We didn’t realize how much affection consumers had for Target’s ClearRX prescription bottling system until the bottles went away after CVS purchased Target’s pharmacies. Maybe customers themselves didn’t realize how attached they were to those bottles until they were consigned to memory, but with the CVS takeover of Target’s pharmacy business, they’re now gone. Why are people so attached to a prescription bottle, though? [More]
origin stories
The White Castle Story: The Birth Of Fast Food & The Burger Revolution
By 7.14.15
Back in 1921, when Edgar Waldo “Billy” Ingram and Walter Anderson imagined what their legacy would ultimately be, they probably didn’t believe that the country’s first fast food burger chain would become the subject of a movie about two pot-smoking pals caught up in a raunchy quest for a sack of small, square White Castle burgers. [More]
How Carl’s Jr. & Hardee’s Became One Giant Burger Chain With Two Names
By 5.26.15
Does a fast food chain by any other name smell as… burger-like? Even though Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s now share (almost) the same menu, the same graphic design elements in their branding, and the same parent company, they still retain their original names and there is virtually no geographic overlap of the two brands. While the only significant difference between Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s might be their names, for more than 30 years the two companies were worlds apart. [More]
Kentucky Fried Chicken Started With An Iron Pan, Dining Room Table & A Gas Station
By 5.4.15
When we imagine Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, we see an older man with a white beard and neatly pressed suit. But that’s not really how the foray into feeding the masses started for Harland Sanders. Instead, things began on a much smaller scale for the entrepreneur, who was in his 60s by the time he started letting others sell his chicken recipe. [More]
Taco Bell’s Founder Originally Intended To Start A Burger Empire
By 4.20.15
If you drive to Downey, CA, you can find the oldest existing McDonald’s eatery and the currently vacant building that housed the first Taco Bell. And the tie between the two famous fast food names goes deeper than that. It was in the parking lot of the very first McDonald’s that the man who would eventually create the Taco Bell empire dreamt of a fast food empire stretching from coast to coast. [More]
Inventor Of The Keurig Doesn’t Own One, Regrets Inventing It
By 3.4.15
Keurig’s K-Cup coffee pods are popular brewing devices that you can find in homes, offices, and waiting rooms. There are even refrigerators with a Keurig machine built right in. Do you know where you won’t find one, though? The home of the man who invented the machine back in the ’90s, John Sylvan. [More]
Who Invented Roadside Arm-Waving Air Dancers?
By 12.5.14
Where did the inflatable dancing man come from? You know what we mean: the tall fabric puppets that you attach to a fan and let loose to dance in the air, capturing the attention of people passing by. Where did the air dancer come from? They’ve been around for less than 18 years, and have an origin story involving three countries and the Olympic Games. [More]
Good Thing Comics Fans Don’t Mind Buying Slightly Mutilated New Books
By 10.26.12
We put out a call for purportedly “new” books mangled in the shipping process by Amazon, but Kain wanted us to see what happened when he tried to buy a graphic novel at Barnes & Noble. This book had different characters’ origin stories condensed into single pages, so of course they slapped a giant anti-theft sticker right in the middle of one of those pages. But that’s okay–it’s not like people who buy comics care about keeping the books in prime condition, right? [More]
How Tech Companies Got Their Odd Names
By 9.9.10
Had fate twisted differently, you might have bought domain names from BigDaddy.com, searched for stuff online via BackRub or never heard of Yahoo because its original name, Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web was so wordy it might have killed the company. [More]
