Laundress told us...

[mich]

That the days of a P&G Color Care detergent was coming.. and it finally did. To be honest, I was quite frankly surprised that they didn't re-introduce this formula under their old-beloved cheer brand, however, I do understand that there in the process of phasing that brand out, so I guess the Tide name, is the perfect image for the product. 

 

But... Anyway

 

 

Tide Advanced Color Guard is Here It's Tide Detergent, yes, Tide liquid detergent, without ANY OB's.

 

 

 

 

[magic_clean]

I believe

this is the latest version of Tide Total Care.....which has worked great in our laundry room.

http://www.tide.com/en-US/product/tide-total-care.jspx

 

[launderess]

Available at Wally World!

Robot or human?

 

[launderess]

Now For The Real Skinny

As one predicted or mentioned Cheer detergent is being phased out and discontinued . In it's place you now have "Tide Plus Colorguard"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheer_(brand)

It was the "Colorguard" that at once got my attention. As one remembers Cheer detergent (and still have a few boxes of the stuff) contained "Colourguard".

Besides not including OBAs (this varied by which version of Cheer one laid hands upon and or P&G's changing whims), Cheer detergent contained small amounts of oxygen bleach to counter the chlorine found in most American tap water supplies. This is how the detergent "guarded" one's colours.

Am dying to see if P&G incorporated any of the extensive colour protection systems found say in Ariel and other detergents offered in Europe.

http://www.target.com/p/tide-plus-colorguard-high-efficiency-liquid-laundry-detergent-92oz/-/A-15701041

 

[whirlcool]

It's starting to look like P&G is going to name all their detergents "Tide" and just have tons of purpose built variants on the name to choose from.

 

[launderess]

Why not?

Outside of the USA such as in Europe P&G has only one top shelf brand, Ariel. It comes in universal, colours, and God only knows how many other formulas but they all are under the same name.

Never understood why P&G kept Cheer around for so long in the first place. Especially as they kept changing the properties and marketing so it became harder and harder to tell why one should purchase the stuff.

Cheer began as a detergent with bluing (Blue Cheer). That morphed into "All Temperature Cheer" and later Cheer with "Colorguard" which was designed to protect colors. Then began a litany of Cheer versions some with OBAs (not what one or many others want in a detergent for colors), "Bright clean" technology, Cheer for Darks, etc..., etc..., etc....

 

[supersuds]

In Big Lots last week, I noticed the shelves groaning with a huge assortment of Era, at attractive prices. Wonder if it's going to get the chop, too.

 

[mich]

Why not...?

With P&G's Tide, Simply Clean... now offering attractive detergent, at a lower cost point to consumers (the goal of Era) I don't see a marketing purpose of keeping it around. 

 

[angus]

So I guess Tide will now become the "Macy's" of detergents. All the regional stores we grew up with - Abraham and Straus, Filene's, Burdine's, Rich's, Goldsmith's, Bullock's, I Magnin, Shillito's, Lazarus, Sanger Harris, Foley's, Jordan Marsh, Marshall Field have become Macy's. So now, P&G will now own most or all shelf space with the Tide name. Amazing that with all the new Tide products and variants, we still cannot get the original Tide fragrance from the 50's/60's. Oh, well.

 

[supersuds]

"Brand extension" seems to be the marketing mantra these days. It's why you see so many varieties of Dove and Dial soap. In the past, Lever Brothers had Lux, Lifebuoy, Praise, Phase III and probably others even more forgotten. Now it's Dove This, Dove That, Dove for Dogs, etc.

If Era and Cheer are going, and Ivory Snow is gone, what has P&G got left? Tide, Gain, Dreft? Bold seems to be theoretically available, but I never see it in any store, just online.

 

[launderess]

To Be Fair

Many American detergent brands are just reincarnations of former products that either no longer make sense in the modern market place and or really are surplus to requirements.

For the Western market places such as most of Europe and North America automatic laundry detergent and other sectors have long matured. So much like toothpaste, Kleenex, toilet paper, and so froth you get new twists and such, but basically nothing totally new. The innovation we are seeing today revolves around the movement towards compact/ultra, liquids and gels. This along with finding perhaps less toxic chemicals to use as various governments seek to ban or reduce amounts of borax/boron, NPE, phosphates, etc...

Ivory Snow had been around for ages and first began as with Lux and many others as a soap product for fine and nursery laundry, woolens and such. By the 1980's or so modern man made surfactant based products such as Woolite, Dreft, and such took over much of that market. PG kept the brand but moved it to a "detergent" for again fine laundry.

Thing is for P&G and other TOL laundry product makers is that consumers found out during the recent recession that there isn't *that* much difference between say Tide and Wisk. Indeed some products once considered second tier perform just as well or even better than top tier products and cost less.

At some point for marketing purposes you want to go with a strong leader and drop what isn't selling to cut down on confusion. It also allows companies to use the attachment consumers have towards one brand to benefit a whole range.

Again in Europe we have seen this for ages. Persil from Henkel comes in everything from Universal to fine/silk/woolens detergents. Henkel like P&G do have lower price lines sold under different brand names, but IIRC in general they are designed not to compete with top shelf products.

 

[supersuds]

All true. My point was more that about the changes in marketing. There used to be one Tide, one Gain, etc. If a slight variation was developed, it got a new name.

Also, I'd submit that having 25 variations of Tide doesn't exactly cut down on confusion; quite the opposite! It must be a nightmare for stores to keep track of all those stock numbers.

 

[launderess]

Stock numbers

At least here most all shops except small mom and pop (and there aren't many of those left) use barcodes and scanners, so don't think inventory is a huge problem even with multiple items. Have seen however it can present some confusion say if Tide liquid goes on sale but only for certain varieties.

 

[aamassther]

Called P&G this afternoon to ask about whether or not the new Tide CG contains OBA's. The customer service rep stated what I suspected, that it does indeed contain them and confirmed that the only product in their line up that doesn't is the Cheer powder. Not sure why they insist on OBA's in everything. But there we have it.