Page 38 - Business Facts

Oreo filling used to be made of pork fat!

Oreo cookies are the best selling cookies in the 20th century, selling a whopping 500 billion cookies since their debut in 1912. The annual Oreo recipe calls for 18 million pounds of cocoa and 47 million pounds of its delicious cream filling. 

That delicious cream filling used to be made of pork fat, though. Oreos are obviously widely popular, which is why their slogan was “America’s favorite cookie.” They didn’t want to be too cocky about how good their cookies were, though, and switched their slogan to “Milk’s favorite cookie.” 

The Oreo sandwich is made up of 71% crème and 29% cookie. It was created by the National Biscuit Company, now know was Nabisco. Get it? NaBisCo! Anyways, it started in New York City, but their headquarters are now in New Jersey.

They’ve maintained their number one status as America’s favorite cookie in the 20th and into the 21st century. They have changed minor things to actually make the cookie somewhat healthier, like replacing its trans fat with non-hydrogenated vegetable oil. That is pretty cool.

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Crash Bandicoot was almost changed to

Crash Bandicoot was a very popular and very well received platforming video game published by Sony and produced by Universal Interactive Studios (known more recently as Vivendi Games). It was developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation in 1996 and spawned a successful franchise. 

The series follows Crash Bandicoot, an anthropomorphic cartoon of the weird animal in the picture, and his attempts to stop his nemesis, Doctor Neo Cortex, from taking over the world. While getting ready for the game’s demo at the 1996 Electronic Entertainment Exposition, the team decided on the titular character’s name. The team simply took the name of the animal he is based on and added the first name from the character’s destruction of boxes throughout the game. 

The marketing people at Universal didn’t like it too much, however, and insisted that the character should be called Wuzzle/Wez/Wezzy the Wombat or Ozzie the Ottsel. Once Naughty Dog threatened to leave the production, marketing backed off and he was crowned Crash Bandicoot. 

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The world's youngest venture capitalist is only 19!

19-year-old Alex Banayan became the world's youngest venture capitalist on March 1, 2012, when he signed on as an associate at Alsop Louie Partners, a San Francisco-based technology venture capital firm. 

A college student at University of Southern California, Banayan read an article about Ernestine Fu, another venture capitalist at Alsop Louie Partners, and knew he had to meet her. He reached out to her online and they set up a lunch meeting. At the lunch meeting, Fu thought Banayan would be a good fit for the venture capital firm she was working for. She set up a meeting for Banayan with Stewart Alsop, the firm's founding partner, and the first meeting went so well Banayan was asked to fly to San Francsico to meet with the other partners. 

It was two weeks after the meeting in San Francisco that he received an email with an official offer from the firm to join as an associate. Alex said yes, making him the youngest venture capitalist in the world. Now, Banayan spends most of his time taking meetings with startups, looking at pitches, and talking with partners on conference calls. 

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Kit Kat is only a Hershey product in the US. It’s Nestlé everywhere else.

Kit Kat has had a long history dating all the way back to the 18th century, when mutton pies called Kit-Kats were served at the political Kit-Cat Club. The origins of today’s product go back to 1935, when a York based candy maker called Rowntree’s trademarked “Kit Kat.” The Kit Cat, as it was called, was produced for a while, before being discontinued. Eventually, it relaunched and was relabeled as “Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp” before being renamed to its modern title.

In the 1940’s Kit Kat was exported to Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. That was actually when the still used “Have a Break, Have a Kit Kat” line came around. In the 1970s, a new distribution factory was made in Germany to meet European demand, and to better handle distribution, agreements were established for Hershey to distribute in the US, and Fujiya to distribute in Japan.

In 1988, Nestlé purchased Rowntree’s, buying Kit Kat with it. Nestlé managed to take global control over the brand, except in North America, where Hershey still had the licensing rights to Kit Kat, which it still utilizes today. 

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Craigslist has a “best of” section for the most unusual posts.

It seems a little strange that such a professionally assembled and managed service would have such a thing, but if you’re stuck inside on a rainy day, flipping through the “best of” section makes for some pretty good reading. If you’re a frequent Craigslist user over 18, it’s something you can get in on. 

All postings are nominated by users, and can often be very offensive, as well as sexual, graphic, and most importantly, not always funny. The section is frequently updated, and some posts from June include the following: 

On June 17th, a posting went up for a VW Bug partway through the modification process to look like Gene Simmons (of KISS fame). You can see it pictured on the right. 

June 16th shows a post for a free birthday hat for a dog, and warns that it shouldn’t be used on lemurs, but is fine for red pandas or llamas One of the most clever is a post from the 6th in the “women looking for men” section where a woman posted about her encounter with a “handsome black man,” who was none other than President Barack Obama. 

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