Flintstones, Meet the
The Pie Man's Short Sad Reign
A Modern Stone age Travesty
The story of the GravelBerry Pie king is a tale as sordid as it is fascinating. There are few alive today who recall when the franchise was at its peak, and fewer who knew the true story behind the corporate branding. Not many people could tell you who the original mascot and owner of the Brand’s trademark were. While there was a short documentary released a few years ago, much of the shadier portions of Fred Flintstone’s life were glossed over.
Our story begins with an honest man set up by crooked union thugs. Fred was the patsy the union picked to deliver their exorbitant demands to company CEO and sole shareholder Mr. Slate. People close to Fred often reported him hearing voices, and evidence exists that Fred took the spot of the patsy on the advice of some fictitious green alien he called “The Great Kazoo”. Obviously, these troubling signs were overlooked as Fred was able to provide a comfortable life for his wife and baby. All that changed when Mr. Slate responded to the demands by firing Fred.
A distraught Fred returned home and his family immediately sensed something was off. Unable to admit his shame, Fred never told anyone about his unemployment. Being the loving housewife that she was, Wilma Flintstone, baked her husband a fateful pie; it was her very own recipe, Gravelberry pie. Fred began loitering in the town park with other unemployed workers as Bedrock’s economy was being devastated by corporate tax loopholes. A dejected Fred befriends a man and shares his wife’s delicious pie. As fate would happen, the owner of Safestone supermarkets, Mr. P.J. Safestone, was in the park that day. Mr. Safestone fell in love with Wilma’s recipe and began negotiating with Fred to sell pies exclusively in his supermarkets.
Fred ran into production problems early on when he spent his entire advance money on a Regal looking cape, crown, and scepter to fit his new title, “The Gravelberry Pie King”. This failed marketing strategy was the classic “putting the cart before the horse situation”. Fred became a tyrant in his home, forcing his family to work round the clock to fulfill impossible quotas. This was possible as Bedrock didn’t regulate worker safety for companies with under 50 employees. As the pies hit the shelves, they were an instant sensation. Safestone sold out the entire shipment in only a few hours’ time. The sales were so successful Mr. Safestone’s next order was 10 times larger. Fred’s exhausted family would be pushed to the breaking point to keep up with demand.
As often of those who aspire to lofty heights, Fred’s fall was precipitous. His quarterly earnings were in the red as his accountants were, quite frankly, smoking crack. He had priced his pies 23% below the breakeven point, essentially losing money as he operated. A typical wholesale markup would be around 20%. No distinctions were drawn between fixed and variable costs. Had Fred paid attention to overhead cost he may have been able to bake the pies for less than the $.52 it cost him. Fred had a taste for fame, and he wasn’t going to let basic bookkeeping ruin his dreams. Without consulting a single expert in the field of supply and demand Fred raised his prices an astronomical 99%. Fred’s closest friend Barny rubble again reported hearing Fred talk to an invisible voice only he could hear while making this decision.
The price increase didn’t go over well with Fred’s sole customer. Mr. P.J. Safestone had long experience in marketing and negotiations and Fred lost his leverage as well as his contract. Logistical problems began cropping up, as the pies needed to be kept below freezing or they would spoil, and the technological advancements that would lead to refrigeration was several million years in the future. Fred’s mismanagement of his advance money had again left him deeply in debt. Alas Fred’s avarice had ruined him, and now he couldn’t even give his pies away. He returned to his home a broken man, a dethroned monarch, an unhappy mate.
It was Wilma who set everything right, at least for a while. This was the ending featured in the original documentary. An ending that saw man and wife happily dancing together in a faux Fred Astaire/Ginger Roberts moment. Before we get to this point though Fred’s depression worsened. Wilma reached out to Mr. Safestone and offered to sell her recipe to him, a valuable trade secret. No figures ever were publicly disclosed, but it was reported that the Flintstone family was once again solvent. In addition to solving the current crisis, Wilma was able to get Fred his old job back as well. Effectively resetting the situation if you will in a comedic way.
The exact nature of the deal between Mrs. Flintstone and Mr. Slate were the source of rumors that haunted Fred for years after he abdicated his crown. No one could explain why Mr. Slate changed his mind so suddenly or why Fred was given a generous rise in salary. Rumors and innuendo haunted Fred and led to his dark decent into alcoholism and eventual death of liver cirrhosis. Wilma found solace in the arms of her best friend and eventual wife, Betty Rubble.
Everything about Fred’s endeavors was a masterclass in failure. He even failed at the most basic level of business, he never actually applied for a trademark to the name “The Gravelberry Pie King”, so he would never make a single cent off his enterprise. This may be just as well since not only was it Wilma’s recipe, Fred showed little interest in running the factory, and on several occasions he was even found unresponsive in the Storage ice house. The pressure may have been getting to him for in order to fulfill even the smallest order, Fred’s family, friends, and a strange cast of sentient talking dinosaurs would all work around the clock well past exhaustion. And the workload would only increase.
Long after the man who created them perished, the brand lived on. Eventually tastes changed, and sales waned. Mr. Safestone sold the brand to foreign investors who moved all plants to countries with even less stringent safety regulations. No trace remains of the man who began the company at this point, for the Safestone marketing division had long abandoned Fred as their mascot. Even though his pies are gone, it is rumored that if you wander down grocery store aisles late at night you can still hear a mournful cry echoing down the corridors, yaba daba doooooooo……..
