The high manufacturing costs and trademark issues with a soda manufacturer (The American Bottling Company, today Cadbury Schweppes), caused the bar to be retired in 1979.
"France is now facing triple challenges," he said, speaking of steep debt, poor growth and high manufacturing costs.
While manufacturing output is at an all-time high, manufacturing employment is today lower than it was in the later 1940s.
The combination of high manufacturing costs, declining demand for luxury goods and a weak dollar last year overstretched the company's finances.
The company, whose cell phone business has also stumbled, in part because of marketing blunders and high manufacturing costs, is now trying to reduce its expenses through job cuts, outsourcing and attrition.
While high manufacturing costs, declining demand for luxury goods and a weak dollar may have precipitated matters, this is not a credit-crunch story — it is a history lesson.
High manufacturing costs were blamed for a collapse into administration in 2006, and two years later it called time on production in Scotland with the closure of its plant at Heathhall, near Dumfries.
Even so, it should be possible to capitalise on the region's high manufacturing skills base, honed by the demands of the North Sea oil and gas fabrication industry, to attract further inward green investment.
Once up and running the company will open up the Blocks platform to developers, who can make their own modules for the smartwatch, although whether any third-parties are likely to take that risk with the likely high manufacturing costs is unknown.
In Tata Steel's press release last week, the company blamed "global oversupply of steel, significant increase in third country exports into Europe, high manufacturing costs, continued weakness in domestic market demand in steel and a volatile currency" for its intention to sell off the Port Talbot steel works.
Holden — a subsidiary of GM, which yesterday named Mary Barra as its new chief executive and the first female boss of a US car maker — said it will stop production in Australia by the end of 2017, blaming the high manufacturing costs there as one of the reasons.
