10 September 2007

Flashback: Baby food for adults

From a CNN.com article with a bit too much alliteration in the headline - "Funky Fries and other foods that flopped", brought to my attention by a colleague of mine. The most astonishing item in the list of marketing disasters being Gerber singles, a take on traditional Gerber baby food but designed for single adults.

From the article ...
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8. Gerber Singles

At some point in time, almost every adult has tasted baby food and discovered that the stuff isn't half bad. But that doesn't mean people want to make a meal out of it.

For some reason, Gerber had to learn that lesson the hard way. In 1974, the company released Gerber Singles, small servings of food meant for single adults, packaged in jars that were almost identical to those used for baby food.

It didn't take long for Gerber execs to figure out that most consumers, unless they were less than a year old, couldn't get used to eating a pureed meal out of a jar -- particularly one depressingly labeled "Singles."

Baby food for grown-ups was pulled from the marketplace shortly after its birth.
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Further Google-ing delivers photos of the next-best food for singles outside of SPAM (scroll down to the bottom, beneath the funny face drink mixes). It gets better. The pictures reveal a few of the flavors one could once choose from, including pureed mediterranean vegetables, beef burgundy, blueberry delight and creamed beef. Nothing better than creamed steak products. M'm! How'd they know?!

Search engines also produced this gem, bringing another failed product to my attention ... Garlic Cake. This item was lumped together in this article with, what else? Edible deoderant. Needless to say, regardless of my relationship status, baby food will never be on the menu.

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