Monday, July 09, 2007

Yearning for lost cookies

Mustang Bobby's Question of the Day involves shopping habits and brand loyalty. This brings up lots of interesting possible digressions. Here's mine.

Every year the food industry launches thousands of new products. In the fight for shelf space most don't make it. Other products are retired by their producers after a while due to styles changing or other business reasons Is there a particular failed product or lost brand that you especially miss?

It seems that whenever someone releases a fruit pastry product, blueberry is the first test flavor to be withdrawn. Apple and raspberry never go away. But I love blueberry. The cruelest of these was Blueberry Newtons. Nabisco released and withdrew them twice, once when they initially tried alternate flavors to fig and once when they launched "low fat" Newtons. They're just playing with my feelings.

In the early eighties I read a story about Harlan Ellison. The company that manufactured his favorite candy went out of business, so Ellison went to the local distributor and bought up all of their remaining stock. He had refrigerators full of the stuff, which he carefully rationed out to last years.

Has there been any lost food in your life that you wish you could have done that for? Green cakes left in rain don't count.

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