CHAPTER 2
The Importance of a Consumer Monopoly or Toll Bridge
When my wife and I popped out our first child (honestly, she did more popping than I did), in addition to the haphazard caches of large plastic cars, ball poppers, and musical tables metastasizing throughout the house like a virus, I noticed another new constant in our lives: Gerber.
Aw, Gerber. The company that has the chubby blue-eyed baby for a logo and that produces just about everything edible for babies.
When Cooper was merely a small gelatinous package slithering around on the floor like Jeff Goldblum at the end of The Fly, he ate Gerber Stage Ones, the mushy stuff—the applesauce, the carrots, the sweet potatoes. As he grew into a sturdy “sitter” able to gaze around the room in wonderment, he ate the slightly chunkier stuff, Gerber Stage Twos—the turkey and gravy, chicken and rice, ham and ham gravy, and the Snozzberries! As he evolved into a rampant crawler capable of turning a 360 in two minutes, he moved up to Gerber Graduates—the puffs and crunchies, the even chunkier stuff, the chicken noodle and mixed vegetables and beef. Once he became a sloppy walker, with the gait of a drunkard at last call, he ate the yogurts, the gogurts, the lil’ meals, and his favorite of all, the Graduates Ravioli, which comes in an assortment of flavors from chicken and carrot to spinach and cheese.
And yes, folks, this is all made by Gerber. If you have a baby, you will know Gerber.
It occurs to me that Gerber has been around ...
