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Worst/Best discontinued products that are taboo now but ok yesteryear

Seeing another post about aunt Jemima products that were discounted due to racial stereotypes I was curious what’s the worst product-fuckuo you have seen?

In Sweden we have a chocolate pastry ball that was called negerboll which translates to negro ball. Early 2000s it was deemed that it was not ok and it changed name to chocolate ball.

Bonus. testfakta.se/…/bort-med-nidbild-pa-fazers-kinapuf…

yesman ,

A little bit about Aunt Jemima for non-Americans:

The image of Jemima isn’t bad because it depicts a racial stereotype. Or not just that. The image of the Black domestic is a symbol of wealth and power. It’s meant to inspire a sense of nostalgia for the times when children were raised and food was served with black hands.

The image of the black domestic was as wide-spread, public domain, and as common as images of Uncle Sam or George Washington. It’s a cultural touchstone, and just like the Rebel Flag, that it might make people uncomfortable is half the point.

Aunt Jemima gets at the heart of race relations in the United States. She’s a caricature of blackness, created by white people, for other white people, that somehow every black American has to confront, even if only to rebel against it. Because once something has become a powerful cultural image of what you are, to most people, and maybe to yourself, you’re defined by the stereotype, even if it’s only in how far you deviate from it.

Defectus OP ,

Well put. Thanks for the lesson.

Chev , (edited )

Not even a product but a childs game. “Wer hat Angst vorm schwarzen Mann? - Niemand!” Who is afraid of the black man? Nobody!

It’s basically about catching each other (with a ball) where you say those words in the beginning.

DasFaultier ,

Fellow German here. As a child I always thought that the black man must be Death himself, wearing a black robe, his face on eternal shadow, bringing darkness to all who meet him. And of you get hit by the ball, death will come and “reap” you from the game. THAT’S someone to be afraid of.

It was only much later I learned that it could also be interpreted as a hurtful stereotype that should be avoided.

Defectus OP ,

Oh man, I totally forgot. In the 90s we had a schoolyard ballgame called Nger. One person in every square. 4 Total. You bounced the ball in another square and if you couldn’t catch it, you were the Ngger. It was 3rd to 6th grade.

CarbonatedPastaSauce ,

McDonald’s fries in the 80s and 90s were THE BOMB. Then they changed the fry oil and they got real mediocre.

Albbi ,

I learned about this from the Revisionist History podcast.

www.pushkin.fm/…/mcdonalds-broke-my-heart

The war on saturated fats had a bad outcome.

Etterra ,

Leaded goddamn everything. Especially gasoline. It took damn near an act of God to stop that from being a thing, the guy who finally waged the war on leaded gasoline had to go through so many hoops to prove that it was the gas’s fault. He literally reinvented what a clean environment was. Seriously, he invented the modern idea of a clean room, because the stuff he had to work with at the time was woefully inadequate at preventing contamination from interfering with his experiments.

Also, and this is a really stupid fact, tornado slides. They used to be pretty ubiquitous, until one day two well meaning parents waged a Crusade against them that successfully accomplished literally nothing.

This one is especially telling. Basically, their kid fell off a tornado slide. If you don’t know what that is, look it up it’s just a slide that twists round in a spiral a few times. Their kid was on top of one being a kid, screwing around and not just sliding down it, fell off, whacked their head on something, and died tragically. So in an effort to protect other parent’s children, they waged a legal crusade to get tornado slides baned from playgrounds. They were successful and governments passed safety reforms for playground equipment, including the banning of tornado slides.

Unfortunately this had two secondary effects. Primarily, kids stop playing at the playgrounds. They were no longer fun, and the whole purpose of a playground being fun is to allow the kid to explore and develop a sense of risk assessment. Consequently, or perhaps incidentally, the second effect was that statistically the amount and severity of childhood injuries in the United States following the changes showed that there was literally no difference before or after the bans. Kids just found other ways to hurt themselves, at exactly the same ratio as before.

The entire crusade had been a futile effort to stop kids from suffering tragic accidents. Unfortunately for them there’s nothing you can do to prevent statistical outliers. By appealing to emotion rather than using data, they destroyed the prior appeal of playgrounds for children nationwide. I don’t know if any subsequent reforms have changed things again, if I remember correctly this all happened somewhere around the '80s or '90s. Whatever the case, we now have other issues with kids not playing around outside, mostly related to electronic devices. But it’s a good object lesson in why appeals to emotion are probably one of the worst logical fallacies there are.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

We had the same product you mentioned in Germany, only it was called “Negerkuss” (negro’s kiss). It was than rebranded to “Dickmann’s” (Fat Man’s), which apparently didn’t sit right with the crowd as well.

They are now known as Schaumküsse (Foam Kisses) or Schokoküsse (Chocolate Kisses).

There’s however also a more elaborate pastry version of this which goes by Mohrenkopf (Mohr was considered to be the “polite” way of calling a person of color, Kopf = head), and some bakeries still make and sell them under this name.

7uWqKj ,

Everybody’s still calling them Negerküsse, though.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

True.

baronvonj ,
@baronvonj@lemmy.world avatar

Radium or Cocaine in soft drinks.

Etterra ,

Pretty much anything radioactive; it was a big fad for a while. Then everybody realized that radiation was bad actually, so maybe your kids geology set shouldn’t include uranium.

Pronell ,

Lawn Darts.

People would actually encourage their children to throw large pointed projectiles in the air around other people.

Didn’t turn out very well. Discontinued for the most part, not so much taboo.

Zerlyna ,
@Zerlyna@lemmy.world avatar

Yes!!! I grew up with these. Someone always got stabbed with them.

systemglitch ,

Used them for tens years and no one ever got stabbed.

11111one11111 ,

Those fucking wax Coca-Cola bottle shaped things with the .00005ml of shitty kool-aid in the middle. Everything about them tasted like shit but never stopped me from eating the whole bag wax and all.

Alexstarfire ,

What made them taboo?

11111one11111 ,

It’s fuckin wax. You literally just ate wax. It was normal then but if I gave it to my 3 y/o niece these days she’d fuckin call cps on me and have me committed to a psych ward. Wouldn’t that kinda make it taboo?

Alexstarfire ,

No. It would just make it bad, like it’s always been. Honestly, IDK how they are even still being made cause IDK anyone who likes them.

GBU_28 ,

You don’t eat the wax wtf

Tolookah ,

I was going to say candy cigarettes, but in the US, they are still around I guess. Elsewhere it’s banned.

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

I often ate them with the paper. Good thing they were banned.

Defectus OP , (edited )

They’re still around. But changed the name to vapes.

kakes ,

Afaik they’re still around in Canada as well.

ArcaneSlime ,

Nah now they’re “candy sticks” and they removed the “ember” (the bit on the end dyed red/orange) and the lucky strike style packs. Last I saw any they had Scooby Doo on the pack.

son_named_bort ,

Big League Chew is still around, and that involves imitating a similar vice.

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

Sounds like the “Negerkuss” (Negrokiss) or “Moorenkuss” in Germany. Nowadays it’s called “Schokokuss” (chocolate kiss) or “Dickmann” (fat man, a brand name). First time I noticed that as a kid was at a bakery that wouldn’t sell you a Negerkuss only a Schokokuss. Even our black friend didn’t get one.

Defectus OP ,

I think I still have a recipe book with that name.

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