It’s not just Cracker Barrel — check out 5 other famous logo back-tracks

Cracker Barrel’s rebranding failure is a sign of the times.

The restaurant chain abandoned its effort to revamp its look after a week of criticism, including from President Donald Trump.

Sometimes, changes can stick. There’s Netflix’s red N. Apple is monochromatic after sporting blue in the 1990s and a rainbow in the 70s. Microsoft added its four distinct squares in 2012.

But for every success story, there have been plenty of flops.

Here are other brands that also had to backtrack on their redesigns.

Cracker Barrel

On August 19, Cracker Barrel rolled out a new logo as part of its fall campaign. A week later, the Lebanon, Tennessee-based chain announced that its “Old Timer” logo, complete with a man known as Herschel, leaning on a barrel, would return.

Some influential conservatives, including Donald Trump Jr., criticized the new logo, which removed Uncle Herschel and the barrel shortly after its announcement. While companies have triggered backlash with design changes before, Cracker Barrel became a target of the president’s vocal base.

The chain has been trying to turn around its outlook on prospects by tweaking the menu, updating some of its locations, and modernizing some of its down-home Southern image. But the redesign was having the opposite effect as share prices tumbled.

After the company backtracked on its new logo, shares increased. By Wednesday afternoon, Cracker Barrel was trading up over 8% from the previous day.

New Coke

In 1985, Coca-Cola went even further than a redesign. The soft drink giant reformulated its flavor in what became known as “New Coke.” It failed so spectacularly that it remains a business-school case study of what not to do.

At the time, rival Pepsi was beginning to seriously cut into Coke’s market share. Thanks, in part, to the successful “Pepsi Challenge.” Coke responded by changing its formulation for the first time in 99 years.

Less than three months later, Coke brought back its old formulation as “Coke Classic.” Its return led to a sales bump.

As for the old formula, it was rebranded as Coke II and remained on the market until the early 2000s.

Tropicana

Tropicana found out in 2009 that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze when it changed its packaging to a minimalist design.

PepsiCo, which owned Tropicana at the time, replaced the image of an orange with a straw sticking out with a glass of orange juice. Backlash ensued, and sales dropped 20%.

Within six weeks, Tropicana brought back the orange to its packaging.

HBO Max

In 2023, a post-merger Warner Bros. Discovery decided to drop HBO from the name of its streaming service. Instead, it would just be Max.

The goal was to show consumers that the service had more to offer than just HBO, the paid-TV service that helped create prestige TV in the late 1990s.

The name-change left some viewers more puzzled than “The Sopranos” infamous cut to black ending.

By July 2025, Max was once again HBO Max.

Gap

Clothing brand Gap decided it needed a new look in 2010.

Out went the brand’s bluebox logo with Gap in bold white lettering. The new logo was just a small blue square behind Gap bold, black Helvetica font.

A spokesperson for Gap said the new logo was to showcase how the brand’s shifting vibe from “classic, American design” to “modern, sexy,” VanityFair reported.

It lasted less than a week.

TGI Fridays

In 2020, UK-based TGI Fridays locations (short for Thank God It’s Friday) dropped the iconic TGI from its name.

The design firm founder who worked on the name change for the US-founded restaurant chain said it was intended to be “shorter, sharper and more contemporary.”

By 2023, the full name was back.

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