Remember the Generic food label products of the late 70s and into the 80s?
The packaging was plain, black-and-white, and featured the product name, ingredients, nutritional information, and UPC bar code, but lacked logos, photos, or illustrations to save on costs.
Generic products were often copycat versions of brand-name foods
Consumers didn't realize it, but they were produced in name brand factories on the same production lines as their more expensive counterparts. Introduced at a time when inflation had been raging for more than a decade, the economy was coming out of a recession, the aisle of misfit foods was growing at grocery stores. The products were simply called generics. Though store brand items did exist before this, they were not nearly as prominent at the time as they are today, and we have the black and white generic craze to thank for the development of store brand items at lesser pricing.
They were initially considered lower quality than name brand products. However, generic foods have improved in quality and are now a popular choice for many consumers.
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