Oh no!

Have you seen this list? I seem to read one every year. It’s about which brands will go under in the coming year.

If you’re in finance, I guess doing the list makes you a smarty pants analyst. I’m not in finance, so a.) since I am not a smarty pants in this particular area, I am irritated by people who are (if I were, I would, naturally, be impressed with myself), and b.) there are always some brands on the list that I can’t believe will go under because I need them, so I choose to not believe the list.

A couple of years ago, the list said Borders would go out of business and I was very upset. Borders is where I go to buy magazines, peruse the travel section for vacation destinations where I can go without getting immunization shots, and look at all the books I will then go onto Amazon to buy at a discount. Which is precisely why Borders is going under. But I still buy all those magazines. And coffee. Apparently not in sufficient quantities though because the list makers were right about that one.

This year, they’re predicting the demise of Saab, which makes me, um, well not, you know, but definitely feel sad. I think they’re going under because they drifted away from that retro Porsche-y almond-shaped sillouhette they used to have in the 1980’s. I wanted one of those cars. Also, I like the Swedes, so that’s sad for them.

With A&W on the list, I thought maybe the one root beer brand I can identify was going south, but no, it’s just their restaurant arm. I thought you had to have a time machine to go to the A&W restaurants, and apparently so did everyone else, because they’re going away.

I am not sorry to hear about Soap Opera Digest, which should’ve just cut over to reality TV a while ago, which is way more soapy than the dying soaps, and American Apparel, because I never liked their ads. Not because the billboards were overtly selling sex (who isn’t?) but because they were selling tacky underage1970’s runner shorts sex, which is not my kind of sex. So I better head to the local shop and get R. a bunch of those waffle Ts he likes and another couple sleeveless turtleneck dresses for me and say goodbye.

The brand loss that’s truly breaking my heart is Kellogg’s Corn Pops. Ah, Pops. I loved Corn Pops. When Fruit Loops and Apples Jacks changed their formulas to be less crispy-sugar-coated and more milk-susceptible, I could always turn to Pops to remind me of the good old days when I escaped the “no sugar cereals” ban at home and got my little box of Pops at camp and college cafeterias. Tasty, tasty Pops.

Pops were a staple of my pregnancy diet, along with fruit, which is probably why A. is so cute and awesome and I only gained 18 lbs. (For which I take no credit by the way: who has control over the foods they want to eat while pregnant? No one, that’s who.)

I just threw out my last box of baby-related Pops last week. They had merged into a single Pop in the humidity of the San Francisco rains. I wasn’t eating them fast enough. And now, soon, I may not be able to get more. I might have to look at the whole second child question from a new angle now if s/he will not have the in utero Pops advantage.

Reading further bad news, it turns out that the smarty pants(s) think Pops are on the way out because they aren’t healthy, containing both saturated fat and something called BHT, which doesn’t sound all-natural and turns out isn’t. It’s a component in embalming fluid.

Adding that little detail is just mean. How can I ever look at a Pops box with the same pure desire I had before knowing it has a little bit of embalming fluid in it? It’s like telling me Hugh Jackman kicks puppies. Why did you have to throw that out there on the mat? You’re ruining it for me. What I didn’t know wasn’t hurting me. Or rather, I didn’t know what was hurting me.

Come to that though, how do you know it’s hurting me? It doesn’t sound good, putting embalming fluid ingredients in food, but the smarty pants guys don’t say if they know it’s bad. It might be giving me nice supple skin. They use corn in ethanol, don’t they? Is anyone going after Orville Redenbacher for using an ingredient in auto fuel? No. They’re not. Maybe BHT is like corn: just another harmless ingredient that’s been vilified unjustly by smarty pants(s) taking it out of context.

Although the acronym isn’t helping its case. Acronyms in food sound sinister. Like CRN Pops. It sounds like something robot overlords use to keep their joints lubricated.

I hear people are hoarding old-school light bulbs in preparation for the cutover to fluorescents next year. Maybe I’ll go that route: go buy that retro Saab I’ve always coveted, load up the trunk with 200 boxes of Pops and cruise on over to A&W to get some milk for my cereal. I’ll just circle until they close or I run out of Pops, whichever comes first. Don’t worry about me: the embalming fluid will keep my stamina up.