This past weekend I made a happy discovery as I was cleaning
out a cabinet in the spare bedroom. I
discovered an unopened container of body butter, a kind I’d used for a number of
years. Somehow it had been pushed to the
back of the cabinet and I had forgotten about it. After happily showering and slathering it all
over myself I went to the Internet to find out how much it costs these
days. Surprise, surprise….they don’t
make it any more.
I grew up in the days when there was a thing called ‘brand
loyalty’. Everyone and his brother didn’t
make a knock-off version of each product, so if you used Noxzema, you used
Noxzema. Every time you went to the drug
store shelf that chunky blue jar would be waiting for you. It always looked the same….it always smelled
the same….and it was in the same doggoned place you expected it to be. We all knew Noxzema cured acne, stopped
itching, soothed sunburn and healed dishpan hands. It was nothing short of a mentholated
miracle, but recently I was disappointed to discover it doesn’t smell the same! I want to go on record as saying I do not want new and improved...I want old and relateable!
I remember a huge jar of Ponds Cold Cream on the cabinet in
my grandmother’s bathroom. She used it
to clean her skin, soften her hands and, my bet would be, it likely eased the squeaks
on a few door hinges. It just seemed to
be good for everything. I still recall how silky and cold it always felt, even
on the hottest summer days. Every now
and then I would quietly close and lock the bathroom door and twist open the
jar to inhale the creamy scent, poking a finger into the gooey stuff.
These things ran through my mind as I researched the newly
discovered jar of my old favorite skin cream on line.
Why don’t things stick around anymore?
In this ‘hurry up and change’ world we live in I think we’ve all come to
terms with the fact that it doesn’t pay to get attached to anything. Find a bra you really like and I guarantee
it won’t be there next time you shop your favorite lingerie department. Victoria’s real “secret” is the invisible
expiration date on everything produced for consumers these days. Why don’t they just stamp “this item will not
be available after 00/00/00”? At least
it would give us a chance to warehouse some quantity of a favorite hair spray
or skin cream or under garment for future use.
It seems to me that companies spend more on advertising than
on production. ‘Our product may not be good enough for the long haul, but if it’s
promoted well we can make a profit and get on to the next big advertising
campaign before they wise up to us’, seems to be the mantra of big companies
these days. I blame a lot of that
mentality on the fact that competition is around every corner. Make a good product and in six weeks you’ll
see a knock off on the pharmacy shelf just below yours at three dollars
less. Wait three months and there will
be an end display of “As Seen on TV” products that mimic yours for $9.95. Finally, another version of your product
shows up on a late night television infomercial selling as a ‘buy one get one free, just pay separate
shipping and handling’ offer. It has
to be frustrating.
I guess it’s just the way this world works today, but I
still miss the simpler times when Ponds Cold Cream, in an un-researched, generic black and white jar,
sat atop my grandmother’s dresser. The
world seemed simpler and ever so much more predictable. Embracing the slogan “nothing is constant
but change”, I guess I will just have to stock up next time I find a skin cream
I really like. The trick is to ferret
away just enough stuff. If I multiply
the number of bottles (or jars) of skin cream by the number of ‘leg shaving’
years I have left….then divide that by the total days of sunshine predicted for
the next ten years I might come up with a workable number.
That’s my own new and improved formula……..
Life is Good
