Metropol

Chris wrote:

Neil Jones wrote:Thought this would be worth adding to this thread, from BBC News and an article about the impending rebrand of Freeserve to Wanadoo.

Whatever happened to these?

LONG LOST BRANDS
Opal Fruits, Marathon, Jif, Wispa, Cellnet, One2One, Abbey National, Midland Bank, Channel 5, Oil of Ulay, Line One, Mercury, BSB, British Caledonian

Let's see: Opal Fruits were rebranded as Starburst, Abbey National dropped the National, Cellnet is now o2, Channel 5 is now just five, BSB merged with Sky to make BSkyB, One2One is T-Mobile... Wasn't Mercury a telecommunication company like BT?

Oil of Ulay was rebranded Oil of Olay and Lineone (the ISP I assume you are referring to?) was snapped up by Tiscali from BT.

Ahh, thats what happened to LineOne, we never had it, but our old PC was full of it all over the place advising people to use LineOne (That was back in 1998) but until we got AOL, at the top we had 'Microsoft Internet Explorer provided by LineOne', even though we were using Totalise. You don't get it with BT they keep changing their Internet service every 5 mins, it's either BT, BT Yahoo, and I am sure there was something else in between that and LineOne.

Chris wrote:

But Mercury was a cable telephone company who in 1997 merged with Nynex and a load of small cable companies to form Cable and Wireless and Mercury eventually disappeared.

Whatever happened to Mercury payphones? I swear there used to be one down my high street a very long time ago but it was rebranded to interphone or something.

AFAIK There was never one in Warrington, but I remember they always had one on Brookside (the old Channel 4 soap for those who forgot) and their Mecury Payphone box changed to a BT one. Though I think there were some in Altrincham that have gone orange coloured, forgot the name of the company.

EDIT: 200th Post

Are Interphone the orange ones?

If so they wer one of the many telecom companies that thought it a good idea, once the system was deregulated, to put payphones everywhere. Then the explosion of mobilephones happened and they've been left with hundreds of obselete non-functioning booths clutteribng up the highstreets of the UK

You don't get it with BT they keep changing their Internet service every 5 mins, it's either BT, BT Yahoo, and I am sure there was something else in between that and LineOne.

IIRC, LineOne was their paid ISP, and until about 1999/2000 BT also had a free ISP called BT Click.

Neither did I, but I'm sure cwathen will be along at some point with one of his fascinating posts about Wispa and where the others have gone...

At what point have I ever spoken about Wispa?

But anyway, Wispa rebranded to the slightly questionable name of Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbles last year.

cwathen wrote:

Neither did I, but I'm sure cwathen will be along at some point with one of his fascinating posts about Wispa and where the others have gone...

At what point have I ever spoken about Wispa?

But anyway, Wispa rebranded to the slightly questionable name of Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbles last year.

I don't like these Cadbury Daoiry milk with Bubbles things, I prefered them when they were a solid bar rather than in segemnts, it's just not the same now. And what happened to the like of the wispa gold and wispa mint? Have they gone or is it just in my area they don't sell the new equivalents?

cwathen wrote:

Neither did I, but I'm sure cwathen will be along at some point with one of his fascinating posts about Wispa and where the others have gone...

At what point have I ever spoken about Wispa?

Damn, I missed a comma out

It should have read "fascinating posts, about where Wispa and the other have gone".

scottishtv wrote:

Johnny83 wrote:what happened to...
Thorn Security

Well, working part time as a Facilities Advisor for a well known retailer, I have a scary knowledge of fire and security systems (for a 20 year old).

Thorn Security are still trading but are owned by the bigger monster, Tyco Fire and Security. Website here. The link there takes you to their Asia site for some reason. Hmm.

They're not to be confused with Kidde Thorn Fire Protection (now owned by Chubb Fire Ltd).

Since doing this thread I actually found out what happend to Thorn Security by somebody I know who works there. Hed told me when Tyco took over Thorn Security (they took them over before ADT Modern as it was known as for a short while). ThornEMI wouldn't exetend the lease of the name Thorn Security to Tyco so when the lease ran out tyco HAD to drop the name.

I have also been told that ThornEMI sold off Thorn Security to the directors of the company, who then decided to sell it to tyco.

Either way there was no finacial problems with company at all & they are still more well known (along with Modern) than ADT even though both comapnies dissapeared in 1998.

Thorn still exists as Thorn Lighting.

ThornEMI where massive at one stage, originally a rename of AFA Minerva (previously known as Associated Fire Alarms), they didn't just do security products & lighting, they also did videos, movies, & I also think Computer games, Sadly this once big UK company dissapear for no other reason than greedy directors, from the people I know who worked for them they said they were a pleasure to work for & a well respected company

Also why did I call the thread companies that bit the bullet? Well I had just finished playing GTA Vice City that day

Tried to find Wispa bars the other day and couldn't - loved 'em too.

one2one became T-Mobile in 2002.
Cellnet became BTCellnet in the late 90s before becoming o² in 2002.

I know this thread's getting on a bit, but I just *have* to know what exactly happened to Byte Computers. There used to be one near me, but it closed not long after PC World opened; I think they were taken over by them, but I don't know for sure.

It's just come to me what happened to Ritz Video? Were they all taken over by Blockbuster? Also at all do any Electronic Boutiques stores still exsist? Or were they all rebranded to Game?

Also sorry if it's been mentioned what happened to Texas? (DIY Store)