In just about every restaurant kitchen, the decaffeinated coffee pot has an orange band. Ask a person under 30 why that band is colored orange, and they won’t know. They will know that it means decaf, but they won’t know why.

The reason, of course, it is orange is because orange is the packaging color of Sanka, the freeze-dried decaffeinated coffee. Sanka was invented in German at the turn of the century, and in Europe is known as Coffee HAG because of the original manufacturer. In the states, the company sold their invention as Sanka, French for Sans Caffeine. For most of the 20th century, it was ubiquitous in most American households.

The word Sanka was so much a part of the American pantheon that most Americans would ask for “Sanka please” when they went out to eat at a restaurant. Today, folks just ask for a decaf.

General Foods took over Sanka, and made it a household name in the U.S. They invested massively in advertising the product, including the sponsorship of top shows like CBS’ The Goldbergs, where protagonist Molly Goldberg spoke about Sanka through a window.

But when Kraft obliterated the General Foods brand, many of the top General Foods products languished, including Sanka. You see, the former General Foods brands were tightly associated with the parent company, and when that relationship was confused, consumers stopped trusting it. In addition, because Kraft owned so many brands, its less prosperous brands did not get the advertising attention they deserved. One silly notion..that Sanka could be sold as decaf Maxwell House.

Some products, like Postum, completely disappeared. In the case of Sanka, it got confused with other Kraft brands. Oddly, it suffers now, in a health-conscious era when decaffeinated coffee is ubiquitous. In fact, it is so omnipresent that Folgers, long a competitor with Maxwell House, uses the green color to identify decaf (as did Taster’s Choice).

Currently, Sanka is sold as a sub-brand of Maxwell House. That is a mistake, as they were always very separate products.

• The new Big G Kids Cereals ads from General Mills are great. Animated Lucky Charms leprechaun are talkin’ nutrition next to the kids. Smart stuff. I’m so cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And the leprechaun and Cocoa bird are in the SAME commercial.
• Postum Update: A reader contacted BrandlandUSA. Their question? When would Kraft, which ended production of the drink Postum, decide to release the formula so its fans could know how to get it to drink? Monday, we contacted Kraft’s public relations team by their contact form on their site, and have heard nothing. Now that’s a social media strategy I hadn’t thought of!
• Stein Mart has just published their annual report. Sadly, they mention that while Stein Mart is trademarked and an asset, they don’t mention their ownership of the Peck & Peck brand, which with a bit of management and marketing could be as valuable as Abercrombie & Fitch. They say “management believes that our trademarks are important, but with the exception of Stein Mart, not critical to our marketing strategy. Peck & Peck was a brand as great as they come, but now it is a store brand of Stein Mart. Oh well. Another opportunity missed. However, the good news is that Stein Mart is taking good care of the brand, and at least keeping it alive. And when I ask clerks at the store, they mention how many people still trust the brand, decades after the venerable department store is gone.
• Shirley Plantation: We happened to see Virginia’s Shirley Plantation and Colonial Williamsburg in some recent ads, but we can’t remember what the ad was about. It wasn’t a tourism ad, as Shirley is privately owned. I think it was financial services; I know it wasn’t Virginia tourism Virginia is for Lovers ad. Love some help from readers. In seeing it, I realized that yes, the family visit to the house museum might become hip again.
• Mercury’s Future: There has been some question about the future of Mercury as part of Lincoln-Mercury. We just noticed a few prime time ads on Fox selling the Mariner and Milan, as we hadn’t seen them in awhile. While they could have been regional buys, they were not dealer ads, but branding. Then we took a look at the website, where it appears that Ford is definitely paying attention to making the lineup interesting. Yes, there are only four models in the lineup, but they are a great foil for dealers, who can lure drivers into the showroom with Lincoln and sell them a Mercury. By the way, it was the killing of the Plymouth brand that really helped to do in Chrysler. Oh, and the Grand Marquis is becoming  a VERY interesting car, and the longer it survives, the more interesting it gets.
• Lee’s Paint: We got to see Mount Prospect Paint in Chicago, where American Idol Lee Dewyze worked. He apparently was good at stain and paint matching, and his favorite color was tangelo. However, the editors at 19 missed showing that the store was a Benjamin Moore dealer.

Orange Plus was a frozen orange drink that competed against Minute Maid. BrandlandUSA reader Nicholas Chicorikas says that it was around forever, and “tasted like nothing else. It was delicious. I can find no reference to it anywhere. ”

The Birds Eye brand, the pioneer in frozen foods, does survive, but the pulpy orange drink does not. It was sold in the 1950s to 1980s or so; if anyone has any more history, please add to the end of the story.

We love the Birds Eye brand. It was originally founded by Clarence Birdseye, who popularized freezing foods. Later, Birds Eye was part of General Foods, and the Birds Eye brand was sold to Curtis Burns/Agrilink in 1998. It was purchased by Pinnacle Foods of New Jersey, which has steadily been acquiring many great cast offs from General Foods.

The $1.3 billion acquisition, which closed in December 2009, had Pinnacle Foods Group LLC, a private equity portfolio company of The Blackstone Group, purchase Birds Eye Foods, Inc. from a holding company controlled by Vestar Capital Partners, Pro-Fac Cooperative, and Birds Eye Foods management. The transaction positions Pinnacle Foods as a leader in both the frozen and shelf-stable business segments. “Birds Eye Foods represents an ideal strategic fit,” said Bob Gamgort, CEO of Pinnacle Foods, in a press release last month.

Know anything more about Birds Eye Orange Plus or want to see it return? Leave a comment below.

1. Serv-a-Gravy. It’s a powdered gravy sold by Serv-Agen. Some have found it hard to locate on shelves.
2. Carnation Breakfast Bars. Not sure why this is so popular but folks do miss it.
3. Kraft Fudgies. Halloween is coming up. Where are they?
4. Derby Tamales. The passion of Derby Tamales eaters is unparalleled. Please bring them back so they will be happy!
5. Postum. The loss of this drink is a tragedy, as is the loss of the brand General Foods, now Kraft.
6. Morton Honey Buns. This is the one we hear most about readers missing. Con-Agra, please bring them back but if you do, find the correct formula.

ST. LOUIS – Introduced in 1898, Grape-Nuts was the nation’s first cold cereal, though you can also eat it hot. It’s not grape, nor is it nuts, but instead  it is whole wheat, flour, salt and yeast. It is baked, and then ground up and baked again. A glorious process of American history alive and well.

Post Foods LLC has reintroduced a retro package for Grape-Nuts to celebrate 100 years of the cereal. The backside (see below) shows various packaging over the years. There is also a picture of C.W. Post himself.

C. W. Post created Grape-Nuts to help with his digestion; in the process he created an empire. In the early days, it was accompanied by his health tract, The Road to Wellville. Grape-Nuts came after Postum, a hot drink he created.

His company was originally called the Postum Cereals company, but after it merged with Jell-O in 1925, Maxwell House coffee in 1928 it became General Foods Corporation in 1929. His daughter Marjorie Meriweather Post helped to grow the company into one of the nation’s greatest prepared foods companies.

In 1989, Philip Morris merged General Foods with Kraft Foods, which it had acquired in 1987. General Foods then became Kraft General Foods, then just Kraft Foods (big mistake). In 2007 Kraft spun off Post Cereals and it merged with Ralcorp Holdings. It is now Post Foods LLC.

Post makes a number of classic cereals, including Golden Crisp (we call it Super Sugar Crisp), Post Raisin Bran, Cocoa Pebbles, Fruity Pebbles and a few others. Sadly, Post Toasties (really corn flakes) were discontinued, as was Postum.

The company is smart to promote the Post heritage. Not only were he and his daughter innovators in food, she was philanthropic and left a long legacy of art and houses, including Hillwood in D.C. C.W. Post’s grand-daughter is the actress Dina Merill, Post’s daughter by husband E.F. Hutton. Interestingly, Dina Merill has been involved with resuscitating another wonderful American brand name, RKO, or Radio-Keith-Orpheum Studios.

Frankly, that’s a bit of a scary headline for us brand fiends here at BrandlandUSA. But it is certainly worrisome that we found this bag of Wheat Thins without Nabisco in the corner. Is Kraft (NYSE: KFT) dropping the Nabisco brand, just like they ditched the storied and valuable General Foods brand? And that’s on top of their cheesy new logo that no one likes.

To us the missing logo means one thing. If there is no Nabisco in the corner, there is no quality in the corner. Certainly, it’s an attractive package, and the Wheat Thins were tasty as always, but we won’t be buying them again unless we have the red Nabisco symbol in the corner. We don’t trust Wheat Thins without Nabisco red, and neither should any other readers. Frankly, Kraft’s stock has been stuck in a rut since 2002, and we don’t think ditching Nabisco will help.

Shame on you Kraft!

There could be any number of reasons why they are separating Nabisco from Wheat Thins, including it being a trial. But it is a mistake, as we pointed out in our story, Nabisco Brand Advice Corner.

1. To see how Wheat Thins sell without the red Nabisco label. If they sell O.K., then Kraft could value the Wheat Thins brand as a separate line or brand from Nabisco. Our response: This is an interesting trial of an idea, a trial balloon, but please put the Nabisco back, thank you. And frankly, the packaging looks nice, so there is no reason why it wouldn’t sell well. But the red Nabisco logo has nothing to do with it.
2. Because they think Nabisco is fuddy duddy. If that’s the case, and somehow packaging tests better without it, you all have made the brand fuddy duddy and you need to fix it. There is nothing fuddy about Nabisco; it’s like Coca-Cola. Nabisco is classic. Nabisco is America. Nabisco is the National Biscuit Company, thank you, and I will have no other.
3. Because they might turn Nabisco into a brand itself, and launch new products. That would be odd. As odd as Mac and Cheese branded crackers, btw. But they are doing it; Kraft just turned Nabisco into a classics line, with decent generic cookies iced and animal cookies sold under the brand Nabisco Classics. This is fine, but it is a downgrade, and evidence they are demoting Nabisco.
4. Because they are going to spin off either Nabisco or Wheat Thins, and need to separate the two brands.
5. Because a graphic designer got a bee up his you-know-what, and thought his pretty little design was too great to be cluttered up with a funny red symbol in the corner.

So here’s the deal Kraft. If I am going to trust a cracker and a cookie from your company, I need a Nabisco label on it. Otherwise, it’s Keebler, Sunshine, Pepperidge Farm, Carr’s or a store brand. You hear! And by the way, Kellogg’s makes Sunshine Hydrox now. So if you take the Nabisco off the Oreos too, we’ll have to switch there, too.

Do not drop the Nabisco corner.

The answer is BrandVault, a portfolio of “once popular but defunct” heritage company and product brand names. The BrandVault has 120 of these names, all ready in turn-key fashion for companies that need them.

The BrandVault was developed by the New York branding and marketing company CoreBrand last year. CoreBrand CEO James Gregory said in a release that the project was “a rare opportunity to acquire a classic brand that has been pushed aside through a merger, or some other quirk of business, yet retains tremendous brand equity.”

Companies spend enormous upfront costs to develop new names, but they often ditch the brands for many reasons other than brand awareness. BrandVault is positioned to save companies money when they need a new brand; the idea is to harness the old equity in a completely new product that mimics or echoes the old. “The astronomical cost of creating a name from scratch includes; research, name development, and legal research, just to get to the point of having a name without any value,” said Gregory.

It’s a great idea, but unfortunate that so many brands were lost along the way.

Some of the best known brands on the long list are below:

• Hollywood Candy Bar, established in 1912
• Lustre-Creme, the shampoo used by Marilyn Monroe
• Bowery Savings Bank, which was chartered in 1934. Now that sounds a heck of alot more stable than Citibank!
• Cocomalt, a chocolate malt milk drink sold by Nabisco back in the 1940s.
• Kool Shake. This was a sister to Kool-Aid, made by General Foods.
• Pom Poms. This was a candy made by the James O. Welch Company.

My personal favorites on the list?

• Collier’s. This was one of the nation’s greatest magazines.
• Stopette. The original spray deodorant, made famous as a sponsor of all those Mad Men era game shows.
• General Cinema. This was my favorite cinema chain, not so much for the actual buildings and movie scheduling, but the graphics that appeared at the beginning of the movies.

Interested in selling or buying a brand name? BrandlandUSA has just launched a classifieds page with brands for sale, and people and companies searching for brands.

Kraft, Unilever, and the Marzetti division of Lancaster Colony.  Time has not been kind to heritage brands or flavors in this day of the “world brand”.

Kraft (NYSE: KFT) has long been known for its fine salad dressings and other condiments and still maintains a sizable line under their namesake banner.  Several longtime flavors, Casino French and Salad Secret, have disappeared and a number are pretty obscure.  A recent change in bottles has lent the line a generic, cheap look, though the great taste remains.  Such line variations as Italian, House Italian, and Zesty Italian still coexist with the Seven Seas Viva Italian, also a Kraft label but for how long?

Kraft obtained the Seven Seas brand (see the photo of a 1976 bottle from the website www.winslam.com) through its acquisition of Anderson Clayton Foods.  AC was in businesses similar to Kraft:  salad dressings, oils, and margarine.  Alas, Kraft has scrapped all but the dressings.  As time has gone on, Kraft has de-emphasized the Seven Seas branding, though the bottles do feature a fairly bold Viva tagline and Seven Seas does appear as a large trademark on front and back labels and neck label.  The variety in the line has been gutted, and the bottles are the generic Kraft issue.  The most frequent sightings are Green Goddess, Red Wine Vinaigrette, and Viva Italian.  Under Anderson Clayton, it included Seven Seas’ own versions of such standards as Creamy Italian and Thousand Island.

The Good Seasons brand came to Kraft with the General Foods merger.  Much has been said on this site about the unfortunate fallout of that marriage and the subsequent de-emphasis of the General Foods identity.  Good Seasons had always been a packet mix sold with trademark glass cruets.  Around 12 varieties of dressing packets remain, and the cruets are still sold…but, surprise, hard to locate.  Under the Kraft regime, a line of upscale dressings was introduced using the Good Seasons brand.  They have all been relabeled Kraft on the front and back labels with the Good Seasons trademark appearing only as a tiny feature on the neck label.  One doesn’t think of Good Seasons as a pre-prepared dressing…more Kraft confusion.

Kraft has dallied with many brand extensions over the years.  Its Breakstone Sour Cream line and Philadelphia Cream Cheese line have both been used as salad dressing brands featuring the namesake product as an ingredient.  Neither remain in the line today, though some of the dressings feature mix-ins of Kraft brands…most notably the Ranch with Oscar Mayer bacon.

For their part, Unilever (NYSE: UL) keeps its dressings under the Wish-Bone trademark, using it for spray extensions and for the Bountifuls upscale line.  Under Hellmann’s previous owner, CPC/Best Foods, there were at least two previous Hellmann’s salad dressing lines.  One came out in the 1990′s, another in the late 1950′s-early 1960′s.  Neither survived, though the later incarnation popped up from time to time until the Unilever acquisition of Best Foods.  The world brand strategy leaves Hellmann’s to mayonnaise and uses only Wish-Bone for dressings.

The Marzetti division of Lancaster Colony makes the namesake Marzettti dressings (originally from Marzetti’s Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio), Pfeiffer’s dressings, Cardini’s dressings including their famous Caesar, and Girard’s.  The latter remain specialty/upscale lines; Marzetti and Pfeiffer are basically mass market discount brands these days.  In its day, Marzetti was more like Ken’s Steak House dressings are today.  Ken’s remains independent and was also restaurant-based (Massachusetts).

Mayonnaises and salad dressings like Miracle Whip are also frequently used for salads.  They remain a curious niche market even in today’s more homogenized world.  While the big brands like Kraft and Hellmann’s dominate, Sauer still markets Duke, Sauer’s, Bama, and JFG…all with loyal Southern markets.  Nalley’s (part of Birds Eye Foods) also markets mayonnaise (as well as salad dressings)  in the Western states.  Reily Foods of New Orleans continues national distribution of Blue Plate Mayonnaise.

Editor’s Note: Dooney Tickner is a regular contributor to BrandlandUSA. He owns Dooney’s Book Company in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

This week Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT) revealed its new logo in a ceremony at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York Conference in Boca Raton. It is, according to Adweek‘s report, to differentiate the product brand Kraft from the company brand Kraft. Please read the article in Adweek to see the logo as I can’t look at it I am so upset.

That is a bit of an exaggeration, but frankly, I find the new logo confusing. Kraft unwisely ditched decades years of brand equity when it dumped the General Foods corporate brand, and now it confuses customers again by changing the look of the familiar Kraft logo. What a waste of effort.

General Foods was a great brand, with a perfect, classic logo, and it was used mostly as a corporate brand, not as a product brand.

Writes Adweek‘s Elaine Wong:

The latest logo, however, is an attempt by Kraft to distinguish between its corporate and product brand identity. In a recent interview with Brandweek, Kraft chief marketing officer Mary Beth West said the company felt the need to redefine its mission…

Hey Mary Beth West! As logos go, your new Kraft logo by agency Nitro isn’t bad, and we are glad they got some work out of it, but we just wonder about the whole strategy. But here’s a little secret that you missed. Nitro could have tweaked the classic General Foods logo, and been done with it.

But no, this is what we get:

“In some ways, this really is all about Kraft Foods. It’s about our next step in the evolution of getting ourselves to top-tier performance. Going forward, it defines, unifies and simplifies our employees and gets everyone thinking about one common purpose,” West said.

We don’t understand why Kraft is doing this sort of thing; they are doing brilliant work with their Kool-Aid brand, and so many other products in their company are getting back on target. It’s just that they are missing the boat by sending General Foods to Alang.

But Kraft doesn’t have it all correct. The Wall Street Journal reported that Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld is pursuing a “top brand” strategy that tries to ensure that its brands are at the top of their category. This strategy is off base, as it imposes a one size fits all strategy on all brands, whether they are mega-brands like Kool-Aid and Jell-O or third-ranking brands like Post Cereals. Post Cereals have for decades been a more “adult” cereal brand; for Kraft to think they needed to be General Foods or Kellogg’s is a grievous mistake in understanding what Post is about. We hope Ralcorp (NYSE: RAL) will be better stewards of the Post brand.

But, that is to be expected from a company that could not figure out how to market brands like Postum in a time when health-conscious eating is the height of chic. While the stuff tasted weird, it had a niche following and brand extensions could have kept the line viable. What’s next, dumping or selling off Tang?

General Foods was a brand that was known to consumers as a master brand to numerous product brands like Tang, Maxwell House, Oscar Meyer and the like. Read our post on the unwise dumping of the General Foods name entitled Where is General Foods?

Frankly, they would do well to scrap the confusing Kraft identity, and go back to General Foods. Kraft is a dairy and refrigerated brand, and there is no getting around that. The “elephant” in the room in Boca Raton was actually a big ole mama cow, with giant teats, that was moo-ing something else, namely that Kraft is an excellent CONSUMER (not corporate) brand that decades of advertising has associated with C-H-E-E-S-E. That Kraft doesn’t get this is weird.

There is no getting around it.  Kraft does not spell F-O-O-D-S. It never will. Kraft does not spell a great consumer products company; I don’t infer this. I was taught this by my wasted childhood in front of American network television. Instead it goes like this:

“America spells cheese K-R-A-F-T.”