• Los Angeles Times, Monday, August 23, 2010 9:32 AM

Hong Kong native Jackie Chan seems to have never met a product he wouldn't endorse, David Pierson reports from Beijing with help from Nicole Liu and Tommy Yang. On TV ads and billboards, he hawks everything from electric bikes to anti-virus software to frozen dumplings. But his wanton ways sometimes land him in the soup.

After it was reported that an anti-hair-loss shampoo he promoted allegedly contained carcinogens, social networks and media in China lit up with chatter about the "Jackie Chan curse." There was an auto repair school that became enmeshed in a diploma scandal. A maker of video compact discs saw its manager jailed for fraud and went under. The Subor Learning Machine for children flopped. Fenhuang cola fizzled. And an air-conditioner brand that he promoted purportedly had a unit explode.

"He has become the coolest spokesperson in history," says an editorial writer at Nanjing's Oriental Guardian newspaper. "A man who can destroy anything." The 56-year-old Chan is believed to have about two dozen endorsement contracts at present. "When you have someone with so many brands, the probability of things going wrong is markedly higher," points out Saurabh Sharma, a strategic planning director for Ogilvy & Mather Beijing.

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