Michael Jordan Once Turned Down A Big Endorsement Deal Because He Didn T Like The Product S Name

Van Camp’s Beanee Weenee, to be precise, is a mixture of baked beans and hot dog chunks, sold in a can and still around today. Back in the late 80s, they offered Jordan nearly one million dollars a year to hitch the Beanee Weenee wagon to his own rising star, and in a 1992 Playboy interview recently rediscovered by Business Insider he explained why he just couldn’t do it, even though it was big money for him at the time: “Two or three years ago Quaker Oats came to me to endorse Van Camp’s pork and beans — Beanee Weenees, I think it was called…You ever heard of Beanee Weenees pork and beans? It was close to a million bucks a year. I’m saying, Beanee Weenees? How can I stand in front of a camera and say I’ll eat Beanee Weenees?” Now, Jordan is a billionaire too rich to even know Beanee Weenee exists, but back when the offer was made he had only made between $4 million and $5 million over the course of his career in the NBA. So saying no to a multiyear contract to roughly double what he was pulling in per year likely wasn’t an easy decision – then again, with a name like Beanee Weenee, maybe it was.