When logo changes go wrong Panasonic In an attempt to give a cute and approachable look to their new home computer model for the Japanese market, the marketers at Panasonic secured the rights to use Woody Woodpecker as a brand mascot. Eager to make the most of Mr Woodpecker's endorsement, it named the new PC "The Woody." They also highlighted the product's touch screen capabilities with the motto "Touch Woody" - which was hastily revised to "Woody Touch Screen" before the official launch. In 2000, BP unveiled a new greener logo, replacing the shield with a green, white and yellow flower-shaped one. The move cost £4.5m in brand research, with tens of millions more dollars to be spent supporting the change. Environmentalists accused the firm of spending more on the logo than on renewable energy. The logo was further critiscised after the DeepWater Horizon crisis in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, as enironmentalists urged people to rebrand the eco-friendly logo , which led to images of the logo with oil be poured over it appearing. Tropicana Fruit juice firm Tropicana dropped its famous orange and straw illustration from its cartons in the US, in favour of a glass of orange juice, a move that sparked countless complaints and criticism from customers. The change caused their sales to drop 20pc in one month. The brand's owner, PepsiCo, relented and went back to the orange. "The 2009 redesign was meant to contemporise our graphics and, as a result of that, we learned just how passionate consumers are about our brand," says Tropicana's Gina Judge, in an upbeat assessment of the miscalculation. A group of very loyal Tropicana fans told us they loved our straw in orange imagery, so we brought that icon back to the packaging. British Airways British Airways was forced to restore the Union flag to its entire fleet of 290 aircraft, four years after embarking on a £60m experiment with "world images" that were widely disliked by passengers and crew - most famously Margaret Thatcher, who covered the new tailfin on a model 747 with a handkerchief and declared "We fly the British flat, not these awful things." The unpopularity of the designs, derided by flight crews as "Air Zulu," forced BA to suspend the repainting process in 1999 after more than half the fleet had been given the new liveries. The 28 "world images" designs were also be removed from all boarding passes, ticket wallets, baggage tags and business cards. Microsoft It took 25 years for Microsoft to shift from its 1987 logo - its name in a bold, italisised font with a notch in the "o," but the result met with a distinctly mixed response. The new design featured much narrower, notch-free, font next to a simplified version of the four coloured blocks that signify the Windows operating system. At the time Armin Vit, a Texas-based designer and brand blogger, called it "fine." There's nothing offensive aout it; there's nothing exciting about it. Though he did cheer the change from the 1980s "world domination" look.. Others expressed more bitter disappointment. "Awfully bland" was how branding specialist Terry Heckler described it. "This took 25 years?" asked Chris Matyszczyk on tech blog CNET. You're always supposed to notice when your lover has had her hair done. And yet, one had the feeling that the company had been to the hairdresser, and then merely asked for a trim. eBay Last October, eBay unveiled a much toned-down update to the zany logo that had branded its website since it was founded in 1995. Patrick Himes, writing on branding and social media website Business 2 Community, called the change a "mistake," lamenting eBay's new-found conformity. He also criticised its similarity to the Google logo. Let's be honest, Google has already cornered the market on multi-colored letters and the straight-and-organized look. Even though eBay came before Google, no one can deny that the Google brand and logo have far surpassed the reach of eBay's. You don't hear anyone saying, "you should eBay that!"