pecan logs

Let me begin with the fact more new products fail then succeed. And I mean A LOT more.  A Cincinnati research company says as many as 95 percent of all new products introduced each year fail.

But given some research and my own experience, I would suggest there is a wide range, say 1/3^rd to almost 90% fail, all depending on the industry.

Look.

I could write an entire book on the internal machinations a company will go through to convince themselves a new product is worth introducing and then how they actually convince <see … bribe, twist arms, threaten> someone to actually stock it on their shelves in distribution.

But, suffice it to say, considering approximately 22,000 products are introduced each year into supermarkets, mass merchandisers, and health food stores that thousands of new products fail every year and thousands of companies sit around pointing fingers at thousands of other people at year end.

Why do I bring all this drivel up? Because I just saw a large display of Pecan Logs at the front of the grocery store.

“Pecan Logs. 3 for $10.” to be completely accurate.

Yup.

Pecan Logs.

And for $3.33 <so you don’t have to do the math> so ‘the log’ don’t come cheap.

About the Log. The best description I could find of what a Pecan Log is was online from some guy called ‘confuserreview’ and it was so awesome I had to include it:

Stuckey’s Pecan Log Roll. It is without a doubt the greatest, most addictively delicious and horrifyingly malnutritious junk food to ever come from these United States, and may I remind you we’re the society that came up with fried candy bars.  We eat cake and pig fat for breakfast and drink more corn oil than water, but all of that pales in comparison to the Pecan Log Roll. Nougat and maraschino cherries, whipped to a dense creamy foam, and rolled in caramel and pecans. More sugar than the surgeon general suggests an entire elementary school should eat in a month, more harmful chemicals than a taxedermied man’o’war. From a nutritional standpoint, you’d be better off eating Lenin’s embalmed corpse, glass box and all…

Yup, that was awesome <and incredibly accurate in a Hemingway-esque way>.

In 1937 the Stuckeys started their own road-side stand to sell the pecan log rolls and it eventually evolved into a national chain of Stuckey’s convenience stores with over 200 locations in 19 states all built around this pecan log concept.

But now you can actually have the pleasure of buying ‘the log’ at your local grocery store.

Ok.

It is typically about now I shift into ‘business mode’ and analyze and provide a semi-intelligent perspective on the ins and outs of new product innovation and/or effective marketing or even a detailed ROI three dimensional butterfly effect risk/return grid <okay … I have never done that> instead I will share my professional opinion simply.

WTF.

Eating a Pecan Log is like a rite of passage … something similar to say jumping off an iceberg to show how tough you are or maybe even cutting your own kidney out <on your own with maybe only a 6-pack of Pabst to fortify you> to give to a friend in need.

All of the above make you a some type of tough survivor … albeit a loony survivor not a Spetnatz-like survivor.

That said … how many people do you know who would actually do those things?

<answer: unfortunate if you know even one>.

The point(s)?

No one in their right mind actually buys a pecan log <in a normal environment> let alone buy 3 because it is only $10? <maybe someone actually thought it was “good for the family”?> And, yeah, sure, a grocery store is a numbers game <sheer number of foot traffic guarantees some nut will walk through the sliding doors> but I cannot imagine they will be restocking that display in … well … ever?

In my pea-like brain I kind of think I could have put something else on the floor of the grocery store that would have sold a little better.

But, hey, maybe floor space is cheap in grocery stores <note: it is not>.

Well.

I need to meet this marketing genius who actually sold it in <assuming he isn’t selling swamp land to someone or ice cubes to eskimos>.

Pecan Logs in the grocery store. It is proof. Armageddon is upon us.