When you go shopping, do you look for name brands? Some people will only purchase something if it has that name-brand appeal. And there is something to be said for a trusted name, especially one that has a lot of years behind it. It stands to reason, even if we don’t have proof, that a business must be good at what they do if they’ve been around for a long time. Whether that’s always true doesn’t matter, it does give you some extra cache in the business. And with that in mind, here are some of the oldest brands in the world that you can still enjoy to this very day.
10. Fruity Pebbles Was the First Brand of Cereal Marketed Around a TV Show
Once upon a time, some brilliant marketing executive realized that if they started linking products to TV shows, then they would technically have a built-in customer base already. If you love The A-Team, surely you will love A-Team brand sneakers. In the cereal world, the first person to stumble upon this idea decided that if you like The Flintstones, you’re going to love Flintstones cereal. and thus Fruity Pebbles were born.
If you’ve never had Fruity Pebbles they are small, arguably fruit-flavored sugary bits that are very brightly colored and feature The Flintstones on the box. Pebbles, as you may recall, was the name of the Flintstones’ daughter. That kind of makes eating the cereal weird because are they suggesting it’s dried-out bits of this cartoon child? Best not to think about it.
Fruity Pebbles was the first brand of cereal that was marketed as a tie into a TV show all the way back in 1971. According to Post, the company that makes the serial, about 1.4 billion bowls of their cereal are eaten every year proving that, even though The Flintstones was only on TV until 1966 originally, people will still enjoy a bowl full of sugar with your cartoon on the label over half a century later.
9. Buick is America’s Oldest Car Company Still in Operation
Car brands come and go throughout history. You will not find a new Pontiac on the road anytime soon, or an Oldsmobile, or a DeLorean. But if you want a vehicle with a lot of history behind it, you have a few choices. Everyone knows Ford and Chevy have been around for a while. Chevy dates back to 1911 and Ford dates back to June 1903. But if you want real old school? Buick is the oldest car brand in America which just sneaks past Ford as it was founded in May 1903.
If you want something even more classical than a Buick, you’re going to want to look to Europe. Peugeot is the oldest car manufacturer in the world that’s still running, and they were manufacturing their first vehicles in the 1890s.
8. Fry’s Chocolate Cream is The World’s Oldest Still Available Chocolate Bar
Do you have a sweet tooth? If you put a lot of stock in old family recipes, then you may have a preference for classic candy bars. Everyone knows Hershey, Nestle, and Cadbury had plenty of chocolates to offer and have been around for a while, but none of them can claim to have the world’s oldest chocolate bar that’s still on the market today.
If you want a taste of history you want Fry’s Chocolate Cream. Even the name sounds horribly antiquated and maybe not as enticing as it did back in 1866 when Joseph Fry invented it.
The company itself dates all the way back to 1728, and it ceased being a company in 2011. However, Cadbury took over production of Fry’s products, including cream eggs which everyone knows, and the chocolate cream bar which is still on sale today. It features chocolate covering a creamy fondant center if that’s your cup of tea.
7. Vernors is The Oldest Soda Brand
The global soft drink market was worth over $400 billion in 2021 and is expected to keep rising. That’s a baffling sum of money for something most people consider bad for you. Of course, alcohol is over one trillion dollars and that doesn’t include what’s sold at restaurants and bars, so maybe soft drink sales aren’t so remarkable after all.
Regardless of the cash going into them, there are plenty of soft drinks on the market and many of them have extremely long histories. Drinks like Pepsi, Coca Cola and Dr. Pepper all date back to the 1800s with Dr. Pepper being the oldest from 1885. Still, the good, pepper doctor is not the oldest soda available in the modern world. That honor falls on Vernors ginger ale.
Vernor’s goes all the way back to 1866 when it was created in Detroit. Like any good drink of the era it was named after its inventor, in this case James Vernor and, of course, he was a pharmacist because pharmacists used to make a lot of weird stuff back in the day. Most early soft drinks were originally created as medicinal tonics because apparently no one knew what medicine was until sometime in the 1950s, maybe.
Of course, if you like a little scandal, there’s also some debate about the exact year of Vernor’s creation with the potential for it being in 1880, which would still make it the earliest. However, the formula may have changed in the last several years as well and, if that’s the case, the Vernor’s you’re drinking may not be the original Vernor’s and therefore may not qualify as the oldest brand still available.
6. Good & Plenty is the Oldest Candy Still Available
If Fry’s is the oldest chocolate bar still available, does that mean it’s the oldest candy still available? Or is that another category altogether? If you’re looking at non-chocolate candy, then Good & Plenty gets the title of the oldest one that’s still available on the market today. The tiny white and pink candy-coated slivers of black licorice were first sold back in 1893.
It is somewhat ironic that the oldest candy available in America is flavored with black licorice since black licorice is regarded as one of people’s least favorite flavors. It’s unpopular enough that there are news articles written about how unpopular it is, something you don’t see with most other candy flavoring out there.
5. Beretta Has Been Making Guns Since the 1500s
In the US alone 663 companies manufacture guns and ammunition. While many of those companies date back years and a few go back well over 100, none come close to Italian gun maker Beretta. The company has been manufacturing firearms since 1526.
The company is a family-owned business and for many generations has been passed from father to son or nephew, all maintaining the Beretta family line. The company helped arm Napoleon’s forces back in the day. Who knows how many historical figures have shot or been shot by guns made by the Beretta family? It’s quite a legacy.
4. Zildjian Has Been Making Cymbals Since 1623
If you’re not a percussionist, you probably have devoted very little time in your life to thinking about cymbals. You may, however, have seen a drummer banging on one and noticed the name Zildjian written on the cymbal in a fancy script. Zildjian makes cymbals, and they have done so since the year 1623. If you want the oldest cymbals in the world, that’s where you need to go.
The story of Zildjian is more bizarre than you’d guess. In 1618, alchemist Avedis Zildjian was not looking to make musical instruments, he was trying to make gold. As you may be aware, alchemy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and instead of creating gold, he stumbled on a recipe for metal that made exceptional cymbals.
The alloy Zildjian created is not widely known, and the company keeps it under wraps, lest every other musical alchemist out there tries to steal their thunder. The metals are copper, tin, and silver but exactly how they are combined is unknown.
3. White Castle Is The Oldest Fast Food Burger You Can Get
In 2021 the global fast food market was worth just shy of $650 billion. There are also over 536,000 global fast-food restaurants out there, serving everyone quick and delicious or sometimes not-so-quick and vaguely horrible meals. All of that adds up to a lot of people eating a lot of fast food and that’s a hell of a legacy for the people who, many years ago, thought that churning out burgers like they were on a factory line was a good idea.
If you’re in the mood to get a real taste of that legacy, you need to go to the source. You need to find the oldest fast-food restaurant in America. Lucky for you, it’s also the first fast-food chain restaurant, too. It’s White Castle.
White Castle began selling 5-cent hamburgers back in 1921. That was 19 years before the McDonald brothers opened their first restaurant, 31 years before the first KFC, and 33 years before the first Burger King. The closest you can get in terms of burger chains is A&W, which was founded in 1919 but didn’t become a restaurant until 1923. Before then it was just a roadside root beer stand.
2. Conciato Romano Seems to Be the Oldest Kind of Cheese Still Produced in the World
According to Wisconsin cheese makers, there are over 1,800 varieties of cheese in the world. Other sources will say over 2,000. Suffice it to say that you’ve got a heck of a lot more than just mozzarella, cheddar, gouda, and Velveeta.
Cheese-making dates back around 4,000 years. It’s believed that a lot of those ancient cheeses were probably pretty salty and briny. We don’t have a lot of recipes on explicitly how it was made when it was first discovered. That said, some cheese, by definition, must be the oldest, right?
Conciato Romano seems to be the oldest variety of cheese still produced today. It’s been produced since the Roman Empire and the Samnite civilization around the 4th century BC. While it may not be an everyday cheese for most of us, it’s still probably worth trying if for no other reason than to understand what Roman emperors used to eat on their crackers.
The process of making the cheese today is labor intensive and obviously not something that many people are going to do. It needs to be made from goat or sheep’s milk, it’s washed in a very specific kind of water that is used to cook a dough first, and then it’s tanned in beechwood buildings. It’s quite an artisanal endeavor, and the cheese is not cheap. The price for 200 grams, less than half a pound, is close to 60 Euros.
1. Weihenstephan is a 1,000-Year-Old Brewery
In the world of alcohol, age means skill. Every brewer and distiller that has been around for more than a decade will probably include on the label or website somewhere just how long they’ve been around. None of them can come close to competing with Weihenstephan.
This Bavarian brewery isn’t just old, it’s ancient. While some might measure their progress in decades and a select few can even claim a century or two, Weihenstephan is the only brewer that’s about to start tossing the word “millennium” around.
The brewery was founded in the year 1040. It started life as a Benedictine monastery because 1,000 years ago monks were all about making beer in the name of the lord. In that whole time, it has never stopped doing what it does, so for nearly a thousand years they’ve been brewing different kinds of beer and, you would hope, really perfecting the recipes.