Amazon.com Widgets Of the classic Christmas candy items, the Life Savers Storybook is among the best known. Question for readers. Is the selection inside the story book the same as in years past? This year, I see Five Flavors and Wild Cherry, but I cannot recall what other flavors have been among the selection in [...]
Tags: Candy
For those who like a traditional looking Christmas, there is no substitute to light from incandescent C-7 and C-9 light bulb, and no name more synonymous with Christmas lights than General Electric. One can make the case that the outdoor Christmas light has been one of the greater (and most surreptitious) of methods of evangelism [...]
Tags: Retail
It’s official. We found it. The worst brand extension ever. It’s the Pillsbury Spritz Collection, on sale now at your neighborhood Dollar Tree, right between all the closeout High School Musical crap. The Dollar Tree, of course, only has closeouts and things that either didn’t sell elsewhere, or are brands of companies that are in [...]
Tags: Grocery
Each year when various Charlie Brown holiday specials arrive on ABC Family, I get a bit confused. Not only are they not on CBS, they are missing the “CBS Special” intro that dates from the Lou Dorfsman era. If you don’t know about the late Lou Dorfsman, he is a great one. Dorfsman was creative [...]
Tags: Media
A few weeks ago, Peggy Noonan wrote in her weekly Wall Street Journal column about the importance of seeing Bergdorf Goodman, and how it cheered her. We should definitely thank ourselves for making it through the year. And we should be thankful that Bergdorf’s is still there. (Above, an old Office of War Information photo [...]
Tags: Department Stores
ORRVILLE, Ohio – Peter is officially home again. In his last Christmas trip home during the Roaring Reagan year of 1986, Peter was dropped off in an old VW bug in a Norwegian sweater. When he got home to his nice mansion in the early morning, he went into the kitchen and made Folgers coffee [...]
MONTVALE, N.J. – There is but one grocery chain that inspires literature. It’s the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (NYSE: GAP), this year celebrating its 150th anniversary. In John Updike’s Kennedy-era short story “A&P” a 19-year-old clerk identifies with three scantily clad girls who come into an A&P in a small town in Massachusetts, [...]
NEW YORK – Each year, as part of Christmas, we pull out a box of Shiny Brite glass ornaments. But each time, there are fewer and fewer. But we keep the box, as it reminds us of another era, when Americans actually made things. Eckardt was a German immigrant who decided to make his own [...]
Tags: News
Top 10 Xmas Brand Traditions NORTH POLE – Candy companies have TOTALLY figured it out, as have TV networks and music producers. Long ago, the networks figured out that if you have a good Christmas special, you can run it each year; the more times people see it, the more they want to see it. [...]
Tags: Advertising · Commentary · Licensing
ABC Family has brought back the Rankin Bass character Heat Miser in “A Miser Brothers’ Christmas.” The show, the first animated feature for the channel, premieres Saturday, December 13 at 8 p.m. ET and is based upon the characters Heat Miser and Snow Miser originally appearing in the Rankin-Bass classic “The Year Without a Santa [...]
