From Blockbuster to WorldCom: Man collects mugs of famous failed American companies

[These companies, it seems, never ‘woke up’ and smelled their coffee/Reddit]

Some people collect stamps. Others, coins. But there is probably only one human on the entire planet who collects the branded mugs of failed American businesses.

Fortunately, that individual has posted a photo of his collection online, and it is one sad, ceramic walk down memory lane.

Snaps of the mugs have been posted to the websites Reddit and Imgur by an individual who goes by the Imgur username of ‘Andrew Garvey’.

At first, Garvey claimed the mugs belonged to a friend, but then quickly outed himself as the nerdy collector.

At the moment, there are only 13 mugs in the collection, but boy, are there some doozies.

From the financial sector, there’s Bear Sterns, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and Wachovia. There’s also accounting firm Arthur Anderson, which famously (and criminally) managed Enron’s books.

Speaking of Enron, Garvey has one of their mugs – a prized item, to be sure. And Enron isn’t the only company in the collection found guilty of extreme accounting fraud: former telecom giant WorldCom is also represented in the collection.

Garvey also includes some great failures of the entertainment industry, including Blockbuster and the movie Attack of the Clones (some may argue it was a financial success, but there can be little doubt that, artistically speaking, the film was a monstrosity).

Hiding in the back row of the collection are two once great but now defunct airlines: Pan American and TWA.

And sitting in it’s rightful place at the centre of the first row of the collection is the pièce de résistance: an engineer’s spill-proof mug from Three Mile Island. For readers under the age of 40, Three Mile Island is a nuclear generating station in Pennsylvania that in 1979 experienced an infamous partial nuclear meltdown.

It’s an impressive collection, but some commenters couldn’t help suggesting additions. Circuit City got several mentions, and Gateway 2000, Pets.com, Radioshack, Sport Chalet, XFL and Sears were also suggested.

Garvey himself lamented the absence of one item in particular: a Madoff mug.