Twinkies maker Hostess plans to go out of business: Thomson Reuters Business News - MSN Money

As we've learned from recent news:   Twinkies maker Hostess plans to go out of business: Thomson Reuters Business News - MSN Money

Who would have even thought it possible, which I guess says something about the temporary nature of even major brands.  No Hostess?  What about Twinkies, Ding Dongs, etc?

Well, my prediction is that a lot of these foods will not really disappear.  They have too broad of a following.  Indeed, I'm quite surprised to learn that Hostess is in trouble, I would have never have guess that. The fact that it is says something about the state of the American economy and production.  Whatever that is probably isn't a good thing either. Be that as it may, while I myself haven't had a twinkie in years, my prediction is that the snack products party of the company will be bought up by somebody who will keep on making them.

While I've been sort of violating this rule recently, this blog isn't really supposed to be a series of running comments on the state of the U.S. today, but in the past, related to today.  So I'll forgo commenting too much on what this odd development might mean. But it is interesting to note how big name brands of the past can evaporate and disappear.  What we think of as being a really stable product line might not be.

One area that this has been proven to be true of is beer.  Lots of beer is still brewed in the country, of course, but the labels have changed somewhat, and even where they haven't, the makeup of the brewers has.  When I was a kid, here, the beer brands you saw around were Coors, Budweiser, Olympia, Hamms and Pabst.  Coors was a regional brand at that time, apparently coveted  by those elsewhere.  As such, it was really a survivor from an earlier era, as the beer scene of the 1950s to 1970s was really quite different from what it had been prior to Prohibition.  Prior to the Volstead Act there'd been all kinds of regional breweries all over.  Casper had one such brewery, that being the Hilcreast Brewery.  It went under, I think, due to the Depression.  Outfits like Coors, Budweiser, Leininkugels, etc., held on somehow and started back up in 1932.  The entire industry begain contracting sometime after WWII and there started to be fewer and fewer brands over time.  Even where multiple lables still existed, they were somtimes owned by the same companies.

 Southern drinking establishment, early 1940s.  The beers being advertised are "Jax" and "Regal", neither of which I've heard of.  Hires Root Beer, still around, was apparently also behind the bar.

Reversing course in the 1980s, new small breweries came in, often with much better beer, and now there's all sorts of labels once again.  I don't know if Olympia even still exists.  Coors does of course, but Budweiser was bought by a huge Belgian entity, making what some have regarded as the very symbol of American beer a foreign owned outfit, at least for now.  American beer, for that matter, might better be defined by Sam Adams, a brewery that came on since the 1970s. Around here a regional brewery that has done wall has been New Belgian, which was just a small outfit when I first heard of it while living in Laramie in the early 1980s.  The beer brands have come and gone, quite clearly.

But so have the soda brands.  Coke and Pepsi remain the cola kings, of course, but at one time you'd also find Royal Crown around here.  Not anymore.  The other biggies, Mountain Dew, Doctor Pepper, Orange Crush, and 7 Up were around then as now.  But a collection of diet sodas, a new thing, also were that are sort of rare, if not absent, today.  Tab was one.  Fanta another.  I think that some of these may still exist, but you hardly ever see them.  If we go back further, however, there were a whole host of brands that were popular in some regions that might still exist, but which aren't as big of names as they once were.  Nehi we still see here occasionally, but not all that often.  Moxey, believe it or not, was a popular soda in the US back in the 1920s.

 Royal Crown getting lower and lesser mention on building, Natchez Miss, late 1930s.

Royal Crown and Coca Cola with some forgotten brands.

Another place there's been a massive amount of change over, in terms of brand names, has been in automobiles.  Even in the past few years a few well known General Motors lines of old disappeared.  The same is true for the Ford Motor Company.  Up until quite recently, I had a Mercury Cougar parked outside the house that I used for a daily driver.  Now, not only is the car gone, but Mercury is gone too.  Of course, Ford remains, but there are car manufacturers that have completely disappeared.  International Harvester, for example, still makes heavy equipment but it no longer makes light trucks and SUVs, like it once did.  Studebaker still exists as a company, but not as an automobile company.  Packard, Hudson, Willys, etc; all gone.

Packard workers building Rolls Royce aircraft engines during World War Two.

These companies, it should be noted, were not minor concerns, as it sometimes seems to be claimed now.  Packard was a major engine producer during World War Two.  Studebaker 6x6 trucks were used principally by the Soviet Union, GM production being so vast that the US didn't need Studebaker 6x6s.  Thousands upon thousands Studebaker trucks were made and supplied to the USSR via lend lease as a result.  Willys, together with Ford, made thousands of Jeeps and Willys gets the credit, along with Bantam, for creating the Jeep.  The big three were all around, of course, at that time, but they had a lot of competition.

Airlines provide another example.  Pan American, TWA, etc., were common names in US air travel following World War Two.  Since then it seems airlines have come and gone constantly. When I was a kid, our airport was served by Western Airlines and Frontier Airlines. Western is still around, but it doesn't fly into here.  Frontier, to my surprise, is still around as well, but likewise doesn't fly here.  Now, United and Delta do, through a regional airline they contract with, Skywest.  

Even such things as clothing brands prove to be less durable than times would suggest.  When I was a kid, the jeans brand was Levis.  Wranglers and Lees were around too, but only real ranch people wore Wranglers.  I've always liked Lees, but I'm about the only one I know who does, so how they hand on I have no idea. And, of course, Carhartt existed, but it was worn only by working men.

Since then, zillions, seemingly, of Jeans companies have entered the market and Levis no longer is what it once was.  The choice is definitely broader than that presented by three companies, and "Levis" no longer defines jeans to such an extent that the product name is interchangeable with the clothing item.

What the point would be, in general, of all of this?  Well, I don't know that there really is one, other than that at least in product names, things really are less permanent than what may be familiar at any one time might suggest.

All photos on this thread from our Flickr site.