The People, Products and Brands We've Lost This Year…

It’s pretty early in the year and we’re already saying goodbye. At the end of 2016, Twitter announced it was shutting down its video service Vine — devastating thousands with the news. YouTube personality and filmmaker Casey Neistat closed the gates of his social video app Beme too when he sold it to CNN in the fall of 2016.

Related: The 9 Things You Need to Let Go of For Success in 2017

On top of companies making their exits, we’ve seen some of our favorite and most inspirational leaders pass away. The Queen of Carbon, Mildred Dresselhaus, died in February this year, as well as iconic actress Mary Tyler Moore.

Here are some of the people, products and brands we’ve lost this year.

Sam Panopoulos, the creator behind the highly debated savory and sweet Hawaiian pizza, passed away on June 8 at 83. In 1962, in order to attract customers to one of his Ontario-based restaurants, 20-year-old Panopoulos and his brothers experimented by adding pineapple and ham to the pizzas. They named it Hawaiian pizza because of the brand of canned pineapple they’d used.

Roger Ailes, founder and former CEO and chairman of Fox News, died on May 18. He was 77. A dominating force in conservative politics, Ailes built one of the most influential media companies today. “We report. You decide,” was a slogan Ailes gave the company early on.

Before Fox, Ailes got his start working as Richard Nixon’s “executive producer for television,” ultimately helping Nixon make his way into the White House. Ailes has also been recognized as helping both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush become president.

In 1993, after becoming head of CNBC, Ailes joined forces with Richard Murdoch to launch Fox. Despite scandals, the media mogul was a genius at hooking viewers and launching the careers of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. In 2014, Ailes found himself in the middle of a string of sexual harassment allegations and lawsuits, eventually causing his exit from the company.

 

Chris Cornell, lead singer of the rock bands Soundgarden and Audioslave, passed away on May 17. The cause was suicide, according to a medical examiner. Cornell, who was 52, and Soundgarden helped spearhead the grunge movement of the ’80s and ’90s. Their 1991 album Madmotorfinger became multi-platinum and was nominated for a Grammy. The band split in 1997, and Cornell released solowork until he formed Audioslave with former members of Rage Against the Machine in 2001. Audioslave released a number of award-winning albums until Cornell quit in 2007 to pursue solowork again. He also created the theme song for Jame Bond film Casino Royale.

Adios, Pepe. Cartoonist and Pepe the frog creator Matt Furie has officially killed one of the world’s most popular memes, which saw a boost in its infamy as a white supremacist symbol during the U.S. election.

In Celebration of Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, May 6, Furie published a one-page piece of his “Boys’ Club” series — where Pepe ultimately got its start in 2005 — that shows Pepe in a casket surrounded by mourning friends.

Last year, when an alt-right version of Pepe the frog went viral, Furie said Pepe’s political association was just a “phase.” However, after the Anti-Defamation League labeled Pepe as an anti-Semitic hate symbol, Furie made efforts to clean up Pepe’s image, even launching a campaign #SavePepe to encourage people to create positive Pepe memes.

Unfortunately, Furie’s efforts weren’t enough and the cartoon has continued to be an alt-right meme (most recently it was “Pepe Le Pen”), so Furie has decided to bow out. Although, you’ll likely see Pepe on the internet, its creator is no longer behind it.

Eighty-four-year-old Stanley Weston, entrepreneur and inventor of the G.I. Joe toy, passed away on May 1.

After leaving the army and moving to New York, Weston worked briefly for an advertising firm, although after noticing opportunities in the licensing and merchandising industry, he left the firm and launched Weston Merchandising.

In 1960, after barbie dolls came on the market and Weston noticed that there was a lack of a male version (other than Ken), Weston came up with the idea for a military action figure — G.I. Joe. He sold the G.I. Joe concept to Hasbro in 1963 and continued to work with his company, which he renamed Leisure Concepts. From Farrah Fawcett to Bruce Jenner to Nintendo, Weston’s company represented a number of famous people and brands.

Considered one of the “founding fathers” of the licensing industry, Weston was inducted into the Licensing Industry Hall of Fame in 1989.

One of the brains behind the world-changing polio vaccine, Dr. Julius Youngner died on April 27 at 96-years-old. Youngner worked with Dr. Jonas Salk to research and eventually discover a vaccine for polio, which was a widespread epidemic at the time — affecting more than 50,000 children in one year in the early 1950s.

Working alongside Salk and five other researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, the team announced in mid-1955 that the vaccine had proven 90 percent effective on tests on 440,000 children. After the announcement and as more children around the country received the vaccine, the number of annual polio cases declined from an average 14,000 to 1,000.

In late April, Yik Yak, the mobile chat app that let people post anonymously — mostly for catty gossip in schools and social circles — announced its plans to close up shop. At one point being valued at $400 million, the app began to lose traction among young users when other apps such as Snapchat began to emerge.

“We were so lucky to have the most passionate users on the planet. It’s you who made this journey possible,” Yik Yak’s young founders Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington wrote in a blog post. “The time has come, however, for our paths to part ways, as we’ve decided to make our next moves as a company.”

Although no date is set, the app will officially close down at the end of the school year.

The last person born in the 19th century and the oldest person in the world, Emma Morano, passed away on April 15 at 117 years and 137 days old.

Born on Nov. 29, 1899, Morano’s lived through three centuries and two World Wars. Until she was 65, Morano worked in a factory. She lost her first husband in World War I and in an interview with Reuters, shared that she was forced to remarry but did not love her second husband, who she eventually divorced.

She outlived her eight brothers and sisters, and in 2016 was awarded the Guinness World Record for oldest living person and oldest living woman in the world. She attributes her long life to a diet of raw eggs and cookies.

On April 13, one of the world’s greatest tech innovators, Robert Taylor, passed away. The 85-year-old was best known for his work behind ARPAnet — the precursor to the internet.

Ahead of his time, Taylor foreshadowed the future of the internet with the work he completed creating ARPAnet while he was the director of the U.S. military’s Advanced Research Projects Agency from 1965 to 1970. After his work in the military, Taylor went on to oversee Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center where he helped develop groundbreaking technologies.

Al Golin, the original public relations man for McDonald’s, died on April 8 at 87 years old.

Golin got his big break in 1957, when he made the legendary cold phone call to McDonald’s CEO Ray Kroc that launched his career and his more than 60-year relationship with McDonald’s. During the phone call, Golin pitched his services and Kroc invited him in for a meeting. Shortly after, the two were in business. Golin built McDonald’s reputation and helped establish it as a brand. He had a close relationship with Kroc and continued to work with the company until his recent passing.

“McDonald’s owes Al a tremendous debt of gratitude for all he accomplished in his partnership with us,” McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook said in a statement.

Don Rickles — the only comedian who could get away with insulting Frank Sinatra — passed away on April 6 at 90-years-old.

From nightclub performances to celebrity roasts to being the the voice of Toy Story’s Mr. Potato Head, Rickles left his mark on the world. Although a successful actor and an honorary member of the “rat pack,” Rickles is most notably remembered for his ruthless sense of humor. Often labeled the “King of Insult Comedy,” Rickles was revered in the comedy and entertainment worlds.

“He could tease presidents and first ladies. He could say things to Frank Sinatra that no one could say to Sinatra. He could walk in and Frank would start to laugh,” George Schlatter, the producer of sketch-comedy TV show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, told The New York Post.

Joe Harris, the creative artist behind cartoon characters such as Underdog and the Trix cereal rabbit, died on March 26 at 89-years-old.

In the 1950s, Harris worked for the ad agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, where he drew cartoons and storyboards for big brands. Working on a pitch for General Mills, Harris came up with one of the world’s favorite cereal cartoons, Trix the rabbit, and his famous slogan, “Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids” — which has graced TV screens for decades.

Harris went on to create the characters King Leonardo, Klondike Kat, Tennessee Tuxedo and most notably, Underdog. The Underdog, a cartoon canine shoe shiner-turned-super hero, became one of the most popular cartoon shows on television in the ’60s, with a Saturday morning slot on NBC. With a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, a theme song that will make your ears perk up with nostalgia and a 2007 live-action film — Underdog has left a legacy.