In computing, companies go belly up and their brand gets bought by someone else all the time.
Hayes, the modem maker, ended up being a brand owned by Zoom.
The name “Atari” has been passed around a bunch of times.
And on and on.
I’m holding out, waiting for a Sinclair branded smartphone to appear.
I am glad you mentioned Sinclair- Clive Sinclair made some of the neatest electronic stuff ever…though what he made was never of top quality. Is he still in business?
Speaking of Hydrox - we bought some a couple of weeks ago. Saw them in the supermarket and bought them out of curiosity, to see if they were better than we remembered. I can attest they are still/again mediocre and Oreos are much better. YMMV of course, but they were GREY for pete’s sake.
Definitely.
Here in Peru we used to have a very famous a sort of chic department store called Oeschle and it closed in 1993.
In 2009 the brand was resurrected by a completely different group and it made publicity much easier because you didn’t have to sell a new name waiting for it to get stuck in our minds.
Yes. In the old days if you were going on a safari or mountain climbing, you’d go to A & F to get outfitted. Now, you shop there if you’re pledging for a frat.
This. I can’t seem to tell the difference.
Let’s start with something simpler. Are you able to tell the difference between your ass and, say, a hole in the ground?
Surely you have heard the old saying “Doesn’t know sh#t from Shinola”? It was pretty common at one time, now not so much.
I think the brand name “Ayds” is dead and buried.
Hydrox were always gray. That’s how you knew someone was trying to pass off inferior cookies as Oreos.
I remember Ayds…it was a sort of diet candy-eating them was supposed to suppress your appetite.
other unfortunate brand names include VDO (car dashboard speedometers, “Focking” (Dutch gin).
Uh…
Ya know, I’ve heard and used this saying, but it’s never occurred to me to ask what “shinola” was. Now I know. Thanks Straight Dope!
Some of us add the line, “…and his shoes show the strain.”
I’ve been watching a lot of TV at my aunt’s house, and one of the old-people things being advertised is the “Car Cane”, a kind of handle you place in the latch of a car-door opening, to help in getting out of the car. It’s a good idea, even if the implementation looks a little cheap and hokey.
The brand name? Bell + Howell! I know that name from my early childhood as a maker of slide projectors! They must have gone under and the name been bought…
They tried reviving Adam’s chewing gum twice that I know of. Is it being made now? I always liked it.
When I had a sore throat last year, I picked up some Smith Brothers cough drops at Target. They came in interesting flavors and I really liked them. When I got sick again last week, I went to Target looking for them, but no luck. It turns out that the ones I purchased were part of an attempt to revive the brand by a new company, but they went out of business in September, 2015.
I also have some 2015 Earth Shoes. The original company died years ago, but the name was purchased by a new company. They no longer have the negative heels, but they still look funky and awkward.
Topps baseball card company revived the once-dead “Bowman” brand to pretty good effect, in the card-collecting market.