are your favourite products being discontinued??

[pulsatron]

I think both manufacturers and supermaket chains have got it in for me as quite a few of the products I like to buy and I trust are being discontinued.
Recently I have been trying in vain to purchase the Raid brand Surface Spray with eggstoppers,as I find this spray does not knock you out with a horrendous odour like Mortein and Baygon,so I sent an e-mail to S.C. Johnson, and asked about it,I received a reply today telling me that due to poor sales it has been discontinued and to try Baygon High Performance with Eggkill(even though I told the nitwit I could not take the smell of it).
So S.C. Johnson can go and get knotted, I won't buy their other spray I will find something else.
Here are a list of my favourite products now gone.
1.Father's favourite sauce(really nice on cooked meats.)
2.Blue Clinic shampoo.(the BEST shampoo ever.).
3.Flash all purpose cleaner.(powder cleaner you dissolved in warm water worked a treat.)
4.Ezi-Kleen.(spray on foam cleaner,changed to this when the above mentioned Flash went.).
5.Raid Surface Spray.(see above.).
6.Blue Torrent laundry detergent.(ok this was many, many years ago, but this is a rant.)
7.Devondale Ice Cream.(the creamiest ice cream ever.)
8.Philips Whitegoods.(very nice looking,especially the refrigerators.)
9.Bon-Ami.(another powder cleanser yep changed to this when Flash and Ezi-Kleen went,get my drift?.
Oh Well rant over(Damn you S.C. Johnson).
Cheers folks.
Steve.

 

[gizmo]

Bon Ami cleanser - When this disappeared I changed to White Lily, that is now hard to find and I recently tried Ajax Cream Cleanser, lemon flavour. Way way better than other cream cleansers I've used. Even the partner, who hardly knows which end of a dishmop to hold, commented how well it works.

Blue Torrent detergent - isn't that a fairly cheap detergent sold in a plastic bucket? They had it at The Warehouse quite recently...

Chris.

 

[panthera]

and the rearranging, the constant moving around of products

Stopped by the local "Schlecker" market yesterday. They had rearranged their shelves four times in 2006...barely February 2007 and guess what they were doing again.
I asked the clerk what on earth they thought this would accomplish. Did they really think customers would buy more because they had to look longer to find what they wanted (there are two similar stores in the same block who keep their shelves in pretty much the same arrangement year in and year out).
She said, nope - it was marketing and neither the store's managers nor clerk's nor customer's opinions mattered.
Their inventory systems showed sales dipping for three weeks after every change, recovering...but never increasing.
Never.
The store manager chimed in at this point. She thinks the problem in the retail industry is the following. Since the marketing people don't really do anything productive, they have to make up work to justify their existence.
My favorite product which disappeared recently was a sunscreen which is not tested on animals, was genuinely waterproof, non-greasy, non-sticky and even smelled good. Wrote the company and they replied: We have to reformulate our products to reflect the changes in the market.
The market now wants stinky, sticky, greasy sun-screen rubbed into rabbit's eyes?

 

[oxydolfan1]

Panthera, I'm actually surprised by that....German consumers are very environmentally conscious and are conscious of the animal cruelty issue.

Back here, my mother is very irritated because, apparently not only Windex with Vinegar, but also Orange Glo furniture polish have disappeared from the stores.....her two favorite cleaners.

They discontinued my Oreo White Chocolate Fudge cookies....then brought them back for the holidays as a "special edition"....at a higher price for a box that was easily one-third smaller.

Nestle Milk Chocolate bars are now sourced by a Brazilian manufacturer and the chocolate itself is God-awful...

I'm still peeved over the discontinuation of Dove dish detergent, as the Dove brand "repositioned" itself as a premium skin care brand, and Unilever decided to dump the household cleaner business...

Grossinger's Rye bread is no longer baked in its own factory, but sourced to a Baltimore-area bakery, and it is now as horrible-tasting as many of its brandmates.

Seabreeze astringent was an inexpensive face cleaner for my ex, and they changed it to an "active" formula that made him break out in hives.

Comet cleanser changed hands, and was "reformulated" by the new corporation, and the new version does not work properly.

Several vital nutritional supplements have disappeared as well.

I think this happens to everyone every now and then....

 

[dixieland]

I miss...

Dawn Free dishwashing liquid

Fresh Start (although I still have two bottles in my stash)

Original Scent Spic n Span (this sun fresh scent blows)

Beige Dial Soap

 

[danemodsandy]

Spic 'n' Span

I agree TOTALLY about Spic 'n' Span- it smelled fresh and clean before- the current scent should be labeled Old Mespotamian Whorehouse. And you'll play hell finding the powder version in a grocery store to begin with; all most of them carry are the liquid formulations, which are crap.

I also miss Original Pledge, which did a fantastic job on plastics, like the housings of TV sets. The current Pledge products are all oily, leaving a residue. Fortunately, Favor High Shine is a decent substitute for Original Pledge.

The best I can say for the reformulated Comet is that it was not broke and they have not fixed it.

Lux soap was my favourite for decades; now Lever has discontinued it in the U.S. You now have to order it through specialty websites at a fortune per bar. I am so angry about that one that I don't buy Unilever products AT. ALL. any more.

S.C. Johnson's Glo-Coat is gone, and Future Floor Finish is getting hard to find. I hatehateHATE no-wax vinyl floors- they're much less harder-wearing than the old kind, easily damaged. Give me floor wax and a wax applicator from Fuller Brush, and I'm happy.

And for conventional-clean ovens, Drackett's Oven Gard is no more. It was a spray that you applied to the inside of the oven. Spills just wiped up, and it made cleaning much easier. You almost didn't resent not having a self-cleaning oven with Oven Gard around.

If I had to choose one item from this list to bring back it would be Lux, followed closely by the original scent Spic 'n' Span.

 

[panthera]

not all

Scott, most folks over here are just like most Americans: They could care less, as long as they get what they want, when they want it and at a price they want to pay.
The main difference is that the government is much more aware of environmental issues than in the US.
Sort of like the Carter adminsitration, but without the negativity.
Another thing I miss: What happened to Tri-Sodium Phospate? Was a great cleaner.

 

[oxydolfan1]

Sandy, believe it or not, they still sell the original white Lux Soap in a Canadian (same as the old US) version at our local dollar stores, for, yes, one dollar for a three-bar pack, and an Indonesian version in single-bar form...

I'd like to add Jergens ActiBath Muscle Soak Tablets (for the bathtub) as well....

 

[oxydolfan1]

TSP is only available in hardware stores now.

Again, the wall-washing product "Soilax" has vanished, as well as the original "Glass Wax"....both very handy products.

 

[whirlcool]

Does anyone remember using Glass Wax and stencils to make Christmas designs on your windows?

Bon Ami discontinued? We still have it at our local Walmart and grocery stores. We like it because it doesn't scratch surfaces like the cultured stone found in bathroom vanity tops.

And you are right about no wax floors not lasting as long. Back in the 90's we had a Mannington Gold no wax floor put on our kitchen. Within a year where the kitchen chairs would slide back and forth from the table scratches in the floor surface started to form. And while out kitchen was not huge, that was a $5k floor!
Just give us a Armstrong Solarium floor with a can of Glo Coat!

 

[petek]

Not exactly along the lines of the thread but I was somewhat shocked the other day when I looked I read the bottle of my HP Sauce and saw that it was now made in Fairlawn New Jersey of all places. For all of my 50+ years it was either imported from the UK or made here in Canada. The majority of Americans didn't even know what it was. The bottle says made by Lea & Perrins but the web says Heinze bought the company so I'm guessing without further investigation that Heinz bought Lea & Perrins.

 

[danemodsandy]

Lux

Oxy:

I'll keep my eyes peeled for the Lux formulations you mention; I'm an old dollar-store shopper from way back, so if the Canadian formula is to be found this far South (Atlanta), I'll find it. The Lux sold on the Web is South American production.
Whirlcool: Bon Ami is discontinued in Australia, where gizmo is. It's going stronger than ever here, because it's a very "green" product, with no perfumes, bleaches, or dyes. The company has a Website; it's the same company that makes Faultless Starch.

 

[danemodsandy]

One More Rant

Note to Manufacturers Everywhere:

I am SO DAMN SICK of seeing Rachael Ray's grinning face on products that I cannot tell you. This woman knows next to nothing about food. All she is doing is pimping her fame out at so many bucks a pop. Watch a video of any Julia Child segment from the past, then watch Rachael, and tell me if you consider Ray someone you want to be connected with your product. The low point (so far) is seeing Ray on the packaging for Nabisco saltine crackers. WHAT, pray tell, does that have to do with the culinary arts?

 

[maytagbear]

For me, it is

SHAMPOOS!

I find a shampoo that works well with my fine, oily hair, and it's either reformulated or discontinued entirely.

Textra-- gone

For Oily Hair Only-- gone

Prell Concentrate-- reformulated

I could increase the list, but I think you get the idea.

Right now, I am using what I consider to be a barely acceptable compromise, Head and Shoulders in the blue bottle.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[danemodsandy]

Maytagbear

Try Suave Daily Clarifying Shampoo. There's also a matching conditioner; both are oil-free. They work great on my hair, which is exactly what you describe yours to be like. They're low in price, usually a buck a bottle.

Let me guess- Scots-Irish background, right? ;-)

 

[maytagbear]

Close--

50% Welsh heritage, 50% German.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try it soon!

L/Mb

 

[danemodsandy]

Lawrence:

Close enough- there's something about that ancestry (I'm Scots-Irish) that almost guarantees oily skin and hair. I have to shower twice a day to feel really clean.

 

[dixieland]

Spic and Span

I did manage to find boxes of the original scent here in Memphis as a janitorial supply store. It is the commercial version and about $6-7 per box. Too expensive if you ask me. The other day I did also get the lavendar version of the liquid (which I am assuming is geared to the Latin-American community much like Fabuloso and the like). It smells okay.

 

[panthera]

Sandy/Lawrence

Oh my, I got the oils from both the German and Celtic sides. Since we have none in our skin, I wonder why our hair should be the next best thing to a tar-pit.
Lawrence: Your e-mail box ist voll! Absolut, total voll.
Head and Shoulders in the Blue bottle does work...