No, really; over the years she has come to like products like Saran Disposable Cutting Sheets (gone), Diet Coke with Lemon (outta here), Bounty Paper Towels with Dawn (kaput), and Ragu Italian Cooking Sauce (รจ morto).
One of the most recent products she likes that is now fading away is this:
Centrum VitaMints were introduced with great fanfare four years ago; advertising blitz, free samples on request, coupons out the bazooty. They started with a Cool Mint flavor, then added Wintergreen and Raspberry. They had all the vitamins and minerals of a typical multivitamin, plus a refreshing mint flavor, perfect for those who take their vitamins after dinner. Wintergreen was her preferred, so I bought those. Then they became hard to find, and I could only find the Cool Mint, so I started buying her Wintergreen from Amazon. And then Amazon on its "Buy It Again" feature said the Wintergreen was discontinued, and I found out that all the VitaMints have been discontinued. Alas!
You may find it fitting or weird that the Vitamin Fred blog is krexing about vitamins, or that my family even goes in for vitamins at all, as many health professionals say that a multivitamin is unnecessary for anyone with a healthy diet. Well, health of our diet aside, I'm not even sure how we got on the habit, but my family was always a One-A-Day crowd, the thought being that it was worth the money to avoid any deficiencies in nutrients. But this entry is not about that so much as it is the mourning over discontinued products.
I'm certain that every product, however lousy, has its fans who are crushed when it disappears, just as every TV show or movie has its defenders. And I'm sure everyone in America has at some point seen a personal favorite vanish. I have friends who thought Zima got a screwed, who lament the end of Whitney's yogurt, who even still miss Koogle almost fifty years down the road. Zima was brought back in limited release in 2017 and 2018, but seems to have returned to the beer graveyard for good. Koogle lovers will have no such luck -- it was a Kraft product, and Kraft has a corporate policy against bringing back brands from the dead. Kellogg's, which made Whitney's, also tends to not bring things back -- Mr. Breakfast's Cereal Project site lists many that will never see the light of day again. Meanwhile, ice cream hippie weirdos Ben & Jerry's don't hide its flops -- they even have a Flavor Graveyard.
We all have mourned the loss of some product that we liked a lot. What product did you love that has gone to Product Heaven? Did you write angry letters? Try to start an Internet campaign to bring it back? Join a support group? Or just say the hell with it?
I'm the eventual to hell with it type. I know that there have been many such products in my life, but I can't remember them enough to regret. They went to hell without me.
ReplyDeleteBack in college days there was a short-lived product called "Hop'n'gator", it was a mix of high-alcohol beer and Gator Ade (really) in a can. We went through a number of sixers of that stuff before it disappeared from the market a couple of years later. Not that I miss it, and today there are countless variations on flavored beers and flavored malt beverages.
ReplyDeleteMore recently I came across Cheeto's Crunchy White Cheddar snacks at a local 7-11 a few weeks ago, and OMG were they good. Sadly I have not seen them since, in that 7-11 or any store in the area. I'll have to try Amazon Prime although it feels a bit silly to be ordering Cheetos for delivery via the Internet. First world problem for sure.