Can a new spark plug be bad right out of the box?

I ran across a bad from the box spark plug situation 3 times in about one month. As a mechanic, that eats up the valuable commodity called time and the money associated with it.

In all 3 cases the plugs were Champions and the 3rd incident led me to never use a Champion plug in a car again. In two of the cases the plugs were misfiring badly from the get-go and in the 3rd example the engine would have to run about 40 or 50 miles before the plugs would start misfiring.

In one other incident many years ago I ran across a car on which one of the 8 AC spark plugs had apparently died within a few miles but there was a bit of a story behind the car so I don’t know if the plug was the cause or a symptom. The prior 2 week car history was very convoluted.

Other than those, never a problem with any brands.