Posted on 10/27/2011 3:12:30 PM PDT by smokingfrog
When the people who make Necco Wafers changed their recipe to use natural flavors and colors in 2009, they thought they were doing their customers a favor. But then those customers told the New England Confectionery Company loudly, and repeatedly that they preferred artificially enhanced candy.
"Our normal mail volume probably went up twenty-fold" after the change, says Necco Vice President of Research and Quality Jeff Green says. "Some positive, and some negative. But a lot of negative."
The common theme from Necco's longtime customers, Green tells NPR's Michele Norris, was, "You ruined my product, I will never buy anything from you again."
"Ouch," Norris says.
"Yes, ouch," Green says.
And so the company is going back to what it does best: making candy with artificial dyes and good old-fashioned sugar
As Green describes it, customers weren't as upset with the candies' taste as they were with their new color. Instead of artificial dyes and colorings, the revamped Necco wafer used natural colorings made from turmeric , red beets, purple cabbage, and cocoa powder. The company also replaced the artificial flavors in some of the wafers with natural flavors.
"The flavors, I thought, were very close, if not identical," says Green. "I mean, considering that four of the flavors, we didn't touch. So, the colors influence people's perception of what things taste like."
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Exacly!
Of course, our tastes were a little less refined in those days.
The colored rolls made me nauseous, but I’d crawl over ground glass for the all-chocolate rolls. Fortunately; most corner stores carried them back in the 60’s and 70’s.
And Netflix.
New coke is old news but relevant.
The most recent dumb-@$$ move by a company is Netflix.
It could go down as the all time dumbass move.
I know coca cola is bigger but when you lose 800,000 people that were paying you (and would continue to pay you probably until a new technology emerged) $10 a month and you lost them in a matter of a month or two.
The company’s headquarters are (were?) in Cambridge, MA. I remember seeing a large “NECCO” sign to this effect and realizing that the name of the candy was an acronym for the company’s name.
Doing business in anti-business commonwealth of Massachusetts — particularly in ultra-liberal Cambridge — must be a daunting experience, even for a long time New England institution like NECCO. One wonders whether the traditionalists will win out over those favoring the less tasty natural flavors and thereby save the product. The new flavors and colors have been in effect for at least two years despite 20:1 complaints from customers.
Maybe the Boston “Occupy” people should march on NECCO and demand a change back to artificial colors and flavors.
Note the dyes were artificial, but the sweetener was real sugar.
The new nasty taste didn't come from the vegetable dies - they used those "all natural" dies to cover up something hideous that they replaced the SUGAR with.
10-to-1 they shifted to aspartame, to make naturally dyed poison disks.
gotta eat ‘em. they don’t work in the toll-booths anymore.
Chocolate was my favorite, as well. I used to despise the black ones, that a previous poster mentioned. I haven’t had them in years. I get them occasionally when I go to Maine to visit.
What is up with all these companies ruining products that people like? I recently ate a nestle crunch bar and spit it out it tasted so bad. I’ve had to stop buying so many snack foods in the past few years.
“people actually eat those things?”
Oh gosh, my dad used to buy them for us all the time.
They were great to use for Communion for playing “church”.
“I loved candy cigarettes, too”
We used to be able to get, at just this one store, some Chocolate cigarette that were just fabulous. They had some gold paper filter type thing on them, they were just elegant and good chocolate too.
Now, here is my real candy question: whatever happened to Turkish Taffy?
I checked NECCO’s website - they were in Cambridge but moved to Revere. Cambridge is so “Moonbat” - there is one company I know of there that I get a chuckle it’s in Cambridge...
Mayflower Poultry - Live Birds, Fresh Killed
http://www.mayflowerpoultry.com/index.html
And they really do slaughter chickens and turkeys in the backroom - must drive the Moonbats - batty - lol
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