A local French official was left heartbroken after the Guinness World Records office spurned his years-long quest to build the world’s tallest Eiffel Tower replica out of matchsticks—all because he used the wrong brand. “It’s disappointing, frustrating, incomprehensible and not very fair play,” he said, according to The Daily Mail. In all, Richard Plaud, a local official with the Charent-Maritime departement council in southwest France, spent more than eight years and used more than 700,000 matches building the 23-foot tall model—an increase over the current 21.4-foot record holder. Representatives for Guinness said their ruling was based on the fact that the matches Plaud used are not commercially available—though they never actually visited the model in person.
