No Press Release for the End

New products deploy entire campaigns to announce themselves. Billboards, TV spots, in-store displays—the whole apparatus ensures you know something new exists. But when a product dies, it just goes. One week it’s there, the next week the shelf space belongs to something else, and you only find out by reaching and grabbing air.

Last summer there was a little blue cartoon thing bouncing through commercials, squeaking "Qoo"—a Coca-Cola fruit drink that was everywhere and then wasn’t. Before that, some wellness drink whose moment of satisfaction lasted about as long as its shelf life. No farewell campaign. No announcement. Just absence.

Things come and go and there’s nothing to do about it. That’s maybe the truest thing consumer culture teaches, and it applies to more than drinks.