40-27A The Gloppy mess of merger mania

Here’s a recipe for you: Chop up some Oscar Mayer wieners, stir in Heinz ketchup, blend with Cool Whip and Maxwell House Coffee, sprinkle Planters peanuts over the mixture, add A.1. Steak Sauce, then top it with Cheez Whiz and blast it in the microwave.

Sounds like a gloppy mess, but an even messier version was cooked up in 2015 when Kraft Foods merged with H.J. Heinz, thus conglomerating more than 200 brand-name products – including all of the above – into one $28 billion-a-year behemoth. The combine was hailed at the time as a whiz-bang deal that would prove that bigger is always better.