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.
Huevos, thank you for your thoughtful post. I am most concerned by the rebranding of Pizza Hut, one of the last great Americas institutions we still have. Lately I've seen signs of its demise, from the increasingly silly fonts in the brand's ads to the closing of the sit-down restaurant closest to my home on Long Island. To rebrand Pizza Hut in a vain attempt to modernize it would be to destroy hundreds of thousands of years of pedigree and reputation. Whoever is in charge at Yum! brands needs to consider the gravity of what they are doing, and if they ever change the recipe for the breadsticks and sauce (not the cheese breadsticks, those are a modern heresy), they might as well shut the mfkr down.
ReplyDeleteon this day in 1968, Russell Tyrone Jones came into this ol' dirty world.
ReplyDeleteWow... I'd like to say I planned the timing of the ODB mention, but it's more of a coincidence. In reality I was thinking about the post much closer to the 6th anniversary of the day he left this world... 11/13. But this could be a sign that the Rounge needs revival.
ReplyDeleteTG- I am also curious whether Pizza Huts still have the all-you-can-eat lunchtime buffet... quite possibly the greatest deal in the world when you were a middle-schooler with 4 bucks in your pocket. (except, that is, for the curious case of the dessert pizza)
ReplyDeleteI'm largely against the re-branding of the old school stuff due to what I call the "A-Rod Phenomenon". Every old person thinks young kids talk like that and call everyone some hyphenated short form. It's like when everyone who was just slightly out of touch thought young people said "izzle" with every consonant. Anyway, the most egregious example I can think of is National Geographic going by "NatGeo" as if it's new name will make it hip amongst the crowd that was too afraid to admit they liked science, lest they get beat up by the kids who preferred extreme mountain dew.
ReplyDeleteThe Hut will never work, and I always thought it was funny to make fun of people who's houses look like a pizza hut. Also, do people who make stain glass windows only have 2 end users, churches and the people who make the overhanging lights for pizza hut?
Huevos, does the "Double Stuf" imply that there is a technical definition of "Stuff" and the crap inside oreos doesn't even qualify for that (like the non-chicken chicken breeding farms of KFC)? Doesn't everyone prefer the cookie of the oreo anyway? I know I do. Would Eli and Peyton Manning lend their super bowl winning names to something that doesn't qualify as full fledged Stuff? I'd love to see Tom Brady endorse Hydrox in retaliation.
Anyway, GFY The Hut. Has anyone had a double down yet? Routting?