As a kid of about four, I recall, I used to enjoy snacking on a whole dill pickle, applying cream cheese to it with a knife. I would guess those dill pickles were probably Heinz, because in those days (late 40s) Heinz WAS pickles, and if there were other brands, nobody paid them much attention. I also recollect that my mother for years used to invoke the Heinz name to indicate large quantity, as in "why, they've got more dresses in that store than Heinz has pickles!"
Things have changed, though. The Heinz brand of pickles has disappeared from store shelves in my part of the country. A decade ago, I could still find them in local drugstores (only the "spears" though); now, I am told in some parts of the country (California?) you can find them in Target and Wal-Mart grocery departments (but not in those stores in my area). You can find a certain type of Heinz pickles being sold online, always in multipacks of huge jars.
Other interesting facts: Heinz has abandoned the pickle as the theme logo for its "Heinz 57" products, in favor of the tomato. If you search the Heinz website for "pickles" you won't find a trace of pickles among the product listings there (just a reference to the change of logo above). If you ask Heinz's public relations department, as I did, whatever happened to their pickle business, you won't get an answer. The website of Pickle Packers International, a trade organization, lists Heinz as a brand but offers scant info on where they exist. Finally, a recent Consumer Reports review of pickles covered a number of brands, but failed to give Heinz even a mention, indicating that CR doesn't consider Heinz a player in pickles any longer.
Well, there are indeed a lot of other kinds of pickles now available, from brands that didn't exist 50 years ago, to locally produced deli brands, so fortunately we aren't lacking for pickles. Personally, I like the brand purveyed by my local supermarket chain under its own name. If Mom were still alive, she'd have to adopt a new phrase, but I'm not actively hunting for Heinz pickles except as a matter of curiosity.
Still, the apparent disappearance of Heinz makes an interesting product life-cycle story. It seems from all indicators that Heinz has deemphasized pickles in its product line, and may have stopped producing them at all, or could be producing them to be sold under other brand names. If so, those still available, whether on California store shelves or in odd packaging online, may soon be a new category of "collectible."
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