Yeah, my Mom had that, and of course I would sneak a few occasionally.
I voted “never heard of it” on the same basis (i.e., only hearing of it after it was already gone).
I wonder why they spelled it that way.
Well, they couldn’t trademark a standard word. So they needed a made-up word for their product name.
And for whatever reason, back in 1940 somebody got the bright idea to name a weight loss aid product as “Ayds”. I bet they had an early slogan something like “Ayds; it’ll aid you in losing weight” or “Need some aid in losing weight? Try Ayds!”
1940s marketing was very earnest and rather discreet by our standards. Compare to the more modern product e.g. Slimfast. It’s kinda obvious what that stuff’s supposed to do for you.
My mother and grandmother had them. I don’t remember trying to eat any, but I loved their Slender Bars.
I remember Ayds*, but my parents weren’t a big fan of ingesting chemicals (cigarettes and alcohol, sure…) so we never had any around the house.
Though I do remember eating some off-brand M&Ms at Jonny’s house… that turned out to be diet pills. Doctor said “He’ll be okay, but he’ll have a sleepless night.”
I don’t know why my dad got the short straw and (tried to) sleep in my room. But I have vivid memories of him saying “Just lie there quietly and try to sleep…” and six-year-old me blathering on about dinosaurs and outer space at 2 am.
.
*By the way, I do remember making fun of them during the Aids epidemic: “Hey, you look slim!” “Thanks, I just got Ayds, and that did the trick!”
I absolutely rmember Ayds and their ads. But I never saw any “in the wild.” My parents didn’t buy it, and neither did any of my friend’s parents.
I remember listening to a network top of the hour news program on radio in the early days of the AIDS outbreak, running a story about disease spread. Then there was a commercial break for, you guessed it. “Lose weight with Ayds!!!”
Yeah, I remember it. Never saw it in our house, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it in my sister’s house, as she had a constant struggle with weight.
I don’t think this is true. Apple, Target, Shell, Windows, etc. They have to be trademarked in a certain context, but single words can be trademarked.
Like, look at all of Apple’s trademarks. One of their registered trademarks is just “Apple”:
They also have trademarks for Carbon, Chicago, Cocoa, Geneva, etc., when used in specific situations. I don’t see any reason why “Aids” couldn’t be trademarked as some of weight-loss candy.
I just think it looked more stylzed and memorable, nothing more than that, like Lyft or Krispy Kreme or whatnot.
Yes, I’m remembering probably 1976-1977, my mother who was (and is) a perpetual consumer of dieting products had them around the house. I feel like this phase only lasted a few months for her. I sampled them and found they tasted too medicinal for my tastes, something in the family of prunes, cough syrup, or licorice.
This was one of an endless conga line of supplements, books, equipment, fads, etc that she was constantly trying and talking about. I’m thankful she’s finally on a GLP-1. Thankful because there’s not much to discuss, she just takes it and crows about how much weight she lost, and of course thankful that she’s finally making real headway in her lifelong weight control struggle. She legitimately needed to lose weight, but the psychological burden of being fat always weighed very heavily on her.
This is how I knew about them, but I was reading the full-page ads in doctor and dentist offices. They read like little soap operas.
They were advertised in the same magazines that had ads for “bust developers”, iirc.