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Notes -
I am not saying they are less likely to be considered valuable. I am stating that they are and were always not valuable. Not as a matter of perception but as a matter of fact. That's why I likened it to snake oil. The snake oil might have been believed to be good when the prospective buyer didn't know it was snake oil but thought instead that it was a rare elixir that cured all illness. But that belief never made the snake oil a good investment. It was always snake oil and the buyer was always a fool for believing it was an elixir that could cure all illness.
Another way to say this, just because a company believed that something was valuable doesn't mean that it was. Or that the company was reasonable for having believed it was valuable in the first place. It was always a money pit designed by grifters.
But they can be. Like the wardrobe of a bored housewife of a rich husband. Sure, it might be very good for the image of the husband and wife for the wife to be well dressed at social gatherings. That fact does not preclude us from recognizing that you don't need a gigantic wardrobe filled with dresses that will never be worn to present yourself properly 4 times a year at company conventions. On top of that, buying into a bad fashion trend might hurt your company as well. Like the case with the anti-men Gillette razor commercials.
Again, just because a company believed something or did something doesn't mean it was good or smart or reasonable or anything else. Decisions are made by people. You can't shield those decisions behind the fact they were made by a company. You have to look at them as they were taken. Which is why, sometimes, companies go bankrupt and CEO's get fired. Regardless of how good they believed their decisions were at the time.
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