Standardization

When I say the United States is a country without values, I mean it in a nice way.

I'm not referring to morals, at least in a biblical sense, but to a certain business ethic-- that of standardization.

Our business community is severely lacking in any sense of providing a stable, unchanging product to consumers.

We're a country with a proud history of breaking boundaries, but must that mean the things I buy must constantly be changing? Is that really helping?


When I was a child a Baby Ruth cost a nickle and was as big as my head. Today they're a dollar and a third the size. I wouldn't mind paying two bucks for the Baby Ruth of my youth, really I wouldn't-- and I imagine I would have bought a lot more Baby Ruths over the years if they had remained the same size. The newer, smaller ones are just a disappointment. They just don't have the same mouth feel.

Part of the problem is that companies just aren't stable. Their fortunes wax and wane. Some prosper, and some fail-- but matters are worsened by the takeover mentality of corporate culture. The Chicago-based company Curtiss, which created the Baby Ruth in 1921 (re-imagining its already existing Kandy Kake) was acquired by Nabisco in 1981. Nabisco, the NAtional Biscuit COmpany was sold to the Swiss conglomerate Nestlé in 1990. Alas, our national biscuit company is no longer national, or, rather, it has Swiss citizenship. The Swiss should be proud.

I should mention the candy bar is fraudulently named. Curtiss steadfastly maintained the Baby Ruth was named after not after baseball legend Babe Ruth, but for Ruth Cleveland, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland-- this despite the facts that Clevland had left office 30 years earlier and Ruth had been dead for 17 years. And should I mention, Babe Ruth was at the height of his fame and the Curtiss Candy Company was located just down the street from Wrigley Field? So the Baby Ruth has been a fraudulent candy bar from its inception.

 The Baby Ruth is made from peanuts, caramel, chocolate, and nougat-flavored chocolate. Peanuts are peanuts, and caramel is merely heated sugar. Chocolate can be produced in a variety of ways by varying the proportions of cocoa solids and cocoa butter and by changing the amount of sugar and by adding or witholding milk; doing so creates distinct types of chocolate, milk chocolate, for example, or bittersweet chocolate.

Nougat, on the other hand, is a more variable product. It can be soft or crunchy, can contain any of several types of nuts, and may contain small pieces of candied fruit. So probably it's the nougat that's referred to in the Curtiss ad above, which proclaims a newer, richer formula: "Research proves formula adds to your enjoyment! Buy some today... See for yourself!"

What the Curtiss Candy Company is really saying is it found a way to save money by substituting one type of nut for another in the nougat or discovered a way to make the chocolate coating a micron or two thinner. I don't for a second believe they were improving the candy bar. Do you?

I hope you don't. The truth is there's a burgeoning industry that spends millions of dollars trying to determine how much can be shaved from a stick of Juicy Fruit gum before the average consumer will notice it. Yes, the very gum you chew has been tweaked in a hundred ways since you bought that first pack. Shameful!

Let's face it, American companies just love to frack with things. Remember the New Coke fiasco? Here's a company with a phenomenally successful product and a huge consumer base who loves their product and when they feel a bit of pressure from Pepsi they change the much-treasured secret formula? Idiocy. Sales dropped and they had to make New New Coke, which was the same as the old Coke. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I think sometimes companies leave their products alone and just claim they've changed it. Remember all those bogus happily-named chemicals from the 50s? Colgate, now with Gardol. Gardol? Give me a break!

Gardol, in fact, wasn't an imaginary chemical; it was the company's propriety name for Sodium lauroyl sarcosinate, which is no longer used in their products-- so how good was it?

I use Colgate today, but I long for the Ipana of my younger years. I liked the wintergreen flavor, or maybe I was just impressed with its mascot, Bucky Beaver. I understand Ipana is the leading toothpaste in Turkey (a country perhaps not famous for good dentition), but I understand the brand has been re-introduced as a retro product to be sold by dentists, so perhaps I won't have to emigrate.

Home Depot and Lowe's are perhaps the worst companies for not maintining a product line. There's nothing like discovering the ceiling fan globe you broke is no longer available or the filter for your water  cleaner is no longer being produced.

Since Home Depot has its own house brand, I especially blame them when I can no longer purchase a battery for the electric screwdriver they so gleefully sold me only three years earlier.

We're Americans. We like to change things. I get that. Our money is now multicolored, our airwaves are now digital, and Twinkies should still be done. Our willingness to explore is admirable, but dammit, some things should just be left alone!

I'm going to go now to have a cranberry-flavored vodka cocktail and sulk.