Posted on 12/01/2006 5:10:31 PM PST by SamAdams76
Many Freepers are probably too young to remember but I can remember the day that when you bought an Almond Joy or a Mounds bar, you got the entire bar. Not "two halfs" sold as a "whole".
At some point during the early 1970s, Peter Paul decided to sell these popular bars as two individual pieces as opposed to a whole bar. I trace this seminal event as a turning point in my life - when I started to become cynical and jaded.
I forget the exact circumstances but I seem to remember these candy bars weighed in the neighborhood of 4 ounces and costed 10 cents each. A pretty fair price back in the day when Richard Nixon was making friends with China and the Boston Bruins were winning hockey games with a blond-haired guy named Bobby Orr.
But a terrible scam was perpetrated upon the American public. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, Mounds and Almond Joy bars started showing up in two pieces weighing a total of about 3 ounces between them.
Not only did Peter Paul cut the weight of their candy bars by a solid ounce but to add insult to injury, they raised the price of these bars to fifteen cents!
But that was not the worst of it. They used the extra profits gained by shrinking the candy bars and increasing the price by launching a multi-million dollar advertising campaign geared towards making the American people think that they were actually getting more for their 15 cents instead of less!
The advertising slogan was wickedly brilliant, evidently thought up some advertising executive with a very warped mind.
The slogan was "With Almond Joy...You Can Share Half and STILL have a WHOLE!"
I can still remember the TV commercials, probably shown during the first episodes of "Sanford And Son" and "The Waltons."
The commercials showed some smiling woman opening her Almond Joy bar and giving some dorky looking man (kind of looked like "Meathead" Rob Reiner) half and then taking the other half for herself. Thus the American people were duped into thinking they were getting "two" candy bars for the price of one when in actuality they were paying more for less.
Had Almond Joy and Mounds kept their original full-size, one could easily split the bar in half and still share - while getting "bigger" halves in the process.
For some reason, I am still bothered by this to this day. While Mounds and Almond Joy were my absolute favorite candy bars at the time, I hardly ate them since, switching over to new favorites such as Zagnut (a much better version of "Butterfinger"), Milky Way and the now extinct Marathon bar (that used to be like a foot long of chewy chocolate-covered caramel - no kidding).
My sister like Three Musketeers but eating that candy bar always made me dizzy for some reason. I think they put girly sugar in that.
You havent noticed the poor quality of anything else yet?
Sometimes You don't
Snickers.
No, I'm not laughing. That was the candy bar I liked. Never cared for Almond Joy.
They sure aren't as good as they used to be.
You're the second person who said they were always in two pieces. I know I'm a little crazy but I swear they used to be in one piece. I can still remember as a small boy eating those full sized Mounds and Almond Joy bars. There was a vending machine near my house - the old-fashioned kind where you had to pull the handle all the way out, and one of these 10-cent bars would rattle around inside the machine and thump into the tray below. Once in a while, two bars would fall out at once - it was like hitting the lottery.
Coconut is disgusting. I can't shake the impression it's just toenails soaked in syrup.
Didn't the Mars bar start out as a two-piece bar, then become solid, like the milkyway?
Wow, they had vending machines back then?? ;-)
ML/NJ
The story of U.S. business in the last few decades is summed up in the question: "How can we make more while offering less?" The examples are endless...
Maybe, but they're clean toenails. They do a pretty good job of sterilization at the candy plant.
I agree with you that coconut is disgusting. I had never heard it referred to as being like "toenails soaked in syrup".
That is now stuck in my mind forever.
You need to buy them from a 24 hour laundromat vending machine. That's the only way to eat those things. :O)
Well, duh.
That's 'cuz they're still the originals from the 70s!
Well, Almond Joy used to be my favorite candy bar. :O)
Brilliant description, but just YUCK!
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