With changing shopping habits and growing competition wreaking havoc on once-untouchable companies, America has lost many beloved – and a few not so beloved – big-name brands over the years. 

From iconic airlines to department stores that once graced malls across the country, read on to discover the once-major US companies that came to a sad end. All dollar amounts in US dollars.

McDonald's may have ended up on top, but at one time the world's most popular fast-food chain had a serious competitor that could have changed everything: Burger Chef.

The chain was founded in 1954 by the General Equipment Corporation in Indianapolis. By 1972, the rapidly expanding Burger Chef was America's second-largest hamburger restaurant chain after McDonald's, and was threatening to topple the golden arches from its number-one spot.

In a different world, everyone might have enjoyed chowing down on Big Shefs and Super Shefs instead of Big Macs and Quarter Pounders.

However, McDonald's eventually cornered the market and a struggling Burger Chef was sold to Hardee's parent company Imasco in 1982. All remaining outlets were converted into Hardee's restaurants.

At its 1970s peak, Howard Johnson’s was one of America’s most popular roadside fast food chains.

With its iconic orange-roofed buildings and simple menu of chicken, clams, and hot dogs, the restaurant was a firm family favorite for years, and operated 1,000 restaurant locations across the country at its peak. 

However, HoJo’s faced tough competition from franchises like Applebee's and Chili's, and its stagnant menu failed to keep up with the times.

In 1985 it was bought out by Marriott for $65 million, with restaurants reopening as hotels and coffee shops.

However, one original Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Lake George, New York remains open, displaying a sign that fittingly reads "Last one standing." The hotel chain of the same name still exists.

The company that owned much-loved brands including Tang, Kool-Aid, and Sanka decaffeinated coffee started life in 1922, having developed from the earlier Postum Cereal Co.

General Foods continued to snap up food brands over the next few decades, right up until its acquisition of Oscar Mayer & Company's meat products and Entenmann's baked goods in the early 80s.

Despite its many successful brands, General Foods succumbed to the purchasing power of bigger companies when it was bought by Phillip Morris Companies, which merged operations with Kraft Foods in 1990. 

If you buy any of General Foods’ former products today, you’ll notice they have the Kraft logo on them. 

The number-one US airline for much of the 20th century, Pan Am revolutionized air travel.

A trailblazer of both luxurious first-class flying and the more affordable coach, the iconic airline, which was founded in 1927, pioneered the jumbo jet and computerized reservation systems. At one time, it was the second most recognized brand in the world.

Sadly, the glory days weren't to last. Falling revenues, increased competition, and a hike in aircraft servicing costs hit the airline hard during the 1970s and 1980s, and a downturn in sales following the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 spelled the end for the business.

Rising fuel prices in the wake of the Gulf War were the final straw. Without a savior to bail it out, Pan Am filed for bankruptcy in January 1991 before shutting down for good that December.

Half a century ago, Eastern Air Lines was one of the "Big Four" American airlines, running a profitable business and dominating the domestic travel industry.

The company, which started life as a mail carrier for the US postal service back in 1926, grew throughout the first half of the 20th century, and capitalized on the rising popularity of air travel.

Revenues began to fall in the 60s, when competition from other airlines started to draw customers away from Eastern.

This was worsened by the company’s decision to buy new Boeing 757 jets, which increased debt and, coupled with worker strikes and further competition, sowed the seeds of the company’s bankruptcy in 1989. Three years later, Eastern Air Lines ceased operations completely. 

Here’s one you'll remember if you were growing up in the 1970s and 80s. Merry-Go-Round was known for its on-trend clothes, which largely appealed to young people in their late teens and early twenties.

With 536 stores across the US, the company enjoyed short-lived success for just over two decades before its downfall in the 90s.

With its prices failing to stay competitive and its market of once-young customers all grown up, Merry-Go-Round struggled to stay afloat.

In 1994, it filed for bankruptcy but was unable to find a buyer. Two years later, Merry-Go-Round stores were forced to close, marking the end of the brand’s short yet influential spell in the fashion industry. 

The original five-and-dime-store, the first Woolworth's was opened by Frank Winfield Woolworth in 1879 in Utica, New York.

After a slow start, the company expanded across the country, bringing its clever concept to the rest of America. The chain began diversifying in the 1930s, ditching the five-and-dime selling point and, by the 1960s, the typical Woolworth's was essentially a full-scale department store. 

Increased competition from retailers such as Walmart and Target led to a drop in profits in the 1980s and 1990s, but Woolworth's sporting goods division stayed buoyant.

As a result, the chain closed in 1997 and the company instead moved its entire focus to sporting goods, eventually changing its name to Foot Locker. 

In business terms, Pets.com’s lifespan of just two years was over in the blink of an eye – but the pivotal moment at which it entered the scene is still well-remembered.

Emerging in 1998 at the dawn of the dotcom bubble, the site sold (you guessed it) pet products and accessories, and even had a memorable TV ad featuring a sock puppet dog.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Despite attracting investment from the likes of Amazon, the year 2000 saw Pets.com's stock fall from $14 per share to just $0.22 per share, signaling the end of the road.

In a last-ditch attempt to keep the company alive, the brand even started selling its sock puppets – but it’s clear it was barking up the wrong tree, as the business ceased operations in 2000.

The fall of Enron might just be one of the biggest Wall Street scandals in American history.

An energy firm born in 1985 from the merger of InterNorth and Houston Natural Gas, Enron took advantage of deregulated energy markets and rising internet stocks to become a prominent market player, even being named "America’s Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years by Fortune.

But it turned out Enron had cooked the books. The company manipulated "market-to-market" accounting methods to log estimated profits instead of real ones, which meant it could massively overstate how much money it was bringing in. 

After hiding its debts for several years, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the end of 2001. In 2006, the company's CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, received a 24-year prison sentence for fraud; however, he was released in 2019 after serving 12 years. 

An emblematic airline with an illustrious history, Trans World Airlines (TWA) dates back to 1930. The company owed its expansion to a former owner, the eccentric tycoon, film producer, and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes (pictured), who purchased the airline in 1939 and oversaw its surging growth during the 1940s and 1950s. 

TWA acquired new management in the 1960s. Business was thriving and the passengers kept on coming until the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, which threw open the domestic market to a slew of competitors... 

Losing out to rival airlines, TWA was acquired in 1988 by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who took the company private and left it drowning in debt. 

The ailing airline underwent a series of bankruptcies during the 1990s and early 2000s, and was bought by American Airlines in 2001, which "absorbed" the brand the following year. 

Living up to its name, this venerable motorcar marque was founded way back in 1897 by Ransom E Olds in Lansing, Michigan.

Oldsmobile manufactured the world's first mass-produced car, the Curved Dash, which debuted in 1901, and the company was one of America's most recognizable brands throughout much of the 20th century. 

More than 35 million Oldsmobile vehicles were produced, most of them by General Motors. Sales reached their peak in the 1970s and 80s, and the Oldsmobile Cutlass was America's best-selling car for some of that time.

But the brand's days at the top were numbered. By the 90s, flashier imports had stolen its thunder and sales had slumped.

Despite efforts to reposition Oldsmobile as a high-end "Made in America" brand, General Motors threw in the towel and consigned Oldsmobile to history in 2004.

Music fans might remember this popular record store chain, which had around 200 stores across 15 countries at its peak.

Tower Records was launched in 1960, when the first store was opened in Sacramento, California. It quickly grew its network across the US, as well as in countries such as Japan (where it still exists independently), Canada, and the UK.

But like many former retail giants, Tower Records struggled with dwindling sales. This was further amplified by the introduction of music downloads and streaming software, which made records and CDs fall out of favor.

In 2006, Tower declared bankruptcy and was bought by the Great American Group for $134.3 million, with plans to sell most of its stock.

Electronics company Circuit City was founded in 1949 by Samuel Wurtzel, who's credited with creating the world's first electronics superstores.

By the 70s, outlets were springing up across the nation and the chain's format was being copied far and wide. Circuit City began to lose its edge in the 90s, with many of its stores languishing in undesirable locations, while competitors like Best Buy and Walmart stole away customers. 

By the mid-2000s, intensifying competition from online retailers spelled the end of the road for Circuit City. In 2008, the company revealed plans to shut down 155 stores and lay off 17% of its workforce in a bid to become profitable.

Ultimately, however, it was unable to stave off Chapter 7 bankruptcy or find a buyer. It bowed out the following year, closing all its US stores and ceasing operations for good. 

Another tech firm that failed to keep up with the times, Iomega brought America the Zip drive, a storage device that promised superior capacity to that of its predecessor, the floppy disk. 

Starting out in 1980, Iomega was a big name in tech for more than two decades before going out of business. 

In the early 2000s, the popularity of CDs and DVDs started to spell bad news for the humble ZIP drive. 

While Iomega tried to stay ahead of the game by dabbling in MP3 software and external hard drives, these products didn’t prove particularly fruitful. In 2008, Iomega was purchased by EMC for $213 million. 

If you're of a certain age, you undoubtedly have fond memories of renting movies or video games – not to mention stocking up on popcorn and candy – from your neighborhood Blockbuster store. 

The very first Blockbuster opened in 1985 in Dallas, and the chain expanded fast. By the 1990s, Blockbuster had established itself as America's most popular video rental chain. 

Yet, by the late-2000s, Blockbuster was on its last legs. Tough competition from the likes of Netflix's mail-order service, video on demand platforms, and automated kiosks pretty much killed the business, and Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010.

The flagging firm was bought by Dish Network, which eventually closed most of the stores, apart from one in Bend, Oregon (pictured).

A common sight in downtown shopping areas back in the day, Borders bookstores disappeared completely from the scene in 2011.

The chain was founded by brothers Louis and Tom Borders in Michigan in 1971, and was sold twenty years later to Kmart, which oversaw its massive expansion in the 1990s.

At its peak, there were hundreds of stores but Borders found itself struggling by the 2000s. It bought into music just as CD sales were floundering and failed to develop a decent online store, while also fatally underestimating the growth potential of eBooks and MP3s.

Fewer customers were shopping in the increasingly quiet stores and the chain had become too large to sustain itself.

Borders turned a profit for the last time in 2006 and filed for bankruptcy in February 2011, with its stores closing later that year. Although Barnes & Noble bought some remnants of the chain, the bookseller opted to retire rather than resurrect the brand, and Borders was no more.

If you owned a computer in the 1990s, chances are it was a Compaq – after all, the company was the decade's largest supplier of PCs.

Launched in 1982 by three former Texas Instruments employees, Compaq was at the forefront of PC technology for years.

The firm gained the first license to re-engineer the IBM PC, which was the key to its success. But the rise of Dell, which was producing better quality computers at more competitive prices, was seriously eating into Compaq's profits by the late 1990s.

An ill-advised merger with DEC and the dotcom bubble bursting were the final nails in the coffin, and Compaq was snapped up in 2002 by HP for $25 billion.

A shadow of its former self, the Compaq brand was restricted to a small number of budget models until it was quietly discontinued in 2013.

The past decade hasn’t been kind to bricks-and-mortar stores. With a 125-year legacy behind it, The Bon-Ton was an iconic US department store that had weathered numerous storms over the years – but it couldn't manage to survive today’s tough marketplace.

The company’s demise was ultimately caused by rivalry from e-commerce giants such as Amazon.

After filing for bankruptcy in early 2018, the business liquidated its assets that April, closing its remaining 256 stores across the country. 

EF Hutton, the stock brokerage firm named after its founder Edward Francis Hutton (pictured), was launched in 1904 and, for several decades, was a popular and well-regarded financial services company.

It was best known for its commercials, which used the slogan "When EF Hutton talks, people listen." But in the 80s, the firm unraveled spectacularly. So where did it all go wrong?

In 1980, EF Hutton got into trouble for writing checks for more money than was available in the branch, using a system called "chaining." Five years later, a federal probe found that the company had committed more than 2,000 acts of fraud, and two years after that it was revealed the business had also laundered money for a criminal family.

Following the 1987 market crash, EF Hutton merged with Shearson Lehman/American Express to save itself from total collapse. However, the firm was revived in 2007 and went public in 2013, taking on the name of EF Hutton America Inc.

All was going well until April 2019 when the CEO and CFO resigned, and the business once again came to a halt.

The toy store that no-one could bear to say goodbye to, Toys R Us had a legacy spanning almost seven decades by the time it filed for bankruptcy in the US in September 2017.

With the first store opening in Washington DC in 1948, Toys R Us profited from the baby boom and economic prosperity that followed the war years. It quickly became one of the most iconic toy store brands in the world. 

At first, e-commerce helped the business, with Toys R Us teaming up with Amazon in 2000 as its exclusive toy retailer for a 10-year period. Yet when Amazon allowed other toy companies to sell through its site before the contract was up, Toys R Us ended the partnership. The toy giant successfully sued Amazon but didn't fully recover.

A toxic combination of greedy investors and mismanaged finances meant the chain was forced to go bankrupt in September 2017. A company called Tru Kids Inc. bought the retailer in 2018 and opened two new stores in New Jersey and Texas.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, those stores have since been shuttered – but the brand is making a minor comeback. In 2021 it announced it would be opening "shop-in-shop" outlets in 400 Macy's locations throughout the US, with sites ranging in size from 1,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet.

Discount department store chain Stein Mart first launched way back in 1908, and was the venture of Russian-Jewish immigrant Sam Stein.

The business was originally called Stein's, but in the 1960s Sam's son Jake decided to add "Mart" to the name after being inspired by the success of Walmart.

For over 100 years, the department stores were a fixture in states including Mississippi, Texas, California, Florida, and Tennessee.

By 2013, the company boasted 260 stores across 29 states – but changing shopping habits and the COVID-19 pandemic would soon put a swift stop to the chain's dominance.

After filing for bankruptcy on August 12, 2020, citing "significant financial distress," Stein Mart permanently closed its brick-and-mortar stores.

It sold all its intellectual property for $6 million to Retail Ecommerce Venture, a company that has purchased other struggling brands including Pier 1 and Dressbarn. Stein Mart relaunched in early 2021 for online sales only. 

Founded in 1826, Lord & Taylor was America's oldest department store brand.

By the start of the 19th century, there were branches across New York City, including its flagship store on Fifth Avenue. It quickly became one of the go-to places for America's elite, famous for its whimsical window displays and exclusive stock.

The brand continued to expand over the next century, opening locations in Texas and Illinois. But, rocked by a series of leadership changes and company controversies, Lord & Taylor began to find itself on shaky ground. And then COVID-19 hit...

In 2019, Lord & Taylor closed 10 stores, including its flagship on Fifth Avenue in New York. That same year, clothing rental company Le Tote bought the brand for $100 million, hoping to turn it around. However, Le Tote also filed for bankruptcy in the summer of 2020 when both companies ran out of cash, largely due to the pandemic.

Saadia Group purchased Lord & Taylor and relaunched the brand as an online-only business in April 2021. By that August, it had been revealed that a number of former Lord & Taylor stores would be repurposed by the co-working space SaksWorks, a partnership between Saks Fifth Avenue and WeWork. Meanwhile, three stores in Massachusetts were earmarked to be converted into life science facilities. 

Houston-based Stage Stores had long operated its department stores in small towns across rural America. Found in 42 states, the company had grand plans to convert all of its brands, which included Goody's and Bealls, to the Gordmans discount store label by the end of 2020. 

However, the COVID-19 pandemic put an end to that, as well as to the company's 700+ stores...

Stage Stores declared bankruptcy on May 11, 2020. Bealls Inc, a separate company that only had permission to use the name 'Bealls' in three states, purchased Stage Stores' intellectual property in October that year for just $7 million, while the chain and its remaining subsidiaries were bought out by New York e-commerce company Brand X last year. Although the most recent reports claim Brand X had plans to relaunch some of Stage Stores' brands online, the retailer itself is now considered defunct.

It's sad news for small-town America. As Retail Strategies president Lacy Beasley put it: "In rural communities across the country, Stage Stores and Gordmans are the top department store options. This will leave a large void in the market if the real estate is not backfilled with a strong soft goods replacement."

After 42 years in business, Family Video announced in January 2021 that it was closing all of its stores for good.

The chain had started out as a video rental store, before adapting to DVD and Blu-ray, and had managed to survive the industry's move to streaming while rivals including Blockbuster and Hollywood Video hadn't.

And while Family Video had admittedly shrunk a little since 2018, it still went into 2020 with 500 stores located mainly across the Midwest. But then came COVID-19...

As stay-at-home orders dramatically reduced footfall and movie releases were at an all-time low, Family Video started to close stores.

By the end of 2020 it had just 250 locations, with the brand announcing the following month that it was closing all its remaining stores.

Pictured is a member of staff clearing the shelves at Family Video's last location in West Des Moines, central Iowa. 

This California-based business was founded in 1985 by the three Fry brothers, who had the goal of providing "a one-stop-shopping environment for the Hi-Tech Professional."

Fry's Electronics grew to 30 stores across nine states and shocked customers in February 2021 when it announced that the business was shutting its doors for good.

Fry's didn't adapt and improve its online shopping operations as fast as its rivals, meaning that the impact of COVID-19 was severely felt by business.

Many of its stores were themed, including its Burbank, California location (pictured), where a UFO appeared to be crashing through the store. It was another sad loss in a turbulent time... 

On April 20, 2021, strip mall fixture Old Country Buffet brand filed for its fourth bankruptcy.

Stay-at-home orders and bans on buffet-style dining during the pandemic didn't bode well for many of the other restaurant chains operated by its parent company Fresh Acquisitions, which also included HomeTown Buffet, Furr’s Buffets, and Ryan’s Buffet.

Fresh Acquisitions reported it had debts of $13.5 million and promptly closed all the locations for its various buffet brands, with just six of its Tahoe Steakhouse restaurants remaining open.

In August 2021, Fresh Acquisitions was itself acquired by BBQ Holdings. That October, CEO Jeff Crivello announced the company had no plans to revive the struggling Old Country Buffet brand, describing it as "just IP [intellectual property] that came alongside the transaction."

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