I had my first Ho Ho in five years yesterday and wrote the company about it.
It was a good Ho Ho, meaning that it didn't taste like a Swiss Roll. My grandfather always bought those because they were dirt cheap, but if it was a choice between Swiss Rolls or the leprous bananas (more black spots than yellow) I'd generally go with the banana.
Anyway, it was a good Ho Ho, but somehow, it didn't taste the same. I opened the box of Ding Dongs to compare. The Ding Dong tasted as I recalled- close enough, anyway. But, the Ho Ho... I don't dislike it, but I missed the old flavour: where had it gone?
So, I e-mailed the Hostess people. We'll see what they have to say, whether they've changed the recipe in the last five years or so.
I would swear that the Milky Way people have changed their recipe. Have you had a Milky Way candy bar lately? It tastes like a chemical plant explosion covered in caramel. There is no chocolate taste left in this thing, and it makes my teeth hurt. I keep buying them because I loved the things when I was a kid, but they just leave me with disappointment and a bad taste in my mouth.
I honestly don't think it's just that my tastes have changed (though there are things that I marvel about having loved so much- candy corn, hushpuppies, anything from Keebler). I think that, slowly, subtly, brands are changing to respond to higher raw product prices (chocolate, sugar); dietary trends (trans fats removed from certain foods actually makes them *better*, because they weren't originally in the food anyway); the evolution of artificial flavours and colours, and the cheapness and popular preference of corn syrup.
Take Hi-C. I've suspected for years that the brand is slowly being squelched (Hi-C is owned by Minute Maid and Minute Maid in turn is owned by Coke- it's been this way since the 60's). They exist only in drink box form, which I won't buy because I hate the stupid things. Back before hard plastic packaging was common, a cardboard juice box was the about the only way to take a drink to school, and you invariably had some kid geyser all over the lunch table. These days, we have plastic bottles, we have screw on caps, why do we need drink boxes?
They have also finally phased out Ecto Cooler. Oh yes, in spite of the investigative reporting of X-Entertainment a few years ago, Slimer juice is gone for good. It was originally changed to some other juice that has been discontinued. Maybe it couldn't make the transition to their new non-staining formula (which, I understand, makes every single juice look like pee), but Ecto Cooler just isn't Ecto Cooler unless it's radioactive green.
I wrote to the company a while back asking why they discontinued the larger gallon sizes (I decided not to ask about the cans: canned Hi-C was a completely different experience). Apparently there wasn't demand for the larger sizes. Yeah, that's why the grocery store was always sold out of them. I'm sure.
Of course, Hi-C's main competitor is probably Juicy Juice. Juicy Juice is the WIC approved juice, and so it sells well at Wal-Mart (the WIC demographic and the Wal-Mart demographic being an overlap).
Doing a bit of research, it also happens that Juicy Juice is the juice of Nestle (who owns everything that Pepsi and Coke don't, and all the European brands save, what, Cadbury?). Nestle, it seems, has a joint ownership with Coke for all their drinks, called Beverage Partners Worldwide.
So, it turns out I have good reason to think that someone is allowing Juicy Juice to squash Hi-C.
And hell, while we're at it, I would like to try some Mexican Coke. Coca Cola, that is. Coke has been made with corn syrup as long as I've been drinking pop (the switchover occurred sometime before New Coke came out in 1985- I was a year old in 1985). But I understand that in Mexico, Coke is still made with sugar. While taste testers back in the 80s preferred the corn syrup to the sugar, the sugared stuff is the holy grail of pop drinkers. I would just like to make the comparison for myself.
I just hope Hostess gets back to me and doesn't brush me off. I'd rather that companies admit to recipe changes, even if they think we don't notice. Some of us can.