A while back, I looked at a list of the most-widely-sold candy bars in the US, and it blew my mind how old they were.
Like, yes, they’ve seen formulas revised, and they aren’t quite the same thing, but I’d have thought that the advent of technology would let people come up with new and interesting bars. Very few consumer products are as elderly as a lot of these and still selling widely.
I did a table with a list a while back – the majority of popular bars are at least 70 years old. I don’t want to do up a whole table right now, but let me pick a random one: Snickers.
Now, I’ve got nothing against Snickers. I like it. But Snickers hit the market in 1930. It’s 93 years old. That means that in 93 years, we haven’t been able to come up with anything sufficiently-better to displace it. That amazes me. In that period, we’ve seen radical changes to our diet and to technology. The refrigerator became widely deployed in the US, the freezer, the microwave. Automats came and went. Vending machines showed up. Year-round availability of many foods became the norm in grocery stores as transportation and storage capability improved. But the candy bar has remained surprisingly unchanging.
That’s kind of how evolution works. Once you get something dialed in, it just kind of sticks around forever. Happens in other instances as well, like the fashion industry and Blue Jeans. Or Radio. When something works well, we just keep it as is.
A while back, I looked at a list of the most-widely-sold candy bars in the US, and it blew my mind how old they were.
Like, yes, they’ve seen formulas revised, and they aren’t quite the same thing, but I’d have thought that the advent of technology would let people come up with new and interesting bars. Very few consumer products are as elderly as a lot of these and still selling widely.
I did a table with a list a while back – the majority of popular bars are at least 70 years old. I don’t want to do up a whole table right now, but let me pick a random one: Snickers.
Now, I’ve got nothing against Snickers. I like it. But Snickers hit the market in 1930. It’s 93 years old. That means that in 93 years, we haven’t been able to come up with anything sufficiently-better to displace it. That amazes me. In that period, we’ve seen radical changes to our diet and to technology. The refrigerator became widely deployed in the US, the freezer, the microwave. Automats came and went. Vending machines showed up. Year-round availability of many foods became the norm in grocery stores as transportation and storage capability improved. But the candy bar has remained surprisingly unchanging.
That’s kind of how evolution works. Once you get something dialed in, it just kind of sticks around forever. Happens in other instances as well, like the fashion industry and Blue Jeans. Or Radio. When something works well, we just keep it as is.
Snickers: the crocodilian of snacks.
Also amazed, also content if Snickers survived for as long as possible.
Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I wonder how much Snickers have changed since 1930, if at all
I’m guessing they used sugar then and corn syrup now.