As a child, I coined this term to describe the "no frills" grocery items you found in the supermarket...
If you're my age or older, you will remember the canned and boxed goods with a plain white label and black text which simply stated the contents of the container. No photos, no brand name, often no other colors (Pathmark being the lone exception with red, white, and blue stripes around the top).
To me, frills were things you found on ballet costumes, not on groceries, and so I rejected the term "no frills" as being just plain wrong, and replaced it with what I felt expressed that the packaging had been violated, having all the color and joy sucked out of it... Certainly the insides had suffered the same fate, and so why would you buy it? "Eeww, mommy, don't buy that, it's Ventimated!"
I imagined a Snidely Whiplash character sneaking through the supermarket, pulling out an oversized ray gun, laughing evilly, and zapping the product shelves, pulling the flavors and colors right out of the cans and boxes, leaving them lifeless shells, withering on display, marked down in pity by the store clerks, waiting for some poor customer who didn't know better to purchase them, simply because they had been put on sale... Who knows what eating the contents would do to you?
Apparently this sort of thinking caught on, because I can't remember the last time I saw a ventimated product anywhere. Now we have "store brands" instead of generic "no frills", which feature colors and images just like their more expensive, nationally branded counterparts.
In some way, I think it's a good thing - lack of color really does bother me... But it also removed the stigma from buying for price... I remember when ventimated wasn't just about a lack of fancy labels, but also about the fear of being "caught"... If a classmate ever saw me (or even just my mom) in the supermarket and saw a ventimated can or box in our cart, it meant we must be poor, and I'd be on the receiving end of some nasty treatment the next school day...
On the other hand, are we simply reinforcing that looks are everything?
There really wasn't any difference between the peas in the black and white can, and the peas in the can with the photo of peas on it, as my mother insisted to me every time we went shopping... But I was certain there was something wrong with the peas in the black and white can... As a child, I was incapable of not judging a book by its cover (consider why children's items are all so colorful!)...
But, obviously a whole host of adults, who should know better, agreed with me enough that an entire industry changed from no frills labeling to store brands... The insides hadn't changed, the factories that made them hadn't changed, the type of packaging hadn't changed, just the look of the label...
While I certainly prefer my colorful store brand to the ventimated packaging of the past, as the song goes, it's just another brick in the wall... Just one more thing programming all of us to look at the packaging over the content...
