r/GenX • u/-Granby- • 14h ago
Nostalgia When you were a kid was there always an opened box of baking soda in the fridge?
My mom always kept a an opened box in the fridge. She never baked anything or did anything else with it but it was always in the fridge.
---In the 1970s, Church & Dwight (the parent company of Arm & Hammer) was facing a decline in sales because home baking was becoming less common. To sell more product, they launched a massive advertising blitz pitching a brand-new concept: placing an opened box of baking soda inside the refrigerator to absorb food odors---
---By the 1980s, the ad campaign was so successful that more than half of American households had an open box sitting in their fridge. The ads even encouraged consumers to replace the box every 30 days and pour the old box down the drain to freshen garbage disposals—a genius strategy to keep people buying it month after month.---
I didn't know about the marketing campaign but my mom sure must have.
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u/Motor-Rip7655 4h ago
Well how else am I supposed to keep The Monster That Lived Behind The Milk, Next To The Mayonnaise And To The Left Of The Coleslaw away?
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u/ApprehensiveCut9809 6h ago
Still is in musty fridges. We have a new fridge (I work in a factory and we made the one I have), so it hasn't needed one yet.
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u/spudmarsupial 11h ago
I suspect the development of cling wrap and, to a greater degree, cheap clear sided sealable containers had a lot to do with less stinky fridges.
I don't put leftovers in opaque containers any more. The "what's inside!" game only needed to be lost a couple times before I stopped playing. 🤢
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u/Mr_Pogi_In_Space 8h ago
Ugh, I remember when we were younger you'd come across a plastic ice cream container in the freezer. You excitedly open it only to discover it was stinky frozen fish
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u/Astronaut6735 11h ago
My mom did that, and I continued to for a while, but I stopped at some point.
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u/OreoSpeedwaggon "Then & Now" Trend Survivor 12h ago
My refrigerator has nothing but opened boxes of baking soda in it. Freezer too.
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u/GX_EN 12h ago
America's Test Kitchen has done studies on the effectiveness of baking soda in the fridge and found for the most part that it doesn't really do anything.
They did, however, find that charcoal does. FYI. :)
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u/KitchenNazi 12h ago
My fridge has its own air filter… But I also throw out old produce etc when it gets bad.
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u/joybilee 12h ago
Got one in there now.
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u/nrith 197x 12h ago
I have four: two fridges, two freezers.
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u/joybilee 10h ago
Do you have two fridges & two freezers, or two each in your fridge & freezer?
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u/nrith 197x 9h ago
Two fridges. Each with a freezer.
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u/joybilee 6h ago
Well la-dee-dah. So fancy!😉 When I was a kid we had two because my dad repurposed an old fridge, I think as a dedicated freezer though. His family raised cattle & deer hunted so there was always meat to keep. I'm just one person & two little dogs, so one is plenty.
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u/Erik_Nimblehands 12h ago
Yep. I don't do it but that's because I don't have stinky garbage in my fridge.
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u/Lucky-Remote-5842 12h ago
I don't have garbage, but some foods like onions and garlic smell.
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u/One-Yellow1504 13h ago
They started that ad campaign because people were already doing it at home. It’s a good home solution that caused A&H to create a small box. It’s not a conspiracy or marketing gimmick, it’s a thing that worked 50+ years ago, so someone sold the product. If it didn’t work it, people wouldn’t still be using them to this very day. I was there, ad blitz is hyperbole
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u/-Granby- 12h ago edited 12h ago
I never said it didn't work. The campaign was created because of a decline in sales though. There was a big pitch towards processed foods and pre packaged foods so baking from scratch declined to the sales of raw ingredients like baking soda declined.
---Long-Term Growth: By the mid-1970s, household penetration had jumped significantly. In the late 1960s, before the pivot, baking soda sales were flatlining at around $16 million due to a decline in home baking. Driven by the refrigerator campaign and subsequent expansion into other household uses (drain freshening, cat litter, pool maintenance, and laundry), total brand sales climbed to $127 million by the late 1970s and reached nearly $300 million by the late 1980s—nearly a 20-fold total increase from its peak pre-campaign era.---
It remains one of the most famous examples in marketing history of "discontinuous positioning"—creating entirely new consumption habits for an established product to exponentially multiply usage and sales.
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u/One-Yellow1504 12h ago
That’s a false inference that marketing companies use to shore up their belief in themselves. The consumers were already using it that way, we just dumped A&H in a mason jar and poked holes in the lid. A&H just created a packaging that was more easily accessible
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u/One_Vision_ 13h ago
Still is there
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u/egret_society United States of WHATEVER 12h ago
You should probably change it. They’re only supposed to last six months or so. I can’t imagine it’s still effective after being in there for 50 years.
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u/GuinnessScentedShart 13h ago edited 12h ago
When I remember to, I still do this. And one member of my home keeps some in the car. I don't know how effective the latter is, but anything's gotta be better than lingering farts.
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u/theShpydar 13h ago
They literally sell boxes now that are specifially designed to keep in the fridge.
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u/0811_devildog 13h ago
Why are you writing this like it's some kind of conspiracy or wives tale? Baking soda is a legit deoderizer for your fridge. I have one in there to this day.
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u/-Granby- 13h ago
How do you figure I wrote it like that?
There was a campaign in the 70s'. 50% of houses had them in the 80's. I asked if people were one of those houses. Not too confusing. I never said it was bullshit or didn't work.
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u/0811_devildog 13h ago
Because the writing makes it sound like the only reason people do it is because of a marketing campaign that your mom was silly enough to fall for and why would anyone do it today.
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u/TxChainsawMascara The OG Redheaded Stepchild 14h ago
There still is.
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u/LaLionneEcossaise 13h ago
Ditto. In fact, I have a box on my shopping list because it’s time to change it out!
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u/stranqe1 1h ago
Yes, there still is