I've done it again. Gone and killed another of my favorite products. Merely by enjoying them, it seems I consign them to some sort of consumer products death sentence, where like Stalin's political enemies they disappear and are never seen again.
According to several news reports, it's not hard to do. Products are coming and going in unprecedented numbers. And just about anything affects it. Corporate mergers. Supply chain issues. Sales. Executive whims. Pandemics.
As a guy with a few kinks in his tastebuds (I detest seafood and poultry, for example) I don't expect to find an endless array of foodstuffs that appeal to me. But when my tastebuds find themselves in the mainstream, I kind of hope things will stick around for a while.
Take Knorr Foods One Skillet dinners. Just last year, I discovered the Steak, Pepper, Brown Rice and Quinoa variety. And the Moroccan-Style Chicken with Barley, which asked only that the preparer add carrots and raisins. (Okay, I admit it—the latter is a little exotic. And if you're wondering, I substituted the chicken with pork.)
But they were amazing! I mean, restaurant-quality food from my kitchen? Are you serious?
But there they were.
Yes, there was some prep required. With the former, one red and one green pepper needed to be sliced, along with a pound and a half of good beef (I used London broil). With the latter, the pork had to be similarly prepped, along with the carrots.
No big deal.
Then each ingredient had to be cooked separately, with each one picking up traces of the item cooked previously. Finally, there was a grand re-combining. Let stand for a couple of minutes and they were ready to go.
I consumed them like someone who hadn't eaten for weeks. Leftovers existed only theoretically.
After several months of One Skillet nirvana, I began to notice one of two things when I went to re-stock: they were either gone (along with their shelf IDs), or they were on sale—the clearance kind.
It being the year of COVID, so much could have gone wrong.
And yet on the other hand, with so many people spending so much time at home, I would have thought a product like this, which required only a few, easy to find additions and yielded a restaurant-quality dinner in return would have been wildly popular.
I was wrong.
But I'll never know for sure. Responses from Knorr were vague and never confirmed the status of these products. But their continued absence from the corporate web site and store shelves doesn't paint a bright picture.
Even on the inedible side of the marketplace favorites disappear.
If you can find it, take my all-time favorite car wax. It was my wife who first spied Final Detail on QVC, and was impressed by the claims of the manufacturer. Mindful of the many hours her hubby spent washing and waxing their cars, she ordered.
Perhaps displaying a bit of gender-based skepticism, I regarded the product with a noncommittal “Hmmm.” It seemed too good to be true. But because of the degraded condition of the wax on hand (I had stupidly left it the garage, where it had frozen over the winter), Final Detail was pressed into service earlier than anticipated.
And I was awed.
My car shone like the proverbial diamond. It was its own auto show. The sun was reflected in a tightly-focused, blinding point of light. Even better, Final Detail could be used across several different types of surfaces. I was immersed in Final Detail delirium. People stared.
(At the car. Not my delirium.)
Not so surprisingly, my wife was immersed in a gentle form of I-told-you-so delight. As if I even needed the reminder, she was a woman worth listening to. And I don't hesitate to say I did.
Marital tangents aside, I became hooked on Final Detail. I swore by the stuff. But life changed, and finances no longer allowed for luxuries like garages. And things like waxing the car took a backseat to things like looking for a job.
When we were again able to afford housing with garages, I resumed my old habits. The diamond-like luster it cloaked my 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder* in made my heart swell. Perfection!
So when bottle number-one of a two-pack ran dry, I began searching for replacements. I may as well been looking for a break on my Illinois property tax. It is gone.
There is a lady by the name of Bridgette in Sumner County, Tennessee who is selling a bottle on Varage Sale for $30—roughly three-times its original price. But apart from hers, good luck.
However humiliating it is to admit, I am a consumer-oriented capitalist at heart. And when I find that rare product that either tastes really good or works really well, I seek an LTR faster than a lonely soul on a dating site.
I mean, I'm there.
But the world's titans of industry need to cooperate. It's hard to believe this even needs to be said, but I can't have an LTR by myself. And insofar as One Skillet dinners and Final Detail car wax are concerned, I seem destined to remain a party of one at a table for two.
Sigh.
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