Author: Kim du Toit

Disappearing Products

Corporate Fuckery, Marketing / Advertising

I read this story about the redoubtable Martha Stewart with some interest:

Homemaking mogul Martha Stewart recently revealed that she’s been using the same exact container of liquid eyeliner for 15 to 20 years – and some experts are sounding the alarm over the practice.

In a new makeup tutorial, which she demonstrated for Allure, the 83-year-old admitted that she rotates through five tubes of the discontinued T. LeClerc liquid eyeliners.

In order to keep them looking good, Stewart shared that she just adds water to them, and they haven’t dried out – yet.

Let’s just ignore the usual panic-mongering of “experts” because fuck ’em:  Our Martha doesn’t seem to be suffering any harm, and she’s 83 years old, so she can do whatever the hell she wants.

I am more interested in the fact that T. LeClerc (whoever they are) discontinued the lady’s favorite makeup, despite her ringing endorsement thereof.  And if the star power of Martha Stewart can’t stop a beloved brand from disappearing of the shelves, what chance do we mere mortals have when it comes to our favorite products disappearing into the ether?  Why, none at all.

Here’s my own tale of woe.

I have been using the same brand of deodorant ever since I was old enough to start needing it, i.e. early adolescence (70 minus 13 equals 57 years of continuous, unbroken use).  This is it:


…taken from my purchase history at Amazon in 2021, when I last purchased a case of the stuff — because it had completely disappeared from all supermarket- and drugstore shelves.  I suspected it was going to be problematic to reorder it, hence my large purchase.

And of course, my gloomy prediction has indeed come to pass, because when I searched for it recently, I got this foul note:

Well, it won’t.  I’ve searched high and low, and it’s gone.

Some brief history of the brand is in order, before I continue.

Old Spice is one of those flagship brands, once manufactured by Shulton, and subsequently purchased by the loathsome Procter & Gamble company (may their little Cincinnati nostrils rot).  Old Spice is a remnant of the “heritage” brands;  almost uniquely among male toiletries, the research showed that it was the brand most likely to be purchased by young men adopting their father’s favorite.  Indeed, the Old Spice Classic deodorant and aftershave (the latter in that distinctive little white bottle with the gray press-in top) can still be found in stores, and it was my Dad’s aftershave, the only one I can remember him using — hence when it came time to buy deodorant and aftershave, it was the brand I first sampled.

Unfortunately, the Classic didn’t work for me — it was too pungent, and it didn’t smell the same on me as it did on my Dad (#DifferentPhysiology).  Even my Mom noticed the difference.  So I did the next thing:  I tried a variant — at the time the only variant — of Old Spice, and discovered the “Fresh” label.

It fit me like a glove:  smelled great, worked well (even with the dreaded Teenage Hormones) and — if I may be indiscreet for a moment — it played no small part in my youthful seductions.  I smelled good, always, and still do.

That may not last, however, because with the Classic Fresh having disappeared, I now have to try to find its replacement.  And to date, I can’t.

I must have tried every Old Spice variant — and there are now fucking dozens of them — on the market.

Fucking hell, what a shit show.

I’ve tried them all, but none smell good, in fact the reverse.  And for those Alert Readers who spotted the “Fresh” variant at the end of the second pic, it may actually be the worst of the lot:  oily, pungent and just foul.  They changed the formulation.

In its own small way, this is just a replica of the Coke / New Coke / Classic Coke marketing fuckup of the 1980s, except that P&G (may their armpits rot) are never going to reissue the Fresh variant in its original formula because #P&GAreAssholes.

And I’ve also tried some Brands Not Old Spice, with horrifying results.  Yeccchhh.  And this experimentation is expensive because of Bidenflation, where instead of just paying a few bucks for a stick of deodorant, nowadays one has to get a credit check first.

I know that in the grand scheme of things, the travails of some Elderly White Guy trying to find a decent replacement deodorant are indeed small potatoes.  But it still gets up my nose — literally, in many cases — that after over five decades of loyal use, some cunt in Marketing (aided and abetted by some cunt in Finance) has decided that my beloved product is no longer viable, and has tossed it into the trashcan of history, and me along with it.

I need to get to the range.

Might As Well

Drive Time

I’ve sounded off before about the stupid management of Jaguar, who’ve turned what must be the most iconic British car company into some kind of purveyor of microwave ovens by going all-electric.  So their latest move comes as no surprise:

Jaguar has ditched its teeth-baring big cat logo as part of a radical electric rebrand that it concedes won’t appeal to the majority of its traditional customers.

The ‘growler’ logo, the universally-recognized snarling Jaguar head badge used for decades on the grilles and bonnets of iconic cars including the E-Type, has fallen victim to a revamping of the firm’s style and identity as it seeks out younger, wealthier and more diverse customers for its next generation of expensive EVs.

Yeah well, who cares, seeing as the latest product offerings from Jaguar bear only the slightest resemblance to any cars at all, looking more like vacuum cleaners and Lego toys anyway.

And this supercilious fuck-you statement typifies their entire attitude towards their market:

Highlighting that 800 people had worked on the radical redesign and re-branding, Jaguar design chief Gerry McGovern jokingly promised: ‘We have not been sniffing the white stuff.’

Fucking plonker.

Just a reminder of the heritage they’ve thrown away:

I sincerely hope that they go out of business — and who would have thought that I, of all people, would ever say that about Jaguar?

A pox on them.

Flight

Freaks & Loonies, Marketing / Advertising, Marxists

I love capitalism.  Why?  No sooner had the ink dried on the fraudulent-but-ultimately pointless counterfeit ballots in Pennsylvania. Michigan etc. when (courtesy of Reader Mike L.) I learned that the Smart Marketing Guys have got going:

US cruise company offering four-year escape during Trump presidency

A Florida-based cruise company is offering disgruntled US voters the chance to escape by traveling the world during Donald Trump’s upcoming four years in office.

Villa Vie Residences has capitalized on the election results by offering Americans a four-year escape – the length of a presidential term – starting at around $160,000 per person, taking guests to more than 425 ports in 140 countries. [more details at the link]

My only requirement is that the trip is non-refundable after the ship has left port — in other words, if the travelers are suddenly overcome with buyer’s regret or whatever, they don’t get any money back, and they have to make their own way home from whatever country they happen to be in. And if the poor regretful souls, having spent all their savings on this 4-year escape, are unable to afford the cost of a flight back to the U.S., I’m sure the newly-revitalized U.S. Air Force would be only too willing to set up refugee flights and help them get out of wherever they are…


…if you see what I mean.

“Dear Dr. Kim”

Advice

“Dear Dr. Kim:

“I’m a manager, and I try to be a good one. I struggle, however, when people ask for days off when they’re trying to get over the death of a dog or a cat.

“Should this really be considered in the same way as the death of a close family member?

“What’s making the issue more difficult for me is that I have never had a pet myself, which means that I probably have little idea of the attachment people can have to one of these creatures.  I am probably coming over as a bit unsympathetic.

“I would speak to HR to see if the rules on compassionate leave should be tweaked, but frankly, they’re too nervous to give a firm line on almost anything.

“Dr. Kim, what should I do?”

— Lost Boss

Dear Sorta-Boss:

You could start by acting like an actual boss.

Fire the whole HR department, for starters.  Or if you want to go all wussy, ask the entire department, individually, to give some cogent, business-oriented reasons why you should give time off for the death of a pet.  If they can’t, then fire the HR manager anyway, because she’s clearly incompetent and shouldn’t be a manager.  (I say “she” because that’s the world we live in nowadays.)

Who cares if you’ve never had a pet yourself?  That has nothing to do with the actual managing of a business which is nominally responsible for creating profit for its shareholders or owner.  It’s purely an economic decision:  can your company deal with the loss of productivity, or not?  (If it can, you may want to consider retrenching staff anyway, because you’re carrying too much employee fat.)

Finally, your snowflake employees.  I can understand needing time off to grieve the death of a family member, especially immediate family:  mother, father, grandparents, siblings.  I find it more difficult to be sympathetic about grief as the family circle starts to expand to aunts, uncles and cousins, and almost impossible to sympathize when it’s second cousins, distant cousins, nodding kin, and the like.

You may therefore take it as read that when it comes to the death of pet animals, I think that asking for time off is a colossal piece of chutzpah.  (If it’s unpaid time off, of course, then by all means give them all the time they think they need, within limits of course.  Let’s see how much they really loved Fluffy when it’s an affair of the wallet.)

Lest I be thought a martinet — it can happen — let it be known that I have never been one of those clockwatcher types of boss, myself.  If a woman wants to have her hair done and can’t get a weekend appointment, then fine — ditto a man who needs the same — especially if their job involves customer interaction, where grooming is important.  And of course time off for real medical appointments should be a given.

Frankly, while I appreciate the fact that society is changing and employees demand more indulgences from employers,  I do think that this pet-worship thing is getting out of hand (see:  “comfort animals” FFS), and it needs to be curtailed.  By the way, where does one draw the line with this:  cats, dogs, horses… also snakes, hamsters, and fucking goldfish?

And for the record, I’ve owned pets for almost all my life, I’ve indulged them more than I did my own kids, and my heart has broken at the death of every single one of them.

But as much as there’s been sorrow, I could not think of asking for time off to mourn their death, because while this may have been a factor in my life, I can’t imagine why a business should be forced into this pantomime of shared grief.

And also by the way:  you will see from the response to this question in the linked article that “Nicola” (of course) thinks that giving time off for this foolishness makes the workplace more attractive to current and prospective employees.  While I’m not advocating a return to Victorian sweatshops and textile factories, I think that today’s work environment — before this time off for pet grief nonsense — is the most congenial and employee-friendly of any generation, ever.  But it never seems to be enough now, does it?

Shape up and get your employees (especially those HR weasels) under control before it’s too late.

—

That Van Thing

Drive Time

From Reader Garry K.:

Kim, in your recent rant against minivans on your Splendid Isolation blog (“No It Isn’t“, November 18, 2024), I wonder why you have so much hatred against such vehicles?

When you played gigs, how did you get your gear to the gigs? Did you pile all of your gear (amp head, speaker bottom, guitar case, maybe a PA system, mic stands, etc) into a tiny 2-seater sports car? I’ll bet not! To me, such 2-seater “sports” cars are totally useless. Give me a minivan any day, as I HAVE used my minivans to haul musical gear to gigs, to go camping, to haul a bunch of folks to carpool to events, etc.

When I used to gig, I had a 1974 VW “Panel Van” (bought new) that looked something like this, except in a sort of pale bamboo yellow, with the same hinged side doors (rather than a single sliding one):

Basically, VW Brazil realized that poor people needed basic transportation, so they set up a production line to re-create the 1964 model, only with modern 1600cc engines.  To say that the interior was spartan is to make Spartan look Byzantine.


…except of course that mine had no radio, no snazzy “Volkswagen” chrome logo, and certainly no way to open the windshield.  Talk about frivolous.

The model was so popular that VW South Africa started to import them — and even with an import duty of 100% (!!), the cars cost, in today’s  Bidenflation dollars, the equivalent of about $6,500 (ZAR950, back then).  Brand new.

I drove “Fred” for about eight years, and put close to 200,000 miles on the odometer.  Horribly abused and always overloaded, it only needed a new clutch at 85,000 miles (along with the usual perishables like tires and so on).

They were so popular in South Africa that VW stopped importing them after only a few years because these plain-Jane vans were eating their lunch, with little profit withal, and VW couldn’t move their “regular” vans (which had unnecessary luxury geegaws like sliding doors, disc brakes, seatbelts, a curved single-piece windshield and automatic transmission).

And that was with the band back in Seffrica.  When the kids came along in the U.S., I did the full station wagon / minibus thing:  several minivans, SUVs and a Chev Suburban, before moving on to SUVs like the Kia Sportage and then a couple of Tiguans such as I drive today.

But to return to Reader Garry’s point:  it’s not a question of hating minivans.  It’s just that I never had a chance to drive a two-seater sports car as my own personal vehicle.  In fact, the sportiest car I ever “owned” (company car) was an early-model 2-door BMW 318i with a 5-speed stick shift, which I loved with a passion.

In other words, I never had a chance to indulge myself, whether in my yoot because I had to schlep a band’s worth of gear, or as an adult because of kids.

And now, in my later years, I’d love to own an impractical 2-seater, just about any 2-seater, but it seems unlikely that I’ll ever get to do so.  It’s therefore with great longing that I talk about sports cars as much as I do;  in the cold harsh light of day, though, they’re my unreachable dream.

What I do know is that if I were to win the Powerball, I’d own at least three, out of pure self-indulgence — because I’ve been the responsible one all my life, and I’d like to be irresponsible just once.

Just don’t ask me which three, because I’ll talk about them some other time.