Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Disappearing Acts: When Popular Brands Are Discontinued

Episode Date: January 6, 2024

To kick off our 2024 season, we look at a strange phenomenon happening in Canada. Well-established brands are suddenly leaving the country. Kleenex is leaving after nearly 100 years. Skippy Peanut Butter has skipped the country after nearly 90 years. And KFC actually held a funeral for their terrible-tasting French fries. What’s happening up here? Find out.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. You're so king in it. You're so king in it. Your teeth look whiter than noon, noon, noon You're not you when you're hungry You're a good hand with all the teeth

You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. When Motley Crue announced their final tour in 2014, they did something no other band had ever done before. They signed a contract at a press conference stating they could not ever legally tour again. That contract persuaded fans to pack stadiums all over the world because they wanted to see their favorite band one last time. Of course, they could have waited just a few years

when Motley Crue toured again in 2020. As Rolling Stone magazine said, it's pretty hard to enforce that contract since there are no rock and roll police. The band Nine Inch Nails announced a farewell tour in 2009. Lead singer Trent Reznor said, I never wanted to be Gene Simmons, an old man who puts on makeup to entertain kids like a clown going to work.

Four years later, Nine Inch Nails went back to work. Reznor justified the new tour by saying, I think I haven't done everything I can do yet. In 2000, Gene Simmons said there were no more mountains to climb and that Kiss wanted to go out in style with this farewell tour. Two years later, Kiss was out on tour again. Twenty years later, they are out on their latest end-of-the-road tour as we speak.

The rest is Kistery. Elton John announced his farewell tour in 1977. He said, I've made the decision tonight that this is going to be the last show. This is the last one I'm going to do. His next tour was in 1979. And just last year, he completed his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road farewell tour.

In 1992, Ozzy Osbourne said he was quitting touring once and for all. He said, I want to go home. I've got a house I never see. I've got a car I never drive. I've got a family I never go home to. He said, Three years later, Ozzy hit the road again. His explanation? Retirement sucked. Back in 1971, Old Blue Eyes announced he was never touring again.

Sinatra said, There's lots of things I want to do. I want to meet some girls and build a house someplace. Okie dokie, Frankie. He was back on the road two years later. As he explained, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Back in 2002, Cher firmly announced that she was done with touring,

saying, This is it. Six years later, she was performing in Las Vegas. Then in 2012, she toured again, saying, This is my farewell tour.

I'm never coming back, I swear to God. She came back. The Eagles have made an industry out of farewell tours, and Phil Collins, reading the tea leaves, announced his first final farewell tour in 2004. There have been some surprising farewell tours in the world of marketing, too.

Kleenex said goodbye after being here in Canada for almost 100 years. Skippy Peanut Butter has hopped away after 90 years. KFC held a funeral for its fries. Count Chocula has been counted out. And the Whistle Dog has run away from the A&W menu. Are they gone for good? Or are they just pulling a Phil Collins? You're under the influence. In August of 2023, Kimberly Clark made an announcement.

Kleenex was to disappear from Canadian shelves. It was surprising news, since Kleenex has been a staple in this country since the 1920s. Prior to World War I, European manufacturers had developed a product called crepe cellulose wadding. It was a cotton substitute made from processed wood pulp.

Ernst Mahler, head of Kimberly-Clark's technical division, saw the product while touring pulp and paper mills in Germany, brought the idea back to the U.S., and trademarked the material under the name cellucotton. When World War I broke, it led to cotton shortages. So Mahler went to Washington, D.C., where he convinced the government that cellucotton would be an ideal substitute for surgical cotton dressing when treating war wounds. He also suggested cellucotton could be used as a filter in gas masks. When World War I ended, Kimberly Clark needed to find a new use for their cellucotton product. With experimentation in 1924,

it came up with a version of cellucotton that was a very thin, soft, facial tissue. The name Kleenex was born from the word clean, only spelled with a K, and the EX suffix was taken from another Kimberly-Clark product, Kotex. Our loyal listeners will remember that the Kleenex brand name was coined and marketed by the genius ad man Albert Lasker,

who we profiled in one of our episodes a few years ago. As women began using cosmetics more and more, Kleenex was positioned in the marketplace as a disposable tissue for removing makeup instead of using cloths. And in 1927, Lasker's advertising agency began running print ads featuring popular Hollywood actresses using Kleenex to remove their movie makeup.

Three years later, in 1930, Lasker did a survey to find out how people were actually using Kleenex. He discovered they weren't using it for makeup removal, but rather, they were blowing

their noses with it. He took this finding back to Mahler at Kimberly-Clark, saying Kleenex could replace handkerchiefs. As it happened, Mahler suffered from hay fever. He loved the idea. Lasker coined the slogan,

Kleenex sales doubled in the first year. Now the product didn't just appeal to women, but to men as well. By 1931, Kleenex was one of Kimberly Clark's best-selling products.

From that day forward, Kleenex became the number one facial tissue in the world. So why is Kleenex exiting Canada? The answer, as always, comes down to profit, or lack thereof. Kleenex was made at one single

Kimberly-Clark manufacturing facility in Huntsville, Ontario. Shipping from there across the country and bringing more product up from the States was costly. The farther you ship, the less profitable it becomes. Inflation was another problem. Shoppers have been turning away from big brands like Kleenex and moving towards private label store brands to save money. The gap left by Kleenex is good news for Kruger,

maker of Scotties tissues. Scotties actually outsells Kleenex is good news for Kruger, maker of Scotty's tissues. Scotty's actually outsells Kleenex in Canada, with a 35% market share versus Kleenex at just 16%. With Kleenex gone, that 16% might just fall into Scotty's lap.

And that's nothing to sneeze at. Back in 1971, two new kid's cereals appeared on store shelves. One was called Count Chocula, the other Frankenberry. The fun animated commercials took a page from Hollywood horror films, with a tip of the hat to Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and ran during cartoons on Saturday mornings. Don't be scared. I'm the super sweet monster with the super sweet new cereal, Count Chocula.

Bethel, here's the super sweet new cereal, Frankenberry. But I've got chocolate sweeties for monstrous chocolate flavor. Well, I've got berry flavored sweeties for monstrous strawberry flavor. Count Chocula. Frankenberry. Hi. Frankenberry. Count Chocula.

They became so popular with kids, other monster cereals were added, including Boo-Berry and Fruity Yummy Mummy. The cereals contained lots of sugar and, according to the box label, eight essential vitamins plus iron. As it turns out, the strawberry-flavored Frankenberry had one more fun ingredient, pink dye, which turned children's poop pink, a condition cheekily dubbed the Frankenberry stool.

In spite of that bathroom surprise, the cereal sold well for over 30 years. Then, around 2010, the cereal suddenly vanished from grocery stores. The most likely trigger for the disappearance was the sugar content, with parents now opting to serve healthier cereal options to their kids. Sales kept dropping, prompting cereal giant General Mills to discontinue the line. But a few years later, a Facebook page popped up called

Bring Count Chocula Back to Canada. It had hundreds of likes. It caught the attention of General Mills, and when it matched that up with the number of requests its consumer service line was getting, it convinced the company to bring the monster cereals back to Canada. Not on a permanent basis, but rather only during the weeks

leading up to Halloween. Limited time only, once a year. Then General Mills noticed something. Over 60% of these spooky cereals were being consumed by adults, not

kids. Parents may say they're buying them for their kids, but they're fibbing. It's not just the taste. There is a lot of nostalgia connected to Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Booberry. As a matter of fact, boxes of the monster

cereals from the 1970s command prices anywhere from $250 all the way up to $750. How about a Monster for breakfast today? Recently, A&W made a decision to eliminate an item from its menu. The Whistle Dog whistled off into the history books. It had been a menu staple since 1960. If you've never had a Whistle Dog, it's a hot dog that has a signature slice down the middle, or butterflied if you want to be fancy, served in a toasted bun topped with real cheddar cheese and bacon.

A&W, by the way, was Canada's first fast food hamburger chain. The original store opened in Winnipeg back in 1956, predating McDonald's by 11 years. By 1966, A&W had over 200 drive-in restaurants across Canada. And here's a little trivia. Canadian A&Ws are operated independent of the U.S., and Canada has more than double the number of A&W locations than the States. It employs 20,000 people and serves over 197 million Canadians every year. Hey, let's all go to A&W. Food's more fun at A&W.

We'll have a mug of root beer or maybe two or three. Make the perfect size from the burger family Hey, let's all go to A&W I can taste it now, can't you? Hop in the car, come as you are To A&W The reason A&W discontinued the Whistle Dog was due to profitability and efficiency. Sales began to drop over time,

and a hot dog in a predominantly hamburger-driven restaurant means extra equipment was necessary, and cooks have to make a changeover on the grill when ordered, resulting in longer wait times in the drive-thrus. A&W wanted to simplify their operations. When the Whistle Dog disappeared in 2017 it sent out a dog whistle to die-hard Whistle Dog fans. They started petitions, rallied support on radio stations and flooded the comments section on A&W's social media,

all calling for the Whistle Dogs' return. Fans were persistent, but the Whistle Dog remained doggone. Six years later, A&W was working on a partnership with the Toronto Blue Jays, and Hot Dog seemed like a perfect fit. So, the Whistle Dog was brought back, for a limited time only, last July and August. Kind of like vintage rock stars, the Whistle Dog was coming back for a second farewell tour.

Its return proved so popular, the Whistle Dog completely sold out. That gave Rethink, A&W's advertising agency, an idea. To celebrate its temporary revival, it created a hot documentary titled, Bring Back the Whistle Dog. The doc captures how much diehard fans mourned their lost dog. I ordered a Whistle Dog and they didn't have one. I went to a different A&W that was a couple minutes away and they also didn't have one.

Whenever I went to A&W, I had a whistle dog. And the one day I went there and said, sorry, we don't do those anymore. It also tracks the lengths those diehard fans have gone through to bring it back, including a constant parade of social media posts. Bring back the whistle dog. It's posts. Bring back the whistle dog. It's time to bring back the whistle dog. Your A&W burger family conversation just furthered my rage from yesterday about the discontinuation of the whistle dog.

What's a family without a dog? There was even a rap song. I kind of lost, then I'm the wheel of the face. Yeah, Whistle Dog makes share. Yeah, Whistle Dog for life. Bring Back the Whistle Dog has been accepted at over 40 film festivals around the world, including the prestigious Tribeca X Festival in New York. I've had a sneak peek, and it's a lot of fun. While the Whistle Dog remains off the menu, fans still have hope.

Just like the Whistle Dog, another favorite has recently skipped the country. Back in 2016, Skippy peanut butter skipped off Canadian shelves. Skippy had a long history here. Canadians have been enjoying the smooth and crunchy peanut butter since 1933. As a matter of fact, according to Smithsonian magazine, the average kid gobbles up 1,500 peanut butter and jam sandwiches by the time they finish high school. Interestingly, peanut butter itself has been around since the late 19th century.

It was first developed as a protein-rich item for sanitarium patients that didn't require much chewing. Hmm, who knew? Enter Skippy founder, Joseph Rosefield. Working in his garage, Rosefield modified the oily and nutty original peanut butter by employing a partial hydrogenation process, which churned the normally liquid oil in peanut butter into a semi-solid, resulting in a longer-lasting,

more shelf-stable, smoother peanut butter experience. Hydrogenated peanut butter was an immediate success. By 1942, it was outselling the original varieties. And today, more than 80% of peanut butter sold in stores is hydrogenated. It appears the name Skippy may have been borrowed from a comic strip and radio serial created by Percy Crosby in the 1920s. Then, in 1932, Rosefield tried to register the Skippy name,

but Crosby opposed the registration. Rosefield continued using the Skippy name in spite of Crosby's protest. Eventually, Crosby was committed to a sanitarium in 1947, the trademark lapsed, and Rosefield snapped it up. Crosby died in the institution 20 years later. Crosby's daughter never let the issue die. She continually brought Skippy Peanut Butter

to court over the years and fought the company all the way up until the year 2014. She was never able to win back the rights or be compensated for the use of the Skippy name. For many years, actor Annette Funicello, who starred in a series of beach party movies with Frankie Avalon,

appeared in a series of commercials for Skippy Peanut Butter. Annette Funicello on the beach. Familiar, right? Except these days, I'm with my family and lots of Skippy peanut butter. The kids love a real peanut taste, so for us, it has to be Skippy. The company that now owns Skippy, Hormel Foods, who also manufactures Spam, issued a statement saying that it was sad to leave Canada, but it had to concentrate on more profitable markets. Skippy is still sold in 60 more profitable countries to this day. In July of 2023, KFC made an unusual statement. It was discontinuing its much-maligned French fries.

It was a bold move. Bold because KFC publicly admitted their fries were terrible. This wasn't exactly a secret. For years, Canadians have been very vocal about their hatred for KFC's fries. So, KFC was not only burying their old fries, they held a fry funeral and live-streamed it. It took place at an appropriately sparsely attended service. There was a casket at the front of the chapel full of fries decked out in KFC colors, and a eulogy was given. Ladies and gentlemen, today we gather here to reflect

upon and say our goodbyes to KFC's old fries. It was hilarious. KFC's old fries were ordered by many, consumed by some, and rarely finished. They were a side to fried chicken, zinger sandwiches, twisters, tenders. And now, they're dead. Canadians had no shortage of things to say about the dearly departed. I will now read a few words that Canadians wrote about our old fries. A sad excuse for a French fry. No self-respecting person would ever admit to liking KFC fries. I once saw a seagull gag eating a fry. That's my favorite line.

Then the news was revealed. Goodbye, old KFC fries. We mourn you. Lightly. Hello, new seasoned fries. We can't wait to eat you. KFC was coming out with brand new seasoned fries. KFC even drove a branded hearse around Toronto adorned with the words,

RIP Old KFC Fries, and in the back was a casket full of fries. KFC's advertising agency said they came up with the idea when they heard their KFC client refer to the old Fry Box as the Fry Coffin, the place where fries go to die. To write the eulogy, the ad agency watched eulogy scenes in movies to capture all the typical eulogy cliches. The Fry Funeral was a huge success, generating over 3.7 billion impressions and went viral around the world. It was a courageous idea, from an advertising agency called Courage, by the way, and it certainly got a lot of attention. KFC had listened to its customers

and the time had come to pay final respects. Companies have to evolve. It's a fact of corporate life. Change is the constant element. But it's surprising when long-time products suddenly disappear. Adrian Lee wrote an insightful article

in the Globe and Mail recently saying that when a beloved product disappears, there is a kind of grief that happens. Yes, it's just a product, not a friend, but it has been embedded

in our lives. As I often say on this show, brands use strategy and millions of dollars to create an emotional connection with their customers. And if that emotional attachment is forged, it prompts a reaction when that connection is broken. As social psychologist Leon Festinger has said, people are stability-seeking animals. So when Kleenex disappears, it's a bit jarring. If you grew up loving Skippy peanut butter, it's a chunk of your childhood gone.

If you stared at a box of Count Chocula memorizing every detail as you emptied the bowl before heading off to school in the morning. That's a warm memory. And when those products disappear, that loyalty suddenly seems one-sided. It can provoke anger, an odd sense of mourning, and sometimes a militant effort to get it back. Some beloved products, like the Whistle Dog and Count Chocula, do come back for a second farewell tour.

Others are best sent to that big fry box in the sky. When you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Airstream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Research, Angus Mary. Under the influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian LeFever.

Tunes provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O Influence. This podcast is powered by ACAST. And if you think there are too many ads in a show about advertising, tsk tsk, and you'd like to see them disappear, you can now listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Plus, if you'd like to read next week's fun fact, just go to apostrophepodcasts.ca and follow the prompts to record it. See you next time. Hi, this is Sune from Cape Town, South Africa. Fun fact, it takes about 850 peanuts to make one single jar of peanut butter.