Last updated on January 27th, 2012 at 11:03 am
No, it doesn’t have to do with covered bridges, old growth forests, or a vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Hostess, makers of Twinkies (immortalized in the since debunked urban myth that they have an indefinite shelf life), Ding Dongs and other comfort foods, is part of the culture of America. You drive into any convenience store, and there are shelves of the stuff. I admit to not either liking or having a Twinkie in years (quite possibly since college), but I know exactly how they taste.
And Eastman Kodak, once the power of Rochester, NY, and whose ubiquitous yellow and red film was everywhere. Now, we think of film as being quaint (though in Hollywood, Kodak still makes a significant percentage of film stock, since many top filmmakers still prefer film to digital). I learned how to develop Ektachrome and Kodachrome slides, taking almost all my photos on slides up until the early 2000’s. In fact, I was cleaning out some old boxes, and I found several rolls of exposed Kodachrome, which I could have developed, but the cost was too high, and given the 10 year old age, I wasn’t sure that I’d get good quality.
Anyways, these two brand names are part of the cultural memory of the United States. But they are disappearing, for Hostess, because we should be eating less processed, high sugar foods, and Kodak, because they stumbled in the transition from analog to digital (though they hold many of the key patents in digital photography and filmmaking).
I guess Whole Foods and Apple are their replacements these days, but they’ll be replaced by something new and better when the next generation replaces us.
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