It Might As Well Be Spring

A variety of useful items from the cluttered garage that is my mind:

• The Economist offers a cogent summary of California’s budget problems, making some points I haven’t seen elsewhere. Like this:

“The immediate cause of the budget crisis can be traced to Wall Street. California depends on income taxes for almost half of its revenues. Its tax code is so progressive—that is, rich-soaking—that in 2006 the top 1 percent of earners paid 48 percent of all income taxes. Since the wealthy derive much of their income from bonuses, capital gains and stock options, the state’s fortunes rise and fall with the markets. California’s economy is as wide and deep as the ocean, but much of its revenues come from froth. That froth has simply blown away.”

• Is the bacon phenomenon proving to be a flash in the pan? (Tip of the porkpie to Webmaster Eric Kelsey.)

• How digital printing might help save the newspaper business.

• With that bullet point, I plan to remove myself from the topic of newspapers. Minnpost.com’s David Brauer is the go-to guy for local media news, and my office colleague Adam Platt opines upon it much better than I ever could. This post from Adam, for instance.

• So I’m sticking to stuff I know. Like Diet-Rite cola! My calorie-counting parents drank this with dinner back in the day, and I’d have sworn this brand evaporated years ago. The other day, I saw an empty cardboard container (uncovered by the February thaw) that once held a dozen cans of DR by a bus stop. A little research revealed that the brand is owned by Cadbury Schweppes Americas. So what’s the demographic here?

• When you think “bloviate,” think of me. That quotation in the American Heritage Dictionary really comes from your no-longer-humble scribe, under the youthful semi-pseudonym he used when he wrote for the Utne Reader. It’s not the kind of quotation he wants to be remembered for, alas.

Brand Exit

If all goes the way various pundits predict, Pontiac and Saab will soon join Plymouth, Studebaker, Packard, Nash, and my favorite now-obscure marque name, Willys (the creator of the Jeep) on the great rubbish heap of discontinued car brands.

I grew up in a Ford family (and married a Ford loyalist), so I have no great nostalgia for any of these nameplates. (One exception: My family did own a Kenosha, Wisconsin–built 1963 Rambler station wagon for a few years, but all I remember about it was that it was green.)

Speaking of lost brands, I wonder whether there’s a term for restaurants that were once part of a chain that’s no longer in business. While researching an upcoming article, I discovered (thanks to Strib scribe James Lileks) that there was a White Castle copycat chain called, cleverly enough, White Tower.

Lileks notes that there once was a White Tower or two in the Twin Cities. (My Minneapolis-raised wife backs this up.) The chain disappeared decades ago. But there still are some White Towers, untethered from the long-defunct mothership, in business. They’re in Ohio. There also are two or three remaining Lums restaurants. This was a Florida-based chain that had a few locales in my native Illinois—I don’t think there were any in the Twin Cities.

I had thought that the Shakey’s Pizza in Stadium Village was another such orphan. But thanks to Google, I now know that the chain still lives, in a truncated form. So does an elderly drive-in chain from my Illinois youth called Dog ‘n’ Suds.

Not that I actually want to dine in any of these joints. (Well, maybe Dog ‘n’ Suds. At least in theory.) Still, there’s something charming and maybe even reassuring that they survive, through good times and bad, in various geographic niches across our massive country.

Unfortunately, car brands can’t survive as regional entities. The idea of buying a 2009 Rambler is still mildly appealing.

Why We Stopped Listening to E. F. Hutton

The recent disappearances of famous financial names like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns made me wonder: Whatever happened to E. F. Hutton?

Refugees from the Yuppie Era of the 1980s remember the commercials for the investment firm, where two dressed-for-success types are discussing where to put their money. One of the two says, “Well, my broker is E. F. Hutton, and E. F. Hutton says…” Suddenly, everyone around them stops and pricks up their ears. Then the voiceover: “When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen.”

E. F. Hutton long ago went the way that the likes of Lehman Brothers have more recently traveled. If you’re feeling sentimental (as I kind of am) about the departure of these grand old names in finance, a recent New York magazine piece provides a useful antidote.

For one thing, Lehman wasn’t really an august old firm dating back to 1850—only the name dated that far back. By and large, brokerages and investment banks aren’t particularly long-lived. They typically run out of gas, get acquired by a larger firm (sometimes getting spun off again—think of Piper Jaffray, which was part of U.S. Bank for a few years until 2003), or blow up thanks to the self-satisfied avarice endemic in this industry.

In the 1980s, several investment firms advertised on television. I don’t know if any still do, since I don’t watch TV anymore. (It’s hard to believe that any would have the money for commercials.) But the New York story made me wonder what happened to other 1980s firms like E. F. Hutton. Namely:

• Smith Barney. In my relative youth, I would mildly amuse friends with my not-quite-spot-on impression of the imperious John Houseman declaiming his catchphrase on 1980s commercials: “Smith Barney makes money the old-fashioned way—they uhhhn it.” The Smith Barney “brand” still exists, but it’s now part of the Citigroup empire’s Global Markets unit, along with another august (though somewhat tainted) investment name, Salomon Brothers. (Houseman, by the way, passed away in 1988.)

• Dean Witter. Catchphrase: “You look like you just heard from Dean Witter!” (Sung over the image of a grinning investor opening and reading his Dean Witter statement.) Later: “We measure success one investor at a time” (spoken by a what I always assumed was a fake “Dean Witter” in a fake old film clip, complete with fake scratches on the soundtrack and film emulsion). During the 1980s, Dean Witter was part of Sears, back when the retailer was seeking to become a financial services company. It split off from Sears (along with the Discover card) in the 1990s. In 1997, it merged with Morgan Stanley, and the Dean Witter name disappeared.

• Paine Webber. Originally Paine, Webber, Jackson & Curtis. Commercial catchphrase: “Thank you, Paine Webber.” It was bought by Swiss giant UBS in 2000, and is now known as UBS Wealth Management USA.

As for E. F. Hutton, that’s a complicated story. The heavily abridged version: During the 1980s, the firm was involved in all kinds of financial shenanigans, primarily rooted in a check-kiting scheme. The 1987 stock market crash hit E. F. Hutton hard, and the company merged with a name that should sound familiar: Shearson Lehman Brothers. The merged entity soon became part of American Express, which later spun it off. It soon became part of Smith Barney, which became part of Citigroup.

By then, the E. F. Hutton name had disappeared. People had stopped listening long before that.

On an other note: Interesting point about wages and health care.

Comeback Kids

I’m delighted that SimonDelivers is back, thanks to St. Cloud grocer Coborn's, Inc (The service is now called CobornsDelivers.) I did a cover story on the company earlier this year, and though I’ve never used the service (or any grocery delivery service), I developed great respect for the company and its president, Liwanag Ojala. It was one of my favorite TCB assignments.

Simon’s closed in mid-July. I penned a funeral sermon that just came out in the September issue. Great timing (and not for the first time in my career). No matter. I’m delighted that this hardworking group of innovators is back.

• Speaking of comebacks: BTW Book Club entry The Box is back in print. This saga of the shipping container is one of the best books on the global market, and one of the most readable. If your business is a link in the global supply chain and you haven’t read it, well, what are you waiting for, a ride? Order a copy and keep it in print.

• And speaking of those beloved corrugated steel boxes, here’s some hot real estate news.

• I just purchased a 1949-model Big Ben alarm clock from The Vermont Country Store. The Vermont Country Store is a veritable treasure trove of forgotten brands. Lifebuoy soap! Bosco! A spin through its catalog is like spending an autumn afternoon in the rocking chair of Boomer (and pre-Boomer) nostalgia. I leave it to you decide whether you find this delightful or depressing.

• Another forgotten brand: Remember Ultra Brite toothpaste? I didn’t want to. Its “sexy” commercials from the ’60s through early ’80s were profoundly dreadful. (“Ultra Brite gives your mouth—sex appeal!”) The other day, while taking a summer evening’s constitutional with Jack (a/k/a America’s Best Canine, or ABC), ABC’s keen muzzle detected a tube of the stuff squashed on the sidewalk. Besides the mystery of how it got there, there was the utter shock of discovering that Ultra Brite is still made. Journalistic legwork (i.e., Google Advanced Search) revealed that it’s still produced by Colgate-Palmolive, apparently as an unsexy bargain brand. I don’t watch TV, so perhaps it’s still advertised? If so, the commercials can’t be as amusingly horrifying as this entry from the early ’80s, all aerated hair and aerobicized spandex.