It wore a yellow ribbon - Nabisco Inc. failed attempt to introduce baked cat food

American Demographics, Oct, 1997 by Robert M. McMath

Pet owners want their pets to eat healthy, but cats care only about taste. A baked cat food didn't satisfy the needs of either group.

When you launch a new product, make sure it is relevant to the audience you want to sell it to. In 1974, Nabisco, Inc. launched Baker Tom's Baked Cat Food "from the makers of Milk-Bone Brand." The product was identified on the package as "a complete balanced meal" for feline companions. Across the bottom of the box's front panel, a broad yellow ribbon proudly pro claimed that it was "The Only Baked Cat Food."

The problem was: who cared? The word "baked" now has a healthy connotation, as in "baked, not fried." But in the mid-1970s, fat and cholesterol weren't big issues. Nabisco was presumably appealing to something else it thought people cared about--homemade taste. A promotional panel on the back of the 14-ounce box indicated that the food was "Oven Baked For Better Taste. Baker Tom's Cat Food is a brand-new cat food made a brand-new way. It's the only cat food that is actually baked in an oven the same way you bake at home.... Other dry cat foods are made by the extrusion process--a high-speed, high-pressure method."

"So what?" most cat owners might have thought if they ever got around to reading the panel. Nabisco had created an answer to an unasked question, a concern that didn't exist in the minds of the cat-food-buying public. People didn't care how cat food was made.

They notice if their cats don't eat, though. Consumers might have accepted the alternative manufacturing method if the product had been more palatable. As it is, we understand cats had a hard time chewing it. The product claimed to "provide a taste your cat won't be able to resist." Cats apparently did resist, enough that Nabisco itself recognized this possibility in a paragraph of package copy: "If appetite drops off, don't worry. It's probably normal. Appetite will most likely return in a day or two. Should lack of appetite persist, however, consult your veterinarian." Pet owners should certainly be aware of their pets' appetites on an ongoing basis. But if animals stop eating when introduced to a new food, most people are likely to suspect the food and try something else. That's what they did, and Baker Tom's slipped off store shelves within a year.

Twenty-some years later, The New York Times called the New Products Showcase to verify the facts of the product's existence, the correct spelling of its name, when it was introduced, and so on. No one at Nabisco could do so: "Never heard of it," they said. Even the legal department had no files or record of a trademark. But the box sits on a shelf in Ithaca, New York, proof that Baker Tom's did exist.

Robert M. McMath is director of The New Products Showcase & Learning Center in Ithaca, flew York, a collection of more than 60,000 once-new consumer products, most of which are no longer sold.