Who wants to go to Shakey’s Pizza? If you were of a certain generation, everyone did. My personal memory is of a pizza parlor on Virginia Beach Boulevard near the Princess Anne Plaza shopping center in Virginia Beach. The “parlor” was small. A player piano played bad Dixieland. Badly editedMORE HERE
What to do when you have a good brand, but then the market changes and technology changes, and the old brand can no longer exist? You do what the New York radio station WABC 77 AM does. It compromises. WABC 77 has had many lives. It was first the flagshipMORE HERE
What to do when you have a great, old brand with a great history and you need a new trick? Release a classic version of the product. That’s just what Golden Valley, Minn.-based General Mills just did with their Wheaties cereal brand. General Mills released a vintage version of theMORE HERE
Old venerable brand. Unionized workers. Well-known. Losing money. First-rate products. Legendary brand allure. Icon. Such is the case with Corning subsidiary, Steuben Glass. No longer is lead crystal the must-have bridal gift, and no longer is Corning willing to lose money. USA Today reports they have lost $30 million overMORE HERE
General Foods, the company founded by Clarence Birdseye, inventor of frozen foods, and C.W. Post, creator of Postum, is no longer around. When General Foods merged with Kraft, the General Foods got lost. That is too bad. Because Kraft is a fine name, but we associate that with dairy foods.MORE HERE
We found a great thread on defunct or forgotten hockey brands on the website goaliestore.com. It is a good exercise to go looking to fan boards to find brands that are underutilized and authentic. Message boards always have fans that are more ardent, and thus tend to know the soulMORE HERE
Anyone who loves aviation will be happy to know that JetBlue’s restoration of the TWA Flight Center, also known as Terminal 5, is moving along nicely, and will open in the fall of 2008. The project is so close to completion that the airline has begun plugging it on itsMORE HERE
When one thinks of vintage travel trailers, Airstream always comes to mind. That company has mined its history so much that a new version of a classic Airstream camper has been designed by Design Within Reach. But in recent years, as Airstream has become hip again, hipsters have sought theMORE HERE
Easy to Pair. Fun to Wear. That’s the simple premise of Garanimals. And they are back this February 2008 at Wal-Mart. It’s the perfect brand to bring back. The public knows the brand story. Its simple; match the animals, and the clothes match. The line was founded in 1972, thoughMORE HERE
For people who love classic advertising, there are few commercials more irresistible than the TV ads of The Himmel Group. While Himmel Group is not well known, its former brands and ads are. There is that Doan’s Pills “back” and the Porcelana lady. Brands associated with Himmel over the yearsMORE HERE