So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Fading Fast]

Did you get your refund?

Yes, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. It's a hardware store that I frequent where - as in any hardware store - you do return stuff once in a awhile as when you get "it" home, it turns out you need another size, shape, type of thing, etc. Plus, it was still in its packaging as I could tell once I had it physically in my apartment, it wouldn't fit even still in the package - hence, they literally could put it right back on the shelf.

 

[Fading Fast]

The funny thing with the bottling setup and Coke was that Asa Candler, the Atlanta patent-medicine impresario who acquired the original formula and marketing rights from the estate of its inventor, Dr. Pemberton, in a series of shady maneuvers, had no interest whatever in bottling the product. He felt that fountain Coke was the only acceptable kind, and that bottling it produced an inferior product. He ended up literally giving away the bottling rights to most of the country to a pair of operators named Thomas and Whitehead shortly after the turn of the century, and they, in turn, ended up subfrancising those rights city-to-city and made a fortune without ever bottling a single drop of soda themselves, or even making any kind of an initial investment.

Author Mark Pendergrast delves into a lot of the corporate machinations at Coke in his book "For God, Country, and Coca-Cola," one of the best biographies of a company ever written.

My never-half-as-good-as-your memory does remember reading that, in the early part of the last century, fountain soda was where the business was at. Sounds crazy to us today, but bottled soda was, initially, the odd new thing that might or might not work while others feared that the bottle business would undermine the very profitable fountain business - which it eventually did.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A big part of the problem was that the bottles themselves weren't very good. They'd often explode under pressure, or the stoppers would fail and the contents would go flat or turn slimy due to inadequate sanitation or contaminated water. It wasn't until the development of the crown bottle cap in the 1890s that bottled soda really became a feasible product, and it wasn't until the 1920s that it really became more than just a seasonal, regional product.

 

[ChiTownScion]

A big part of the problem was that the bottles themselves weren't very good. They'd often explode under pressure, or the stoppers would fail and the contents would go flat or turn slimy due to inadequate sanitation or contaminated water. It wasn't until the development of the crown bottle cap in the 1890s that bottled soda really became a feasible product, and it wasn't until the 1920s that it really became more than just a seasonal, regional product.

And while their own Boys deserve as much wrath as any, their marketing campaigns have defined Santa Claus as we understand the persona.

 

[LizzieMaine]

HO HO *hack! koff!! hack! gag! koff!* HO!

 

[Lean'n'mean]

When Santa wasn't dealing in coke & tobacco, he did a bit of gun-running...........kids, do you really want this guy comming into your homes ?

 

[Fading Fast]

HO HO *hack! koff!! hack! gag! koff!* HO!

Granted different times, but looking back, all one can think is what the heck were we thinking. Also, "It's Toasted" played a major part in a "Mad Man" episode with, if my memory is correct, the idea being that it makes no sense - all tobacco is toasted - but it sounds good so they used it. And of course, it was successful. Oh those "Boys from Marketing."

Lizzie, did you watch "Mad Men" at all or did you just assume (probably correctly) that your head would explode if you did, so you judiciously avoided it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I never saw it except for a few minutes here and there. It struck me as a glossy upgrade of "The Hucksters," which was a gloriously sleazy novel about The Boys from the late 1940s.

The "toasted" line goes all the way back to when Lucky Strikes were introduced in 1913 -- the first of many dubious cigarette slogans introduced at the behest of George Washington Hill, the head of the American Tobacco Company, and one of the most mendacious human beings ever to breathe air. He was royally parodied in a number of movies and novels about the advertising business - most effectively as Evan Llwellyn Evans in "The Hucksters."

Santa himself comes across as a pretty sleazy character in the Era -- not only did he endorse Luckies, he also endorsed Camels, Chesterfields, Pall Malls, Philip Morris, and Prince Albert pipe tobacco. Jolly old "Anything For A Buck" Kringle.

And what's with all this "Happy Holidays" stuff, Claus? Why do you and your creepy little pal there declare war on Christmas?

 

[HudsonHawk]

When you get Olympic gold medal-winning sprinters clamoring about how great your smokes are, you're on to something.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And one should not be surprised to learn that Mr. Owens died an excruciating death from lung cancer when he was only 66 years old.

On the other hand, the good folks at Mad Magazine seemed to have a pretty good handle on the situation.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Speaking as a Mad Men uber-fan...

One of the unfortunate side effects of Mad Men is that people now think that Don Draper INVENTED "It's toasted.", since he's seen as the savior of the Lucky Strike account when he suggests it in the first season. As Lizzie pointed out, it's actually a VERY old pitch. Don was just recommending that they go back to their classic tagline because his brainstorm was that people still ENJOY smoking, and they will ignore the recently published health effects when faced with a bit of nostalgia. And that approach really works for several years.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When they first started using the slogan in the 1910s, it was always accompanied by an image of a piece of bread speared on a fork over a fire, and text suggesting that the process of toasting tobacco -- which was merely the extraction of moisture from the raw leaves -- produced a flavor akin to buttered toast.

People weren't more stupid a hundred years ago, but the Boys certainly thought they were.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Only a cigar have to be "toasted" over your flue.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And to put the timing into perspective, that slogan would only have been about forty years old in the times of "Mad Men." That's like a company reviving imagery from the 1970s today. Talk about disturbing realizations.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

" It's toasted" may refer to the smoker's lungs.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Only a cigar have to be "toasted" over your flue.

That's what Bill told Monica. ........." Listen to me, I'm gonna say this again......I did not toast my cigar over that woman's flue."

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Fun fact: "Lucky Strike" was a tobacco trademark dating from the 1850s. At that time the California Gold Rush was all the rage and innumerable products were marketed with Gold-Rush-themed names. In the goldfields a "lucky strike"was exactly that. Liggett & Myers must have owned the trademark and revived it for their brand of cigarettes.

 

[2jakes]

My favorite toasts!

 

[LizzieMaine]

The sleaziest Lucky Strike campaign in a long history of sleazy campaigns was the "Reach For A Lucky Instead Of A Sweet" campaign of 1928-29, which was aimed straight at women and promoted smoking as a means of controlling one's weight.

Yes indeed, contracting a wasting disease by sucking poisonous filth into your lungs will certainly knock off the old avoirdupois.

This was the campaign that finally roused the do-nothing eye-winkers of the Cooidge-era Federal Trade Commission into action. The FTC told Hill and his stooges that unless they had scientific proof that smoking is a reducing aid, they'd better lay off the claims, but they wouldn't have even done that much if a trade association of candy manufacturers hadn't filed a complaint.

 

[2jakes]

The least favorite toast in the morning!