Where Are the Brands of Yesteryear?

There were several brands of shampoo in my childhood that are long gone: Halo, Drene, Finesse, Luster-Crème (I can still remember the radio jingles for Halo and Luster-Crème).

Of course a lot of consumer products come and go. Presumably they disappear from the market if they were not successful. But sometimes a brand that was big can also disappear: In my childhood there was a toothpaste called Ipana that I am sure was one of the top sellers, and it disappeared, too. It must have finally had a lot of its sales gobbled up by another brand.

Not too many consumer product names last a really long time, like Coca-Cola, which goes back to the nineteenth century, or Tide detergent, which I think goes back to around World War II. (Synthetic detergents were given their original impetus by the war, which made some products like soap scarce—and there's a similar story with margarine as originally a substitute for butter, scarce in wartime. A few of the early margarine brands are still around.)

Some consumer names can still be seen but they're not the original companies. That's true of names like RCA. The original company, Radio Corporation of America, at one point was bought by the French firm Thomson. Today if you see an RCA-branded product it's probably has little to do with the original company; and similarly for a number of other names, particularly those in consumer electronics or appliances, like Crosley—a very old name that made refrigerators, some great, sought-after radios, etc. The rights to a name can be sold and bought so that the modern-day use of the name is by some company not having any direct descent from the original one.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein