The Niagara Falls Reporter

Description

Greg Frewin is a world-class magician who plies his trade right across the bridge in Niagara Falls, Ont. The Hamilton, Ont., native has won more first-place awards for magic than a mansion's walls could reasonably hold for display. I took in a Frewin show recently and was amazed as he made a host of animals, people and props disappear right before my eyes. As amazing as his prowess was, at least the audience was prepared for the near-certainty that things were going to go "poof" right before their eyes. It's different out in the real world. For instance, are you aware that four major American auto manufacturers went the way of the dinosaur in 2010? Before you read on, stop for a moment and see if you can name the quartet on your own. Difficult, isn't it? Two of the brands were relatively new, at least by automotive industry standards. The Hummer is no more. The Persian Gulf War gave us the futuristic car that sucked gas like a drunken sailor left unattended in the rum cellar. Saying "sayonara" along with it is the Saturn brand. Maybe people need salesmen haggling as part of the buying experience after all. The other two to sail off into the sunset were part of the American landscape for a far longer stretch of time. Pontiac was formed in 1939 as part of GM's Oakland division. The brand forged on when Oakland went belly-up a couple years later. The Pontiac GTO was one of the first muscle cars, and the Firebird was a staple of urban cool. Also launched in 1939, Mercury was placed on the market to serve as a buffer between parent company Ford and its top-tier line of Lincolns. Mercury soon found its own niche, and when the immortal James Dean drove one of the company's coupes in "Rebel Without a Cause," Mercury was part of the automotive lexicon for good. It's not only car companies that are disappearing like a Frewin rabbit before our eyes. The website "24/7 Wall St." has created a list of 10 companies that may disappear in 2011. If they do, they will go the way of some other companies that you might not realize are no longer around. How about Beatrice Foods? At one time Beatrice owned Butterball, Altoids, Peter Pan peanut butter and Tropicana orange juice. They've been gone since 1990, when what was left of the company was bought by ConAgra Foods. Do you remember when E.F. Hutton would talk and everyone would listen? Well, market crashes and money-laundering scandals had the public turning a deaf ear to the investment giant. Citigroup, Incorporated owns what's left of the once powerful firm. There was a time in the 1980s when you couldn't find a mall in America that didn't have a successful Merry-Go-Round clothing store as a stalwart tenant. Chess King was part of its franchise, and the one here at the Summit Park mall was the place to buy the trendy Rayon shirts that were the staple of a teen's wardrobe in the Reagan years. Unfortunately, trends come and go, and Merry-Go-Round and Chess King were checkmated in 1996. When Congress broke up Ma Bell, long distance calling became a competitive industry, and it also became cheaper for consumers. One of the early giants was MCI WorldCom.

Fact sheet

Company contacts

Products & services

Similar companies nearby