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BS: Products that Never Caught On
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Subject: Products that Never Caught On From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 13 Aug 02 - 11:13 AM As long as there are couple of threads on new cola flavors, we might as well add some not-so-fondly remembered products that were introduced with fanfare,that flopped miserably.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Licorice popsicles(turned your mouth, tongue and lips black and tasted terrible.) Now that I think of it, you looked like the women who wear black lipstick after you ate one.)
For non-food products,:
Liquid solder... airplane glue with silver flakes in it... worked just like airplane glue, but you couldn't use it to solder
Anybody got any other product disasters they remember fondly. We can probably add blue Pepsi to that right now, and start getting nostalgic. :-) Jerry |
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Subject: RE: Products that Never Caught On From: Penny G. Date: 13 Aug 02 - 11:22 AM Fizzies---late 50's----instant soft drink |
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Subject: RE: Products that Never Caught On From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 13 Aug 02 - 12:16 PM I remember that stuff, Tweets... like drinking warm carbonated Kool-Aid. Jerry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Little Hawk Date: 13 Aug 02 - 02:53 PM 8-tracks didn't do terribly well, did they? Then there were Beta movies (as opposed to VHS). There was the notorious Edsel automobile, now a hot collector's item. There were some dreadful movies: "Heaven's Gate", "The Postman", "Amerika", etc... (funny, Kristofferson was in two of those). Furbys didn't do all that well either, did they, considering the hype... - LH |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: GUEST,Melani Date: 13 Aug 02 - 03:13 PM Once, on a school field trip, we dumped a bunch of Fizzies into a stream just before the teacher came along to lecture on the local flora and fauna. He never did figure it out. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Deda Date: 13 Aug 02 - 03:14 PM I doubt you could find a pet rock any more. Hard to believe you ever could! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Little Hawk Date: 13 Aug 02 - 03:18 PM I've got some, Deda. The back yard is full of them. I'll sell 'em to ya cheap! PM me at once... - LH |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Amos Date: 13 Aug 02 - 05:05 PM It just boggles my mind, sometimes, to think of the lives, the hours of mental work, that goes into conceiving of, designing, planning, prototyping, refining, manufacturing, distributing, selling, and advertising some of the absolute shlock crap that is to be found in the market place. Ceramic and plastic models of objects that never existed--molded cherubs with painted cheeks--plastic doodads which need batteries and last an average of 1.33 days---plaster painted replicas of spoons or puppies or whathaveyou---there is so much pure crap out there, and at such a cost of sweat and thought!! And these guys (if guys they are) go home at the end of the day satisfied that they have "earned" their pay. Just mind-boggling! A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Clinton Hammond Date: 13 Aug 02 - 05:17 PM Hubba Bubba was GREAT bubble gum! I'm pretty sure I saw it in the store a few days ago as well...
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 13 Aug 02 - 05:37 PM It works the other way too - for example the genius who realised that that batch of totally useless paper glue could become "post its", and totally changed every office environment into something a lot more habitable and squalid.
Maybe if they'd aimed the licorice popsicles at a goth and vampire oriented youth market they'd have done better. The thing is to recognise the drawback to a product as a potential selling point. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Genie Date: 13 Aug 02 - 05:38 PM Tweets, and Jerry, to me "Fizz" tasted like flavored Alka Seltzer! Then there were the products that didn't do so hot the first time around but became quite popular when revived and redesigned a decade or two later. The skateboard is one example. (The other one slipped my mind. Stayed up nearly all night to watch the Perseid meteors and just finished a brew, so I'm off to dreamland.) Oh, I just remembered the other one -- self-tanning lotions. The ones introduced ca. 1960 made you turn orange and smell really funny and didn't wash off evenly. As for things that never really caught on, how about 3-D movies (with the funny glasses)? Genie |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Little Hawk Date: 13 Aug 02 - 05:45 PM Speaking of which, Amos... I walked into Zellers (Canada's version of K-Mart) the other day, and saw a 1/6 scale action figure of.... GERRY GARCIA!!! I kid you not. Gerry Garcia, complete with his guitar, his faded jeans, his beard, his belly, etc. Not only that, the damn thing really looks astoundinly like old Gerry in his elder days, although I think they trimmed a little weight off him. He's got a fairly big gut, but I believe it was bigger in real life. This is bizarre. He's in there among figures of Spiderman, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jar Jar Binks, hockey players, weird monsters from cartoon shows, and so on. He's the only musician on the shelf. How could this happen? And why? The mind boggles. He looks so cool, I think I might just buy one. :-) You can, by the way, get 1/6 scale figures of the guys in Spinal Tap (David, Nigel, and Derek), but only by ordering on the Net. They also look surprisingly accurate. Derek comes with a little foil-wrapped cucumber to stick in his pants, just like in the movie. - LH |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: GUEST,Elaine Date: 13 Aug 02 - 05:55 PM I must be the young one here (as usual), but I remember Pop Rocks (candy that fizzed on contact with saliva and made popping sounds--is this what Fizzies were?) and Suga Duga (colored, flavored sugar. Yep, that's it, purple grape sugar, red strawberry sugar, etc. I used to eat the stuff strait...) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 13 Aug 02 - 06:17 PM Noone has mentioned the Sinclair C5 |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Banjer Date: 13 Aug 02 - 06:44 PM Makes my solar powered flashlight idea seem almost normal! I made up a 'gag gift' for a friend of mine who is ever alert for tropical storm warnings and wants to be always ready. It was simply a glass jar, empty of course, with a professional looking label on the outside. The label said "'Dehydrated Water' to use simply add tap water." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: GUEST,Arkie Date: 13 Aug 02 - 06:45 PM Pet rocks made a lot of money for a few people for a while which was the purpose for the whole thing. Their popularity just gave way to the next craze. Guess it depends upon what one means by not catching on. On the other hand, "New Coke". Millions of dollars in promotion. Absolute proclamations by the company that New Coke was here to stay. I can't speak for the rest of the country, but Pepsi sales in the concession stand I operated mushroomed. And then its gone. I nominate New Coke. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Bill D Date: 13 Aug 02 - 07:04 PM in about 1962, in Kansas, there was an attempt to market canned, processed **WHEAT**...called it "Redi-Wheat" and touted it as a 'strecher' for hamburger, and a substitute for rice..etc... It lasted about a year....wish I had saved the one can I bought...*grin* |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull Date: 13 Aug 02 - 08:41 PM the Austin Allegro with the square steering weel, the Austin Maestro with the talking dash bored. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: RangerSteve Date: 13 Aug 02 - 10:09 PM Gablinger's Beer. It was low calorie, but I don't believe it was non-alcohol. It tasted like beer-flavored soda. There was no fitness craze going on at the time, so no one cared. Hoppin' Gator Beer - the guy who invented Gatorade sold the product to someone else and with the money he made, tried combining Gatorade with beer. Can't imagine why it failed. Hereford's Cows - something like Baileys Irish Cream, but in flavors - chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and (heaven help me) root beer. I had Fizzies once, not bad, but then kids will eat or drink anything. They died out because they were made with the now banned sweetener Cyclamate. Other artifical sweeteners (and sugar) won't hold together in tablet form. Kelloggs cereal with dehydrated strawberrys and bananas. The fruit had the same feeling as papier mache. By the time the fruit became rehydrated, the cereal was completely soggy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Little Hawk Date: 13 Aug 02 - 10:30 PM My father created a modular building called a Q'bik. (cubic) It was made of triangular sheet metal panels which formed a one room building. Even the door and the windows were triangular. The floor was plywood. It was supposedly quite easy to build. His advertising literature said that all you needed to put it up in an afternoon was "2 men and a pole". I said to him, "You should add to that...or 1 man, a dog, and a Hungarian". He was NOT amused. The sheet metal turned out to be the biggest problem. It got bloody hot on sunny days! You could've roasted a hog inside there. This necessitated putting insulation on the inside...lots of it. Then it would get very cold at night...and the extreme temperature changes would cause the thing to shrink and expand, which led to other problems. Add to this that the door (which was actually a hinged double triangle) was a real bastard to open and shut. The windows were okay, but you couldn't open them. In damp weather the thing would sweat like mad on the inside and get like the black hole of Calcutta in no time flat. This was somewhat alleviated by providing small vents, but not enough to prevent mushrooms from growing inside the storage areas under the bunk bed/sofa. After about 3 years the plywood floor began to rot out from the moisture condensing and running down and the insulation got too damp to function properly. 2 of the things were built. One served as a tourist information kiosk for the City of Orillia for a couple of years, and then vanished mysteriously. I lived in the other one for about 3 years. It was an experience not to be forgotten. I am still alive, so the idea was not a total failure, but it has never gone into mass production. This story is 100% true. If I were better at blue clickies and stuff, I could probably find a picture of the Q'bik somewhere. - LH |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 13 Aug 02 - 10:43 PM They haven't been out long enough to know for certain, but if the Cadillac and Lincoln pickup trucks don't turn out to be the first "Edsels" of 21st Century I'll eat my fingerpicks. In five years Bubba amd Claude will be totin' their lawn maintenance equipment around in what were originally $40,000.00 vehicles. I can just imagine a couple of old guys sitting around reminiscing twenty years from now..... "John, what's the stupidest thing you ever did?" "Well, Bill, it pains me to remember, but I once bought a Cadillac truck." "Damn, John! That was stupid!" Bruce
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Clinton Hammond Date: 13 Aug 02 - 10:54 PM Here's one... OS2 More's the pity...
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Genie Date: 14 Aug 02 - 02:29 AM How about Rudi Gernreich's topless bathing suit, introduced in the 1960s? The prototype I saw was like a one-piece maillot made of a stretchy material but cut off just below the bosom and held up by a one spaghetti strap that went around the neck. On some beaches in Europe some women did start going topless some time during the 60s or 70s, but I don't think there were more than a handful of the topless suits sold. Then there were the paper dress and the paper underpants, which were also introduced in the early 1960s and never really became big sellers. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: GUEST,Foe Date: 14 Aug 02 - 08:48 AM Flag Flyer shoes in the 50s, "Flip they're open, Snap they're shut" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: GUEST,Mr Red Date: 14 Aug 02 - 09:00 AM 1-Up 2-Up 3-Up 4-Up 5-Up 6-Up ya gotta admit it, that guy was sure persistant. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: SharonA Date: 14 Aug 02 - 09:00 AM A couple of years ago, Mattel (makers of the Barbie doll) came out with Barbie's "friend", the Rosie O'Donnell doll. It looks pretty much like her – complete with the sneering smile – or at least it looks like Rosie looked then, before she gained even more weight. But why Barbie would be palling around with Rosie is anybody's guess! Of course the doll sold very poorly, if it sold at all. It's so bad that it'll probably be a collector's item one day (along with that Gerry Garcia doll!). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 14 Aug 02 - 01:16 PM Wow! Maybe they could make a Museum out of all this stuff. I wouldn't include stuff that was just a fad... like Cabbage Patch Dolls. They caught on like wildfire for awhile. Now, you might think that lava lamps should be in this thread because they appeared and disappeared along with tie-dyed shirts. We thought. At least over here, lava lamps are all over the place, along with tie-died shirts. I even saw a chair set out for trash with a peace sign painted on the back. Some fads do come back, at least for a little while. For food products over here, they re-issued (but not re-mixed, I hope) Black Jack and Teaberry gum, which was made by Clark, from what I remember. It hasn't really caught on, but it's been back on the market in a limited way for at least ten years. Black Jack gum was licorice gum. The perfect follow up to a licorice popsicle. :-) Jerry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Lonesome EJ Date: 14 Aug 02 - 01:48 PM Someone mentioned the skateboard craze. I was around for the first one (mid-60s), and the general feeling was that you just made your own board. Mine was a foot and one half of 1x10 with the front and back portins of a standard metal clamp-on street skate. It was fast, but not highly maneuverable. The metal wheels also tended to develop flat spots. In the second wave of the craze (early 80s?), the manufacturers were on top of it, cranking out factory-made boards by the thousand. I still look down with scorn on these new boarders with their helmets, pads, and plastic wheels. They don't have any idea what its like to hit a sidewalk seam at 40 mph and have your metal wheels come to a complete stop, and you wearing nothing but a pair of cut-offs. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Little Hawk Date: 14 Aug 02 - 02:04 PM Here's another one my Dad was peripherally involved in... Remember back when the movie industry was doing all these films about animals going crazy and attacking people? It really started with "Jaws". Then we had movies about grizzly bears, piranhas, flying piranhas, birds, frogs, worms, rats, chinchillas, whatever... So, during the 80's sometime a Hollywood filmmaker comes to my Dad's design company with a script about alligators going crazy and attacking people en masse in the Everglades. The script was the usual terrible schlock, with lots of blood and explosives and action. The gators were to be led by a gigantic King gator who was about as long as a Greyhound bus and far meaner. The hero gets to battle it out in the climactic scene with the King gator. Uh-huh. Well, in due course of time a truck arrived with about 30 fiberglass alligators in the back, including one monster specimen. These were to serve as the initial models on which to base a few actual working robots that would swim, open their jaws, roll their eyes, and so on. This would have been an enormous project, quite beyond the capabilities of my father's company, in my opinion. Fortunately, the deal fell through, as Mr. Hollywood failed to secure necessary funding. The fiberglass gators remained, stacked in a huge pile at the back of the model shop area. They got really dusty after awhile, but never failed to attract the attention of visitors. My father finally closed the whole thing down in the early 90's, and was faced with the problem of what to do with the leftover machinery and other stuff. He sold most of it in an auction, but the gators remained. He finally went to the Indian Band Office (Rama Reserve), on whose property the business had been located, and offered to give them the alligators. They accepted!!! Most of the gators disappeared into people's back yards, and have served to amuse many children, but the King gator was displayed proudly on the front lawn of the chief's house for a number of years. I kid you not. There's a new chief now in Rama, and I'm not sure just where the gator is...but I daresay he's still around there somewhere. - LH |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Don Firth Date: 14 Aug 02 - 02:17 PM Back in the mid-Seventies, Kraft Foods, Inc. came out with "Koogle"—flavored peanut butter. It came in four flavors: chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, and banana. I understand that Koogle, like the Edsel, was a product that grew out of extensive consumer research. Launched with lots of TV commercials, it sank like a rock. I understand the Jif Peanut Butter (Proctor and Gamble) is planning on trying it again. I'll stick with my jar of Adams peanut butter (no lard added, just peanuts) and my jar of grape jelly. I love the classics. I keep an X-Acto knife handy to fillet the TV Guide when it comes. You know, all those stiff cardboard pages inserted among the newsprint, so they'll pop open every time you pick it up to see how to waste some time? Invariably they're ads for kitch doo-dads and dust-catchers, like a ceramic figurine of Princess Di or Elvis Presley under a glass dome, or a little doggie with sad eyes, or a plate commemorating Buffy the Vampire Slayer. "Five easy payments of $39.95 each," and the ad always says something like "Limited Edition Collectors' Item." I heard someone on "Antiques Road Show" say, "If it's advertised as a collectors' item, it isn't!" Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Willie-O Date: 14 Aug 02 - 02:18 PM I just read a biography of the ill-fated Hank Williams. In the last year of his life, he was a headliner on "the last, greatest medicine show", something called the Hadacol Caravan. Hadacol was an allegedly medicinal product which was developed and marketed by a Lousiana hustler and sometime gubernatorial candidate named Dudley Leblanc. In 1952 it was the second-most heavily advertised product in the U.S., after Coca Cola. Leblanc told a friend once, when asked what was actually in it, "enough alcohol to make you feel good (12%) and enough laxative to give ya a good bowel movement." The alcohol was key: the stuff was a hot seller in the numerous dry counties and towns of the South. The significance of Hadacol is not the vile stuff itself, but how it was marketed. The Hadacol Caravan was a huge traveling country music revue featuring Hank and other major country stars of the era. Admission to a show was two Hadacol labels per person. Leblanc took the show to places where Hadacol wasn't distributed, and the drugstores would suddenly get hundreds of requests for it. At peak they were spending a million dollars per month on advertising, but selling a million per day of product. It didn't last, of course. The whole scheme crashed and burned as the AMA and the Food and Drug Administration took an interest in Hadacol, and the Caravan suddenly had no money to pay its big-ticket performers or Hadacol's many creditors. (Hank himself was dead a few months later.) Leblanc had been using the Caravan as a funding & public exposure springboard to run for Governor of Lousiana again. Didn't work out so well for him, thus Lousiana was deprived of having this colourful character as its leader... W-O
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Little Hawk Date: 14 Aug 02 - 02:28 PM That's a danged shame. With a little luck he could have gone on to be President, and we could all be guzzling Hadacol daily... - LH |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Willie-O Date: 14 Aug 02 - 02:42 PM I just read a biography of the ill-fated Hank Williams. In the last year of his life, he was a headliner on "the last, greatest medicine show", something called the Hadacol Caravan. Hadacol was an allegedly medicinal product which was developed and marketed by a Lousiana hustler and sometime gubernatorial candidate named Dudley Leblanc. In 1952 it was the second-most heavily advertised product in the U.S., after Coca Cola. Leblanc told a friend once, when asked what was actually in it, "enough alcohol to make you feel good (12%) and enough laxative to give ya a good bowel movement." The alcohol was key: the stuff was a hot seller in the numerous dry counties and towns of the South. The significance of Hadacol is not the vile stuff itself, but how it was marketed. The Hadacol Caravan was a huge traveling country music revue featuring Hank and other major country stars of the era. Admission to a show was two Hadacol labels per person. Leblanc took the show to places where Hadacol wasn't distributed, and the drugstores would suddenly get hundreds of requests for it. At peak they were spending a million dollars per month on advertising, but selling a million per day of product. It didn't last, of course. The whole scheme crashed and burned as the AMA and the Food and Drug Administration took an interest in Hadacol, and the Caravan suddenly had no money to pay its big-ticket performers or Hadacol's many creditors. (Hank himself was dead a few months later.) Leblanc had been using the Caravan as a funding & public exposure springboard to run for Governor of Lousiana again. Didn't work out so well for him, thus Lousiana was deprived of having this colourful character as its leader... W-O
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Don Firth Date: 14 Aug 02 - 02:52 PM Hadacol provided a lot of material for comedians. Prior to Hadacol was Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, a tonic for various and sundry women's ailments (This makes this a music thread). Actually, it did catch on, and for many years running, they sold oceans of the stuff. Anyway, years ago, my dad ran into an old schoolmate, and we were invited to her house for dinner (I can't recall the occasion because I was pretty young at the time). Dad and the old school chum were standing in the kitchen reminiscing, when the chum reminded dad of once when, as kids, they went to some kind of temperance meeting where they signed a pledge never to let alcohol cross their lips. The chum ask dad, "Did you keep your pledge, Bob?" Dad responded that, no, he guessed he hadn't. She raised herself to her full height and said stuffily, "Well, I can proudly say that I kept mine. I have never touched a drop of alcohol in my life!" Dad noticed a bottle of Lydia Pinkham's tonic on the counter, picked it up, and said, "Do you take this?" "Well, yes, I do." Dad pointed to the label. 20% alcohol. That shut her up. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 14 Aug 02 - 09:06 PM Great story, Don:
When I was a little kid, we had to rent out half of our house in order to pay the $8 a month mortgage. Tommy Pope and his wife rented out the other half (of a five room house.) Tommy was an alcoholic and his wife stopped his credit at every store you could imagine. But, she didn't think of the corner grocery store. There are many products that are high in alcohol. Tommy drank Extract Of Vanilla. Not only was he slightly, pleasantly drunk all the time, he had the sweetest smelling breath in town. Wrote a song about him with the lines:
"He'd send me to the corner store, with a dollar in my hand
It didn't take Tommy's wife long to catch on, though. And every Monday morning when I hauled the bottle out for pickup, we had a whole washtub full of empty extract of vanilla bottles.. :-) Jerry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Bill D Date: 15 Aug 02 - 10:22 AM hey...here are some new products you may want to grab before they disappear!.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Bill D Date: 15 Aug 02 - 10:24 AM right...get dyslexic me, while I last...(well, the link works...) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Peter T. Date: 15 Aug 02 - 01:26 PM Fizzies, o mi god. I remember those -- tasted really, really bad. The one I never figured out, and that just keeps going is PEZ. The candy tastes terrible: can it really be just the wierd dispenser all these years? I always thought the choice of names and flavours of stuff made no sense. Why not "Michelangelo" flavoured potato chips? There are all these strange flavours of potato chips out there now -- no one ever ate anything like them before, why not really break out? Did anyone ever eat anything at a Bar-B-Que that tasted like Bar-B-Que chips? (By the way, Barbeque is one of the few words handed down to us by the now extinct Carib Indians). yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Catherine Jayne Date: 15 Aug 02 - 01:32 PM You can still get Hubba Bubba bubble gum and the bubbles you can blow with it can be pretty impressive!!! Catwhoistryingtofeelnotsooldonherbirthday! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Genie Date: 15 Aug 02 - 01:46 PM Cute, Bill D! Anyone remember the name of those cars that are also boats? They were introduced (by Nash?) in the 1950s, I think, and a few are still around, but they never really caught the mass public's fancy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Oaklet Date: 15 Aug 02 - 03:02 PM Genie, Nash Metropolitans? Hi Genie. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Don Firth Date: 15 Aug 02 - 03:19 PM No, the Nash Metropolitans did look like a bathtub (upside down), but they weren't amphibious. They were an inexpensive little two-seater (but not a sports car), and people who had them really liked them. I know the one Genie means, but I can't recall who made them or what they were called. Some years back, the owner of one cause a near-panic when he took a look at the Mercer Island floating bridge across Lake Washington (east of Seattle) and saw that traffic was bumper to bumper and going nowhere. He left the streets, found access to the lakefront, and putt-putted across the lake while people on the bridge sat a stared. Somebody called the police and soon rescue boats were all over the lake, accompanied by the news media. The report was that someone had driven their car into the lake--which was sorta true, but by then the amphibous car and its driver were across the lake and home. Considering the current state of traffic on the Lake Washington bridges, that should be the wave of the future. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Bill D Date: 15 Aug 02 - 10:56 PM the real 'bathtub Nash' was the Ambassador The Metropolitans were, as you say, a little two seater. Cute little thing...wish I had one today. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: GUEST,Elaine Date: 15 Aug 02 - 11:17 PM Bill D--That's a GREAT website! Had to email it to everybody! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Genie Date: 16 Aug 02 - 01:30 AM Nice picture, Bill, but the one I remember -- which I saw a clip about on TV recently -- had fins. Was that a Nash, too? Genie |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 16 Aug 02 - 02:10 AM A lot of great, weird stuff here. CatsPHiddle: I know that Hubba Bubba bubble gum still exists, but have you seen any cans of Hubba Bubba soda? Didn't think so? When it comes to food products, you could have a companion thread of stuff that has been around forever. Then you could talk about Bazooka Joe cartoons... the comic strip equvalent of Willeam Shatner. But, that would be thread drift. :-)
And in case people think this isn't a music thread... there was a Nash Rambler plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin when I was in my twenties:
"Over in Kenosha where the Ramblers grew
Friday night, at the Evergreen Bar
Jerry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Genie Date: 16 Aug 02 - 03:49 AM "While riding in my Cadillac, much to my surprise, A little Nash Rambler was following me, about one third my size. The guy must have thought his car had more spunk, 'cause he kept on tooting his horn. I'll show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn!"
'Beep! Beep! §;- ) How about Billy Beer and Jolt Cola? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 16 Aug 02 - 09:01 AM Two good ones Genie:
Back in th fifties, a kid I knew in school told me that Parker Pen was going to revolutionize the industry. His Father worked in product development and they had made a startling invention (but he couldn't tell me what it was.) A few months later it came out. My Mother worked at Parker Pen so she brought a few home... liquid lead pencils. You were supposed to be able to write with them like a pencil, and erase what you'd written as easily if it was written by a lead pencil. The concept was alright, but the product didn't work. By the time you got the "lead" erased you could see through the paper. It was just lead-colored ink. The product stayed one the market such a short time that I doubt if anyone else ever even heard of it.
Now, this is a story about a product that didn't catch on the first time, because it didn't do what it promised. By the time my kids were in school, they had erasable pens, and they worked reasonably well. Jerry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Don Firth Date: 16 Aug 02 - 11:55 AM Thanks for the link, Bill. The Metropolitan was a neat little car. I never had one, but a lady friend did. Ahh, that brings back memories….. Speaking of pens, how about the Reynolds Rocket? They were, I think, the first ball-point pens. It took about ten starts to get the ink flowing (it was real gummy and you had to press hard), and then you'd write about two words and it would start to skip. Sometimes they would go to the other extreme and turn your shirt-front blue (pocket protectors got real popular about then). When you could get a pretty decent fountain pen (e.g., Parker 45) for about $5.00, they wanted $12.00 for those things. "Put a Rocket in your pocket" was the advertising blurb. That could have killed the ball-point pen right there, but then everybody went to work on it and the ball-point pen took off. I've always loved fountain pens. I still have two Parker 45s, and they still make ink cartridges for them, but these days a five-pack costs your first-born and the deed to your ranch and you can't get them very many places. Hard to get a decent fountain pen these days. A good one costs at least fifty bucks and you have to buy them at a specialty store. The ones you can get in the drug store, sealed in a plastic bubble, for a couple of bucks really stink. Penmanship is a thing of the past. Pity. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: Products that Never Caught On From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 16 Aug 02 - 12:19 PM Hi, Don:
I still have a few Parker Pens. The Parker Pen company was right alongside the railroad tracks, about ten blocks from where I grew up and when we headed out to open country on the tracks, we'd always check the dump behind the factory to see what they'd thrown away. The had a policy back then of keeping parts in stock for a long time, so the pens they were throwing out were realllly old. My Mother would also bring home working fountain pens that they were finally disposing of and gave to the employees. My personal take on Parker Pens is that the company was killed because they never developed a clean-writing ball point. I never liked the way the Jotters wrote. Left little balls of ink every now and then. I have a beautiful matched seet of a Parker Pen and Pencil my Mother gave to me a few years ago, and treasure it, even though I write more commonly with a calligraphy pen now. Jerry |
