Author Cherie Reich joins us today and discusses something that I think many of us have found, much to our dismay. Why? Why do companies do this? I don't have an answer, but I think Cherie has a good idea of what to do about it. (grin)
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Although they say you shouldn't pick favorites, I do. It's human nature to have favorite items, but what do you do when those great things disappear?
A few years ago, my favorite soup was Campbell's Old Fashioned Tomato Rice Soup. I would eat it one to two times a week. No other soup could measure up to the rice and tomato within. It went perfectly with cheese and crackers. A real soup you could scoop up and enjoy. Slowly, we realized that less and less of the soup was in the store. We and quite a few other patrons would scour the soup aisle for a single can of Old Fashioned Tomato Rice Soup. It was the first aisle we went to in every store carrying soup. When we found the cans, we would buy them all, not leaving one for someone else. Stingy? Yes. Do I regret it? No. Then there were no more cans. No more favorite soup. And, no, it's not the same using tomato soup and adding rice. It really isn't, so don't suggest it. The tomato part of the soup tasted different. They took it away.
I've slowly grown use to Campbell's Healthy Choice Tomato Soup, but nothing compares to the tomato rice soup. It isn't the last thing gone either.
I started using John Freida's Weather-Control Conditioner. It worked pretty well, but it was getting harder and harder to find it at Walmart. It, too, disappeared, but I've moved on. There're always other types of conditioner.
I could get over the conditioner. I still miss the soup, but nothing prepared me for the next item to disappear.
I used to eat Yoplait YoPlus Strawberry Yogurt. It was the absolute perfect yogurt. Sweet but not too sweet. A perfect consistency, not too liquidy and not thick like Greek Yogurt. It had real pieces of fruit in it. My cat Romeo even loved it. I ate it every day religiously. Then it became hard to find. I would scour Walmart, Kroger, other grocery stores. Sometimes I would find it. Sometimes not. Then they removed the price tag from the shelves. No more Yoplait YoPlus Yogurt. The most perfect yogurt in the world was gone. It's been a couple months. I've tried all sorts of other yogurt. Right now I'm eating Activia yogurt with the granola. It's…edible. The granola really helps. It's not the same. Not at all.
They also took the cat treats I had been getting.
Where does it end? Why remove an object that people buy? That people love?
Bastards! Everyone of them.
Is it just me? Or have you found old favorites disappearing off the shelves never to be seen again?
Perhaps it is time for a horror story…one of sweet vengeance against a certain company.
I'd really like my yogurt back.
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Author Bio: Cherie Reich is a writer, freelance editor, and library assistant living in Virginia. Her works have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, and her horror ebook Once Upon a December Nightmare is published by Wild Child Publishing. She is a member of Valley Writers and the Virginia Writers Club and placed third in Roanoke Valley's Big Read writing contest.
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