actually, jif and skippy try flavored PB every so often … one of the better attempts was an apple cinnamon one
i remember when Reese’s PB in a jar first came out …every kid who tried it was pissed there wasn’t chocolate in it …
Are you talking about Tang? Why would you not name it? And while it might coincidentally look like the metal piece “tang” I don’t think it was “named after” it. It’s from “tangy,” referring to a sour fruity flavor.
Only in the U.S. They sell many other flavors in other countries. I really want to try the mango sometime.
The large Japanese conglomerates have been making widely diverse products from before WWII.
Except the PTB thought ‘old’ Coke was broken.
In blind taste tests people preferred the taste of the new Coke formula (Basically Diet Coke with HFCS replacing the artificial sweeteners) over the traditional formula and the hated rival.
What they then discovered was that advertising works; generations of building brand loyalty overcame what people really liked.
John Deere has made toy tractors for a heck of a long time.
Dennis
… and the one and only flavor that is heads & shoulders better than the original (and vastly superior to all those echemical-tasting flavours) is RYE Triscuits. And they’re annoyingly hard to find.
If you are unfamiliar with Negativland’s brilliant Dispepsi recording, an entire album searing of marketing and consumerism all based on soda/Pepsi/Coke commercials and the idiocy surrounding them, then look it up. Possibly their finest work.
I’ve seen strawberry and banana liquid yoghurt (which ok, if they say it’s yoghurt I’ll believe it) all over Western Europe, most recently this morning in Normandy.
I collect breakfast cereals, and the number of bizarre variations is incredible.
Most recently for National Cereal Day (March 7), Honey Bunches of Oats came out with two special edition limited flavors: Maple Bacon Donut and Chicken & Waffles. Reviewers were generally in agreement that meat and cereal don’t mix.
There’s also the other way around, where a non-cereal product is converted into cereal. The Peeps cereal is very bland, but the new Hostess Donettes cereal is delicious, and does taste like eating little powdered donuts.
This. The general public has no use for a John Deere farming equipment, but many can and do buy John Deere riding mowers. Hey, if they make multi $100k farm equipment, they must make quality stuff! After all: “Nothing runs like a Deere”.
In the 80’s Beatrice Foods Co., who was the parent company for multiple name brands ran commercials telling customers to look for the company’s name on their product’s labels as a way of associating themselves as a parent company of quality brands.
I didn’t know they still made rye Triscuits, but they were the only ones as good as the original. The other flavours sound like they would be delicious, but somehow aren’t.
Be afraid. Be very afraid: https://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/product/pancakes-syrup-chicks/
- There’s a National Cereal Day?
- I recently discovered banana-flavoured Shreddies. I was cautiously optimistic, but they turned out to be revolting. They had that sharp overrripe banana oil flavour. Ugh. I wonder whether they were too old?
I nominate Sensodyne toothpaste and Mucinex cold remedies. The Sensodyne brand grew around toothpaste that contained potassium nitrate to desensitize sensitive teeth. The Mucinex brand grew around OTC guaifenesin, an expectorant that loosens phlegm. Now they’re putting these brands on all kinds of products for treating various cold symptoms or all kinds of toothpaste. I’m supposed to use guaifenesin for my bronchitis and potassium nitrate for my painful teeth, but when I shop for them there’ll be 20 branded versions of each, many of which contain things I want to avoid and many of which do not contain the active I needed in the first place. It’s a great deal of effort to read through all the fine print to find the damn product I’m trying to get. We don’t need dozens of different versions of pseudoephedrine or hydrogen peroxide toothpaste anyway. This stupidity is driving the simple active ingredient preparations out of the marketplace. And my dentist didn’t even know that “Sensodyne” toothpastes don’t usually have the potassium nitrate anymore; she’s still telling sensitive tooth patients to buy them.
They’re ubiquitous in the UK, multiple brands.
The most ridiculous company extension I’ve personally seen was somewhere I worked. I was only there a few months, but the place was a public aquarium, and it had recently been bought by a company that, until then, has specialised in furniture manufacture, then had branched out into jewellery, before taking the logical next step of buying an aquarium (nearly 100 miles from anything else they owned as well, it wasn’t like it was next door).
They then moved a manager over from one of the furniture factories, and started insisting all new enclosures (there were some small mammals as well) and tanks were to be bought from the people who made jewellery display cases for them. This… wasn’t a great success. The [del]jewellery displays[/del] enclosures had tiny doors, presumably for security, but they were next to impossible to clean out, got bad condensation and the opening was front centre, in the most distracting place.
The manager they brought in was even worse; obviously her way of fixing problems in the furniture factory was to find anyone who wasn’t doing anything and yell at and threaten them. This… may have worked there (though I bet they hated her too), but when someone’s sole job is to give public talks and there are no members of the public in the centre, it doesn’t.
She yelled at staff for ‘Not talking to visitors’ in front of the visitors who had just told said staff member that thanks, but they’re happy looking, or in extreme cases, spoke no English. When faced with the only visitors being German, she once demanded I ‘follow them round and point at things’. I was also yelled at for not giving a talk to a totally empty room, because the talk was on the timetable, so it had to happen; me being present in case anyone showed was not acceptable, I had to talk dammit, and she’d hide behind doors to check everyone did. Especially hilarious when a visitor did walk in halfway through…
Not Just a Bus Line Anymore! Now, Greyhound is Meat!
Head & Shoulders Snack Crackers
Now THAT would be a ridiculous brand extension.
You laugh. But Greyhound in Canada once owned an airline. Then Greyhound got bought by Laidlaw, the airline was cancelled, and Greyhound in Canada has been going to pieces ever since.