Not Nice

          A few years ago, I noticed that Keebler had copied the girl scout cookie recipes, and I was a little shocked, because okay, those are supposed to be girl scout cookies.  Today I noticed that the Walgreen's "Nice" brand has also copied them.  So I guess that is that, you know, because recipes I think are considered public domain and do not have copyrights.  I do think that is a good policy and yet wow I thought maybe people would go ahead and let the girl scouts have something special and seasonal.  And another thing that bothers me everyone is the fact that probably I will eventually break down and buy some of those caramel delights I mean of course I will and the peanut butter patties and yeah ok the thin mints, and they know I will, you know all those ad wizards and marketers and food sharks, they know that I will not be able to stay loyal to the girl scouts.  And it is true that the girl scout cookie industry became such big business that it is hard to see it as just little kids selling cookies anymore, which might be part of it too, and maybe this final acquisition, I mean copying, of the girl scouts is some kind of representative decision and conclusion that the girl scout cookie business can't honestly be called a fundraiser anymore and is part of a gillion dollar food industry.  But I am kind of sad to see it happen, and I am also sad to see pretty much all those other Keebler brands and any other well marketed food brand to now have a store brand competitor product next to it for cheaper.  So basically the stores with the power to decide shelf space get to squeeze out the brands that first developed the food products.  But maybe this, too, is a representative decision and conclusion that those days of power are over for those brands, and now people have other ways to decide what to eat. This also could be related to another market trend of rejecting all those brands with preservatives and making room for the organic foods and hippie market.  That was crazy of me to say hippie wasn't it, especially when all those people might have saved the day for everyone with food allergies.  Anyway, I am rambling a little bit, and maybe some other people have cracked the code on all of this, and I can see how I haven't really made a single clever joke like I would have hoped to do in a post like this.  But maybe that is because it really isn't funny to me, and my brand loyalty actually goes far enough to care about the people behind the brands, who I think might not be getting the merit badges they deserve.