I didn't read about it on the internet, I was just recalling the story from years ago. I first heard about it at a business meeting where the ideas behind it were discussed, and even if the facts I recalled aren't totally accurate, the gist of it is still the same: WalMart got Chinese knockoffs made of the product that looked identical short of the logo, and then marketed them as if they were the brand name, and used their selling power to bury the original company. They had no qualms about getting some low tier Chinese manufacturer to make a nearly identical version of the product line and I remember someone telling me that the brand name they were putting on it was something similar, but I don't recall the name.
Rubbermaid was bought out after Walmart destroyed them, for a fraction of the original value of the company, although they play it off as "they merged". Within 3 years, 850 employees at the original plant in the U.S. were jobless and the whole works is manufactured in China now with distribution by the holding company. From what I heard, which may only be speculation, the knockoff company Walmart had commissioned to make the knockoffs is now manufacturing for the new company. And there is no doubt in my mind that Walmart financed the deal for the Newell company to buy out Rubbermaid. They might not have bought them out outright, but they sure as hell had a major hand in it.
Honestly, the reason I even remember the story at all is because after this became news, my own company found one of these Chinese companies who will take any product you give them and produce it for far cheaper and with the same or better quality than the U.S. manufacturer did it. They don't even care about casting the products directly from the original. We sent them a product that is manufactured in the U.S. and within a few months we had samples we could choose from. One was an identical knockoff, and the others had various modifications from basic cosmetic changes to some improvements in the internals. We passed around the identical knockoff, and aside from the branding, it was hard to tell which was real and which was the fake. If we had chosen to buy the knockoffs, we only had to commit to so many and we could have told anyone interested that we found another manufacturer who was selling it for cheaper, just as Walmart did.
Is it illegal to do that? I imagine it is, but how do you prove that Walmart sent the stuff to specifically have it cloned when thousands of brands are already cloned in China and available to buy in the U.S. Why do you think the owners of the rights to all these arcade games aren't raking it in from lawsuits for all the 60in1 boards? It is because suing a Chinese company for copyright is difficult and expensive and in the end you won't see a dime and the moment you DO win and get one company to stop making and selling them, two more will pop up and start selling them.
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