names Mars and Murray.
08:16It's no secret that this game is a blatant ripoff of the board game Scrabble, which has
08:28been around since 1948.
08:29Scrabble, Fun Beyond Words
08:32Words with Friends was released as an iOS game by Zynga in 2009, stealing games that already
08:37exist and rebranding them as basically Zynga's MO, and it's even been sued for copyright infringement.
08:43One of its earliest successes, Farmville, was almost identical to another pre-existing game,
08:47Farmtown.
08:53The companies then turned around and threatened to sue other developers for copying its ideas.
08:58Perhaps most absurd of all was when Zynga released board game versions of Words with Friends.
09:02They were available in standard, luxe, and to-go editions, just like Scrabble Classic,
09:06Deluxe, and Travel editions.
09:08New Words with Friends from the game experts at Hasbro.
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09:27Number 1.
09:28Oreos
09:29There are plenty of knock-off brands of chocolate sandwich cookies in the grocery store today,
09:33and you might be surprised to learn that Oreo is one of them.
09:36Oreo, unlock the magic.
09:38The original was a cookie called Hydrox, which was introduced by Sunshine Biscuits in 1908.
09:43Nabisco's Oreo came along in 1912 and didn't hide the fact that it was imitating Hydrox.
09:48Because Nabisco was a larger company with wider distribution and more money to devote to advertising,
09:53Oreo soon surpassed Hydrox in sales.
09:55It's gone on to become the best-selling cookie on the planet.
10:10Hydrox was discontinued in 2003, but in 2014, a small company called Leaf Brands acquired the
10:15trademark and has attempted to mount a comeback.
10:17Now this is what the new Hydrox package looks like, and behind me in this entire palette,
10:22there's about 20,000 individual cookies ready to be eaten.
10:25Which of these rip-off brands do you think deserves its popularity?
10:28Let us know in the comments below.
10:30Coca-Cola says it's the real thing, but Pepsi-Cola believes that when it comes to colas,
10:36the only real thing is taste.
10:38Coca-Cola says it's the real thing.
10:45It's a real thing.
10:50It's a real thing.
10:56So I am going to get a piece of the new Piano Suckers.
10:59I'm going to get a piece of the new Piano Suckers.
11:04I'm going to get a piece of the new Piano Suckers.
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