Cookies, Candy and Toys No Longer Recession-Proof

Now We Really Are In Trouble.

Every day you hear about home and stock prices falling still further. Jobs are vanishing as fast as your retirement money. In California, and most other states, you will be paying even higher taxes for far fewer services.

But 3 different business news reports out today prove just how dramatically Wall Street’s decline is changing traditional buying habits on Main Street.

Hershey will quit making its York Peppermint Patties and other candy brands at its company plant in Reading, Pa. After 23 years of operation, the Associated Press reports that today the chocolate maker is closing the plant and moving production to a new factory it has built in Monterey, Mexico. It will mean the loss of 300 jobs in the southeastern Pennsylvania city made famous for its house-hold name products. (I wonder if all that chocolate will melt in the Mexican heat.)

Also this morning, USA Today jolted me with this headline: “Girl Scout cookie sales crumble”. It’s a clever headline leading into a sad story about the times we live in. It seems that pre-order sales for the once-popular fund-raising tool are down up to 19 percent. Door-to-door neighborhood sales from January to March account for the majority of money that comes in to support Girl Scout council functions. So you can expect your boss to hit you up at the office to buy some more of his or her daughters’ cookies to bail them out, unless the government steps in. (Of course if your boss just laid you off, this is one expense you can dodge.)

And here’s another shocker from the younger set. World-wide sales for Mattel’s popular Barbie doll fell 21 percent in the all-important fourth quarter. The Wall Street Journal reports even sales of Mattel’s trademark ninety nine cent racing car, Hot Wheels, fell 22 percent. As a result, Mattel reported a 46 percent drop in profits. It seems parents are cutting back everywhere and toys for their kids are no longer a top priority. (You can use this story to tell your kids why their next birthday may be toy less.)

These stories may seem isolated, but taken together they speak volumes about how deeply this downturn is impacting U-S businesses. And not one of them is asking for a government bail-out.

(Brian Banmiller is a national Business Correspondent for CBS News Radio, free lance writer and public speaker. The former television business news anchor in San Francisco can be reached at brian@banmilleronbusiness.com .)