I don't know when the post-80s generation, originally defined as the "youth of the times", began to "collective nostalgia", and one old object after another awakened the childhood memories that had been sealed for many years, bringing up wave after wave of "memory killing".
For the post-80s generation, when they were young, they were much more monotonous than today's children. At that time, there were no large and small supermarkets on the street, which were as varied and complete as they are now, and only some grocery stores could buy a little luxury that could be used for tooth sacrifice.
At that time, the children often ate nothing more than a small bag of figs with brown characters on a white background, sour plum powder that had to be eaten with a strangely shaped plastic spoon, a large bubble gum that could not be spit out in the afternoon, and crisp noodles that had to be crushed by hand to eat.
Milk, which is now ubiquitous in supermarkets, was a scarce commodity in the quantities of food in those days, and it was not something that could be drunk if you wanted to. However, children in the stage of growing up, coupled with the good memories of breast milk in childhood, have a deep desire for dairy products. Although the adults in the family will try to give the limited milk to the children to drink, but occasionally want to drink some milk to improve their lives, so what to do? Fortunately, at this time on the market, there is a high-grade imitation dairy product to choose from, the taste is more sweet and delicious than milk, right, yes, it is the famous "malt milk extract".
When malt milk creamer is popular all over the country, you will be attracted by the colorful, innovative design and ingenious malt milk creamer packaging on the counter or in the glass window. The containers containing malted milk are also full of flowers, some are made of cylindrical and square tinplate cans, some use white food grade polyethylene plastic cans, and of course, there are relatively simple bulk plastic bags.
The categories of malt milk extract are even more abundant, dozens of kinds. But most people choose only two categories, that is, cocoa malt and fortified malted milk, the taste and nutrition are more balanced, can be described as suitable for all ages.
Malt milk is made from two-sided barley and fresh milk as the main ingredients, so it tastes with the fragrance of malt and the fragrance of cow's milk. For people of that era, "malt milk" combined the essence of staple foods and dairy products, and the simple preparation method also made people finally realize the small dream of drinking milk if they wanted to drink milk.
Imagine how happy it was to have a life with malted milk creamer, come to a cup in the morning to save energy for the day's work and life; go to bed for a cup, accompanied by the faint milk fragrance of the tip of the teeth, quickly enter the sweet sleepland. This is not an advertisement, nor is there the slightest exaggeration, in those days, you can drink malt milk extract every day, which is equivalent to a sea cucumber with red wine every morning and an abalone with Rafi in the evening.
Malt milk creamer also has a characteristic, that is, hot and cold, eat and drink. Three volts of day you want to drink some cold, with warm water to wash malted creamer can also be flushed, a little bit of layering can drink the feeling of cocktails; on the third and ninth of the waxing moon, the big chai pot has just boiled boiling water, and the milk fragrance fills the house in an instant, which is called an addiction. Before I could drink it in my mouth, my brain had begun to secrete dopamine like crazy, and all my troubles were swept away.
The children's favorite thing at that time was not to drink malted milk, but to "eat" directly. The granules of malt milk are crunchy in the mouth, creaking in the mouth, closing your eyes to feel, and the pleasure slowly dissolves in the mouth, full of sweet aroma and endless aftertaste.
Some people also choose to use malt milk as jam, in the middle of the cut bun or bread, lay a layer, to make a simple "malt milk extract small burger". Anyway, when malt milk creamer was the hottest, people gave full play to their imagination and ate malt milk essence out of tricks, out of level, and out of culture.
So why has malted milk, which was once popular all over the country, disappeared now?
In fact, as early as the 19th century, malt milk creamer has been born in the world, its inventor is the Hollik brothers, the brothers because of the obstruction of entrepreneurship, they want to enter the "blue ocean" market in the field of baby food. To this end, they founded a baby food company, developed an instant drink with malt as the main ingredient, named "malt essence", and put it on the market in 1887.
China's malt milk creamer production also started relatively early, there was production before liberation, its process is constantly improving, and the categories are constantly enriched.
The first stage, before liberation to the 50s. The earliest malt milk extract was produced by Shanghai Jiufu Pharmaceutical Factory, and later merged into Shanghai Coffee Factory. It can be seen how "golden" malted milk creamer was when it first entered the Chinese market, and the quality of food made by pharmaceutical factories naturally exceeded the general food-grade requirements, and later entered the coffee factory production, and also labeled malt milk creamer with a "petty bourgeois label", which has some luxurious meanings. At this stage, the quality of malted milk is stable and the yield is increasing day by day.
The second stage, from the 60s to the 70s, during this period, the manufacturers of malt milk creamer continued to increase, distributed in more than ten provinces across the country, only in Shanghai city there were 7 factories, the country has nearly 100. Although the price of malt milk is more expensive than milk, it is not limited to purchase, so many people buy malt milk to supplement nutrition for pregnant mothers, and some are directly fed as milk powder to newborn babies to make up for the lack of breast milk, so the purchasing power of people in this period continues to rise.
In the third stage, after the 1980s, in order to crack down on counterfeit and shoddy products on the market and continue to improve the quality of malt milk production, the Ministry of Light Industry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries formulated the quality standards for malt milk creamer in 1981.
In May 1985, Tianjin held the first national wheat milk creamer quality product evaluation meeting. A total of 34 kinds of samples participated in the evaluation, and all of them had ministerial and municipal double excellent foods, including 12 kinds of cocoa type malt milk essence and 22 kinds of reinforced type. The judges were from Beijing, Shanghai, Qinghai, Anhui, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Heilongjiang, who tasted the participating samples from three aspects: physical and chemical indicators, bacterial indicators, and sensory identification, and finally selected 7 samples produced by 6 factories to become national malt milk quality food.
Let's list the trademarks of these 7 samples to see if they can evoke everyone's memories, they are:
1. Shanghai Coffee Factory Fuzi brand Lekoufu
2. Shanghai Dairy Factory No.2 Guangming brand malt milk
3. Guangzhou Dairy Factory Guangzhou brand malt milk creamer
4. Wuxi Dairy Factory Taihu brand strengthened malt milk essence
5. Tianjin Great Wall brand cocoa almond malt creamer
6. Heilongjiang Wandashan Food Factory Wanda brand cocoa type and reinforced malt milk extract
The first ranked "Fu" brand Lekoufu is the star product of the year, by 1990 the output has ranked first in the industry, the coverage area of the national market is as high as 85%, and most of the cabinets that are not reached by children in each family are placed with this brand of malt milk. However, in 1993, the "Fu" brand Lekoufu bid farewell to the Shanghai Coffee Factory, and the production and operation rights were transferred to Novartis Food Co., Ltd. Novartis is a foreign-funded enterprise, and it does not attach great importance to the business of malt milk creamer, and the brand appeal has plummeted.
At that time, the media also made a special investigation into the decline of the "Fu" brand Lekoufu, and the survey found that when the lightweight packaging on the market had become the mainstream, the "Fu" brand Lekoufu still stubbornly supplied the market with huge packaging and iron barrel-like weight. To know that the shelf life of malted milk creamer is not long, then a large bucket to buy home, often eat half a barrel found expired, resulting in a waste of resources. The most critical thing is that the jar is large, too expensive to sell, and consumers do not pay for it.
Lekoufu packaging has not changed for decades, the eternal red and yellow collocation, just out of the time is still quite festive, see more on the feel "soil", for the pursuit of foreign Chinese at that time, if there is a more fashionable packaging to choose, why buy a big and stupid and rustic Lekoufu?
In the 1990s, it was the era of rapid development of China's industry, full of opportunities and challenges everywhere, people can choose a variety of beverages are also greatly enriched, all kinds of dairy products are emerging in an endless stream, malt milk creamer is no longer a rare luxury, and it is no longer the "just need" of every household. Because although malt milk creamer tastes good, there are also some congenital defects, and when there are not many choices, these defects are often ignored by people, but they will always make people feel at some point that it is time to find a better alternative.
The biggest problem with malt milk is that when brewing, particles will stick to the spoon and chopsticks of the stirring, which feels very bad and is not conducive to cleaning. Brewed malt milk essence will also have a phenomenon of stratification, there is a significant precipitate, and occasionally there will be black substance precipitation, so that people have the illusion of unhygienic.
At the same time, some experts have proposed that the protein content of malt milk is extremely low, only 30% of milk powder, and the fat content is only half of milk powder, which is simply not enough to supply the growth needs of young children. On the contrary, the carbohydrate content of malt milk is too high, most of it is granulated sugar, and the lactose content that is beneficial to infants and young children is seriously insufficient, and it is not conducive to the growth and development of newborns. Those fortified malt milk that add vitamins A and D, due to the relevant elements exceeding the standard, long-term use will also lead to the occurrence of various diseases. Therefore, experts collectively call for the use of malted milk instead of milk powder as a daily nutrition product for children.
Malt milk creamer, which has been popular for decades, has since fallen off the altar and has become a chicken rib product that the poor will not buy and the rich will not be rare. It is also during this period that the iterative upgrading products of malt milk creamer have fully occupied the market, advertising has been overwhelming, and today's major supermarkets can still see the figure of this product, which is the famous High Lego.
High Lego, introduced in Barcelona in 1946, has swept the entire Iberian Peninsula as soon as it was launched, thanks to its pure milk aroma and rich nutritional ratio. In 1990, The Nutray Barthes Group, a manufacturer of High Lego, entered China and established High Lego (Tianjin) Food Co., Ltd., which was also the first food enterprise in Spain to enter China.
When we think of High Lego, we can think of a large yellow cylindrical jar with a red lid, heavy in the hand, and you can smell chocolate and milk candy as soon as you open the lid, which is very tempting. I have to admit that malt milk creamer and The outer packaging of Gao Lego have too many similarities, which shows that the portraits of the two of them are strikingly similar to their target groups.
In the 1990s, as long as you turn on the TV, whether it is black and white or color, you can see a little girl with a double ponytail holding a cup of chocolate colored Lego, take a sip, turn to the camera and say: "High Lego, great!" "Just 6 words, the brainwashing effect is excellent, and it is difficult for people to forget."
Compared with malt milk, the taste of Colco is closer to the taste of modern people, and the instant effect is excellent, almost no condensation and layering phenomenon occurs, and the taste is naturally more delicate. In terms of nutritional content, High Lego can be regarded as a high-quality, high-nutrition safe and healthy food, which is more suitable for children to drink for a long time.
The hottest family comedy "Family with Children" around 2000 included Liu Xing, Xiaoyu and Xiaoxue who ran home after school, just to drink a sip of the classic leg of High Lego.
Indeed, as in the TV series, High Lego was still a luxury for most families at that time. Due to the huge investment in the early stage of the enterprise, resulting in the high market price of High Lego, in the era of a few hundred yuan per capita wage, a can of 500 ml of High Lego will cost more than 20 yuan, but it is not affordable for ordinary families.
As an "imported product", Gao Lego has both improved China's localization and has not lost the "foreign fan" that elevates its own image. For a while, Gao Lego's advertisements used foreign children plus Chinese dubbing, and there were many foreign subtitles, so that people could see at a glance that this thing was imported, it was certainly not cheap, and it was very faceless for gift-giving.
The main ingredients of Kolgo are cocoa powder and sucrose, which can be brewed directly or mixed with milk for better taste. At that time, both adults and children thought that milk + High Lego was the most beneficial health drink for growth, and some people also called this combination "the secret recipe of long height", and it had to be said that High Lego was at the forefront of the times in terms of marketing and advertising, and it was no wonder that it would make a lot of money.
In comparison, can you remember what kind of propaganda is deeply rooted in malt milk? In the final analysis, whether it was in the past or in the present, if a commodity wants to sell hot and sell for a long time, it is inseparable from two major factors:
First, the quality of the product itself should be able to withstand the test of the market, and those who have used it have said it well, forming a good reputation of word of mouth, so that the product can last forever.
Second, appropriate publicity is indispensable, to establish a big brand has the strength and responsibility of the external image, so that consumers have a sense of trust, but also can make the goods produce brand premium.
To put it bluntly, it is a sentence: both good products and good drinking.
It is not that malt milk creamer is eliminated by the market is its own problem, but with the development of the times, better products and more advanced marketing concepts have emerged, and the back wave has lined up the front wave on the beach. Although malt milk essence has long disappeared, the yellowed memories it once brought us have never dissipated, and every time we think about it, it is still sweet and fragrant.