So I was eating an Oreo today and I thought, there's a Roundy behind this… maybe not a 'the Rounge shut down a year ago and this is gonna bring it back' Friday Roundy, but one nonetheless. But more on the cookie later.
Remember a few years back when KFC was still Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Colonel was still a caricature of a drunken, antebellum chicken farmer? Well, times changed. Yum! brands took over and decided to push the public's focus on the long popular nickname "KFC". Most likely the decision was made due to the growing health food trend- which the word 'fried' certainly did no justice to. But there was no shortage of speculation that the abbreviation was done for the C-word… 'Chicken', since KFC had found a cheaper alternative. Personally I think that's still chicken in the Double Down Sandwich, along with about 2 days worth of unhealthy fried fat/goodness. So maybe they just thought it was shorter to say?
Which brings us to Yum!'s more recent and less pronounced plan- rebranding Pizza Hut as "The Hut". I've heard less opinion that what they're serving is not actually pizza, but I think a case could be made. Certainly their expansion into other gourmet Italian cuisine- like the pasta you purchase by the kilo, may mean they didn't want to be seen as one-dimensional.
Anyway, Yum!'s branding decisions are really just meant as a prelude to the Oreo question. Today I looked at a container of Oreo Double Stuf cookies and noticed that, yes, that's right, they are "Double Stuf" with one f. This confuses me. What is Nabisco trying to pull over on us? Did they at some point switch from normal stuff to a cheaper, synthetic stuff, and feel they could be legally liable if if they left the full word in-tact? I'll admit I hadn't experienced an Oreo Double Stuf cookie in some time, so I don't know when exactly the change occurred, and to be honest, I wouldn't have noticed a difference based on taste alone. But that missing f does bother me.
Then I wondered if maybe they just were going for the succinct thing. But if that were the case, wouldn't they follow in KFC's footsteps and go all the way to ODS? It worked for ODB, right? I mean, ODB was considered a visionary artist whereas Ol' Dirty B*st*rd was more of an Ol' Dirty B*st*rd. I don't mean that Dirty. RIP.
Anyway, I'm starting to think there's something amiss in the food industry.
