A World Without Kodak or Twinkies?

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

First Kodak says it's going dark? And then, only days later, the Hostess Twinkie seems headed for the junk-food graveyard?

What's the world coming to? Next thing you know, they'll stop making Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles. No, wait! They already did that.

To be honest, I admit it's been quite a while since I laid out any money for anything with either the Kodak or Hostess label attached to it - which, I suppose, makes me part of the problem. Still ...

To a person of a certain age (mine), growing up in America meant being steeped in the awareness of certain iconic, comfortable brand names that one just assumed would always be there in all their reliable standardness. God was in his heaven and Eastman Kodak was in Rochester and Wonder white bread from Hostess was in the breadbox.

The names of Chrysler Corp.'s five product lines still roll effortlessly off my tongue to this day, having been memorized during the watching of a thousand black-and-white television commercials back in the 1950s: "Plymouth. Dodge. DeSoto. Chrysler. And the exclusive Imperial!" Three of those, as near as I can tell, are now history.

If you were in the market for a roll of cellophane tape back then, you were pretty sure to buy Scotch. If you wanted a .22 rifle, it was probably going to be a Remington or a Winchester. Oh, there were Marlins and Savages and such, but most were considered "off brands" - as was anything but a Daisy if you were looking for a BB gun.

Tide, Fab and Vel pretty much had a corner on the detergent market. If you needed baking soda, you would seldom stray from Arm & Hammer. A sewing machine was almost certainly a Singer. Most razor blades were either Schick or Gillette. Telephones, of course, meant the Ma Bell monopoly. Anything else was unimaginable.

Many of those once-transcendent brand names, and so many others like them, have either vanished or fallen into decline and obscurity - or found themselves awash in a sea of nimble competitors, probably foreign. A little bit of the America we knew and grew up in has died with each of them.

But I can't think of any corporate collapse that carried quite as much of a punch as last week's announcement that Kodak is about to declare bankruptcy. For all of my growing-up years and most of my adult ones, the name Kodak and its instantly recognized yellow box represented the very incarnation of photographic quality and dependability.

I shudder to think how many photos I took on Kodak film over the years, whether personally or professionally - starting with a clunky Brownie Bull's-Eye that used 120 spool film and graduating into 35 mm viewfinder cameras and later into single-lens reflexes.

Even if the camera wasn't always made by Kodak, the film always was. Here again, there were off-brand competitors. Ansco comes to mind, and later Fuji. For all I know, their film was just as good. But never once did I ever dream of entrusting whatever I was shooting to anything but Kodacolor for prints or Kodachrome for slides.

The main thing that has brought photographic film low, of course, is the advent of digital photography - which offers as many advantages over film as a laptop computer does over a clunky old portable typewriter. Once you've ventured into the world of megapixels, there's no turning back. But isn't it ironic that Kodak played a pioneering role in developing the digital technology that has now brought it to the brink of extinction? It's kind of like making a great new friend and introducing him to your wife - who then runs off with him, leaving you stuck with all the bills.

It's harder to find any reason to mourn the Hostess Twinkie, which in today's world has all the esthetic appeal and health benefit of a factory-molded block of yellow Styrofoam with a dollop of white drywall spackle injected into it.

But I sure have scarfed up a bunch of Twinkies over the years, from sitting on the curb outside Mulkey's Market in Carthage, Mo., to camping with my boys on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Oh, well. Time, taste and technology wait for no man. But is nothing sacred?

Steve Bouser is editor of The Pilot. Contact him at (910) 693-2470 or by email at sbouser@thepilot.com.

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Courseaire 4 months, 1 week ago

If Hostess goes under, what will happen to next Christmas without Santa's HoHos?

JER 4 months, 1 week ago

"Time, taste and technology wait for no man". Ain't that the truth! I have the feeling that we are wasting our time, have lost our taste and worship technology. My wife and I were, just today, discussing the old Texaco TV commercials. For those of us of a certain age, they were the ones with the crew of guys in Texaco hats, white Texaco shirts and bow ties that came running out of the station as you pulled up to the pump as the theme song "You can trust your car to the man who wears the star..." played in the background. Each guy had his job: one to pump the gas, one to check the oil, another to clean the windshield while another checked the air pressure in the tires. The driver never had to get out of the car if he or she didn't want to. This was why gas stations were called service stations back in the old days. All this, and gas was $.35 cents a gallon. And we foolishly think we are making "progress". I'll bet someone else out there has a similar example they can share with us. Let's see how many we can come up with.

geoffcutler 4 months, 1 week ago

I remember when a penny bought a piece of bubble gum. Saw a bubble gum machine the other day that wanted a quarter for the same piece of gum. A quarter!

OldSpook 4 months, 1 week ago

Anybody remember taking your date to McDonald's after the movie and and getting a couple of hamburgers, two fries, two small cokes and change back from your $2 bill?

Mythreekids 4 months, 1 week ago

I remember when we got a quart of milk out of a machine on the corner for a quarter. A Royal Crown Cola and Johnny Cake (big vanilla cookie) were 10 cents (together). Stanly Home Products and Fuller Brush were the in home parties. Just brings to mind the saying that everything that lives...dies. Hard to believe that I often find myself saying...those were the good ole days. Sound familiar to anyone but me...

justmyopinion 4 months, 1 week ago

I recall dad telling stories about working in the old theaters where he grew up and the movies cost 9 cent. At the age of 13, he ran the projector and cleaned the floors between shows and said he could buy a lot of things on the pennies he would find that fell out of the children's pockets during the afternoon movies.

herecomesthescience 4 months, 1 week ago

I remember the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

Bentpan 4 months, 1 week ago

The things I remember most were that a soda was 8 oz. and a occasional treat, my grandfather always in a coat and tie except when he was doing manual labor, then he'd take off the coat. Going out to dinner was an event and I don't recall anyone eating in their car. Two of my favorite places to go were Western Auto and Sears when we went to the city (which happened once a year maybe) anyway they both had the latest fishing, hunting and camping gear, not to mention everything else under the sun or so it seemed then.The other thing I recall was women in particular collected Green Stamps ( do they even exist anymore) the catalog for them was always loaded with neat stuff you normaly wouldn't buy, so it wasn't uncommon to save stamps for a year or two to get something nice. And while credit cards existed I don't remember being aware of them or ever seeing someone use one.

Hembloche 4 months, 1 week ago

lol @ herecomesthescience. :-)

Hembloche 4 months, 1 week ago

At the age of 33 my memories don't go back quite as far as others. However, when i lived in Pennsylvania as a youngster, we had a penny candy store stocked with just about every kind of candy you could think of. Amazingly, 90% of it cost... a penny! Can't find that anymore.

Hembloche 4 months, 1 week ago

Man, hadn't thought of that candy store in ages. I'd take my $2.00 weekly allowance, get 3 packs of Garbage Pail Kids cards for $.50 each and enough candy to last me through the next week. Ah, the good ole days. HA.

Arestorer 4 months, 1 week ago

The good-ole-days..No grass, No paved roads, No television, No telephone, No air conditioning, No shoes, No shirt, No Problems...

geoffcutler 4 months, 1 week ago

On weekends, we'd leave the house with the rising sun and wouldn't come home again until it was going down. And nobody molested us, kidnapped us or otherwise, and our parents knew be home in time for dinner. No TV, video games, no cell phones. Just us and our Raleigh Choppers and our pennies to lay on the trolley tracks.