Recycling Famous Brands

I've touched on this subject before but the trend just keeps getting more ridiculous. That is the recycling of our famous brands. Apparently, the creative and marketing folks can's come up with new concepts. They now just slightly modify a well-known name or brand. Almost every trip to the grocery store, there is a new version or flavor of an old time product. 

TV and the movies are notorious for doing sequels, spinoffs, and revivals. This coming TV series, we have a new version of Magnum PI. Based on the previews I've seen, it looks like only the Hawiaan location and red Ferrari remain from the original. CBS already has the reboot of Hawaii Five-O. That same network also has the Young Sheldon spinoff of The Big Bang Theory. There are three versions of the NCIS franchise. There used to be several versions of Law and Order and CSI. This is not new, we have had numerous versions of Star Trek for the last 50 years. In the Movies, we have the Star Wars franchise and several other superhero sequels. The Ocean's series has used numbers between 8 and 13 to designate the films. How about The Fast and the Furious movies How many have there been? And all with the same script, just different cars and locales.

It is not just the entertainment industry. Food is a particularly derivative industry. There used to be one flavor of Cheerios, Oreos, Triscuits, Corn Flakes, 3 Musketeers, etc. Buying Triscuits, Wheat Thins or even Cheese-Itz is now a major decision point. They all have multiple flavors, sizes, and textures. Sea Salt, low sodium, gluten-free, no GMO, organic, and a thousand other descriptive adjectives. Some real, many complete marketing BS. Candy is and has always been gluten-free, but now it is trendy to put that on the label. Remember when yogurt was a small section in the dairy aisle? Now it takes up more room than milk. Is it really fair to call two vanilla cookies with a chocolate filling an Oreo? According to Nabisco, now almost every sandwich type cookie is an Oreo. There are dozens of flavors and combinations. While spinoffs and variations have always been around, the changes have come far more quickly of late. Oreos were mostly only available in the original flavor from 1912 until the 1970s when different shapes and sizes emerged. New flavors finally came about after 2000. 

Sometimes the new flavor or shape has absolutely no relationship to the original. It's the same for TV and movies. The current Mission: Impossible movie franchise has very little to do with the original TV series. The original was about a tight team of professionals who worked together to outsmart the adversary. Little or no violence or gunplay was necessary. Tom Cruise is a lone wolf who displays superhuman abilities and has an impressive arsenal of weapons. A low-key, brainy TV original vs an over the top bombastic movie series reboot. I'll take Peter Graves over Tom Cruise. 

There is at least one more disturbing area of this recycling trend. That is the reviving of a once iconic brand name for a new, usually crappy, product. I have seen late night infomercials that tout the Bell & Howell or Polaroid name. It's usually for some $19.99 plus shipping and handling, we'll double it for the next 10 minutes, product. Buyer beware.

I know this trend will continue and probably accelerate. In fact, I may recycle this bitch in the future.

wjh