Koogle, we hardly knew ye

The late Mitch Hedberg said, "Sometimes in the middle of the night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny."

Such is my life, kinda. I had no sooner turned off the BlackBerry last night when several items that would fit in a post I'd planned began coming to mind. I couldn't convince myself that what I'd thought of wasn't funny, or interesting, although something being unfunny or uninteresting has certainly never stopped me from blogging on it before. (Like I need to tell you people that.) So I fired the BB up again, and commenced thumbing up some notes. I use the 'Berry and not pen and paper because I've been known to scribble notes that were incomprehensible while fully awake, much less groggy-headed. Didn't want my own Flaming Globes of Sigmund episode.

What I'd been planning on blogging on for a while was the products, things, or concepts I've used at some point that are no longer extant. At least, they're no longer extant if you go by my memory and a cursory googling. If I'm wrong, email me and I'll make the corrections, and in many cases will also try to track down some of these products and order up a passle.

Let's start with the eponymous product, Koogle. According to the Wikipedia article (and I think it's high-larious that this article doesn't meet Wikipedia's "standards"), Kraft manufactured the flavored peanut butter from 1971 until discontinuing it later in the seventies. I'm sure the flexible nature of memory has inflated the actual taste of the stuff from good to incredible in my mind, but I do remember it as being quite tasty. I don't think I ever tried the cinnamon or vanilla flavors, but I have happy childhood memories of the banana and chocolate flavors. Kraft people, let's make with the retro foodstuffs, okay?

I was prepared to mention Pearl Drops toothpaste, but the aforementioned cursory googling turned up a website for the stuff. It doesn't look the way I remember it, so it's possible it's a reincarnated product, like Pop Rocks.

Other than recipes for a DIY version, there were no results for Oatmeal Jumbles, which was a product by Kraft or General Foods, or at least one of the major conglomerates, that allowed you to bake a mixture of oatmeal cookies with brownies into a gooey mixture that would send your taste buds into spasms of ecstasy. I remember eating them in the early eighties, but I also remember them disappearing a short while later, and I think I know why. I know it's folly to base your research on one statistical sample, but in this case, I'll make an exception. Because, according to my tests, not only did the stuff send your taste buds into spasms of ecstasy, but it also sent your GI tract into spasms of a food-ridding frenzy. I think the combination of fat and fiber was the culprit. Whatever the reason, it resembled the effects of the weapons-grade laxative they give you when you're scheduled for a colonoscopy. I ate some and then went in for my shift at the Piggly-Wiggly, and got into trouble for disappearing into the bathroom for long periods. I assure you I'm not making up that anecdote.

Next on our tour of the product graveyard is the headstone for Chipos. The link goes to the only result I could find, a mere Flickr image of a coupon for the product, which came in a box like a cereal box. As you can see in the image, they were a "new fashioned" product, "fashioned from dried potato granules." I can't see how that kind of marketing failed, but I guess it did. To me, nothing says "tasty" like "potato granules." (They were actually pretty tasty.)

While I appear to be somewhat of a loner in my recollection of the preceding products, there are evidently hordes of people who fondly recall Funny Face drink mixes. I'm not going to recap it here, because that'd be repetitive. Just make with the clickies.

Freakies cereal is also fondly remembered by a lot of people. I think one of my relatives still has a Freakies magnet on her refrigerator, now that I mention it. Extensive love posted at the link.

I don't actually remember the taste of Sour Bites candy, but I sure remember that striped lion mascot. (Hit the link and scroll down a little for the image.)

I have no personal recollection of using Underalls, but I do remember that they once sponsored a racecar in NASCAR. How'd you like to finally earn a ride in NASCAR's top division, only to be told that your sponsor would be something called Underalls? And, since the teams coach drivers to mention the sponsors as much as possible (there's even a company, Joyce Julius and Associates, that tallies each "impression" of a brand during a race), some poor guy had to get out of his car and tell a reporter, "Well, the Underalls Chevy run good today." I imagine he prayed that Massengill or Kotex would sponsor a car, just so he'd have somebody to laugh at. Too bad the Boudreaux's Butt Paste car was still years from sponsorship.

Underalls disappeared for a while, perhaps because they were rumored to be yeast-infection factories, but they've been brought back by a Canadian company. (Warning: PDF link.) Maybe there have been great strides in yeast-infection-prevention technology in the intervening years.

Quite a few products I'd thought long gone are actually still being manufactured. Take Frostie Root Beer, for example. The grape-flavored drink Grapico is not only still being manufactured, but is owned by Birmingham's own Buffalo Rock company. That most stereotypical of Southern drinks, RC Cola is still alive and well, or at least alive. Fruit Stripes gum, too, as well as L'eggs pantyhose. (The last without the distinctive egg-shaped packaging. What's the point?)

Retsyn, which is evidently a yummy mixture of copper gluconate and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, is still being piped into Certs products, althought the Certs people don't tout the fact like they used to. Time was, Retsyn was hyped like a miracle drug. It has Retsyn! Nobody really knew what it was, or what it did, but we bought the stuff, anyway. We were stupid like that.

Now, for some things that aren't products, but which seem to have disappeared. Howzabout "W" as a vowel? Back when I was a child, i.e., on the eighth day after creation, I was taught that the vowels were your basic five, "and sometimes y AND W." (My teachers spoke that last line in capitals, just like that. Always scared me.) Now, however, people will look at you like you've sprouted poison ivy from your eyebrows if you mention W as being a vowel.

But my memory hasn't gone soft. W really can be a vowel. How? Well, in the word "how," for one example. So there. Nyah, nyah, nyah, he typed, most adultly.

A few years ago, someone sent me the link to this video, which I still think is cute, although I'm sure the young lady in it regrets the day video cameras were invented.

It was then that I found out that, at least in some circles, kids no longer go to the prom, but to prom. Why is that? Is your iPod-laden, tons of text-messaging schedule too busy to pronounce a perfectly good article that has served the English language for eons? Or is this like the rassinfrassin' Flickr phenomenon, in which we just drop letters for no reason other than to appear cool? Do these kids wonder why Ralph Kramden didn't say, "To moon, Alice!"?

Also, do schools still teach the Schwa sound? And does it still frustrate kids like it did me? I was always bumfuzzled to the nth degree by that, because I never knew where their example came from. It would be like teaching the long E sound by saying, "It's the 'Flema' sound." What the heck's a flema?

But the one thing that really twists my knickers is the death, ongoing, of Haagen-Dazs Triple Brownie Overload ice cream. It was chocolate ice cream, with chocolate brownies, AND chocolate chunks in it. When I discovered it at the Winn-Dixie in Tuscaloosa, I also noticed that whenever it appeared in the freezer section, it also disappeared quicker than a federal budget surplus. According to this Newsweek article, the introduction of the company's "Extraas" line increased their market share by one-third, so the only logical thing for them to do was, of course, to kill that line.

Speak not to me of high-fat alternatives to TBO. A pox on your Ben & Jerry's. Ben & Jerry's is tofu, carob, asphalt, and gravel compared to TBO. (Plus, I prefer my ice cream to be less preachy than B&J.) TBO was, quite simply and without argument, the greatest ice cream ever to grace the appreciative tongue of man.

A few years ago, I contacted the Haagen-Dazs people about resurrecting the flavor, but they just patted me on the head like a youngster asking Santa for an Uzi, and sent me some coupons for some of their regular brands, which of course can't hold a candle to TBO.

What tepid offerings does the company have now? Well, yummy stuff like Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle! Yum! Sesame, so you get all the flavor of a Big Mac bun. Wait, there's also Caramelized Hazelnut Gianduja, which sounds like an affliction, not a confection.

Here's a suggestion, Haagen-Dazs people: Realize that your market is people who are more than happy to pay premium prices for premium fat content, stop imitating The Granola Barn when it comes to new flavors, and bring back Triple Brownie Overload!

Sorry for the rant, but when you're refusing to bring back dairy perfection, you're walking on the fighting side of me.

If you have any products, concepts, entities, etc. that you remember but which has departed this mortal coil, drop me a line and I'll post a follow-up.

Update: The folks over at Homestarrunner.com still use "the" before "prom."