Stay Tuned/7 September 1997

More advertising sections than usual this weekend. Beats me why, but considering that even with the abundance, I was hard-pressed to find really suitable items, I shouldn't question my good fortune.

One of the reasons it gets progressively harder to find material is because I feel like I've done some of my favorite rants to death. For example, people are beginning to discover that the current fad for tooth whitening may be leading some people to excess - imagine that! And that peroxiding your teeth frequently may be bad for them - imagine that! I did that already, but no one reads this column, so by the time everyone else notices something, it's too late for me to exploit the buzz.

I'll give you a few more things which someone else is bound to notice in a little while; then you can say you read them here first.

To begin with, fat is back. You bet. Bigger better faster more. I have seen a vast number of ads in the last week that basically boil down to, "Now with Extra Grease!" than I recall seeing in many months. I saw a two-page spread this weekend for some Ore-Ida snack foods - five or six items in this product line - which are all variations on fried cheese. One item, to give you an idea, was jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese and then dipped in batter. You microwave them, apparently, but I suppose you could try sticking them in the Fry-Baby for a few seconds to give them that extra je ne sais quoi.

I saw fat everywhere I looked this weekend. Now, I like fat; fat, to me, is one of the things that makes food taste good. But when everyone is pumping more of it into their food, I begin to wonder whether there's a statistical correlation of some sort. Pillsbury wants you to know that their cinnamon rolls now have "More Icing!" and that their chocolate chip cookie dough now has "20% More Chips!" The Healthy Choice people have temporarily gone into hiding. The only holdout I saw was an ad for Special K, which urged you to eat it in repentance on Monday for all the fatty food you ate over the weekend.

Sooner or later, someone else is going to comment upon the changes in the Brach's candy line, so I should mention that as well. This venerable candy maker apparently thought their line wasn't distinctive enough, so they changed their packaging and introduced sub-categories ("Sparklers" was one, I think) to further classify their goodies.

Now they have apparently decided on an approach which involves hooking up - big time - with other manufacturers, in order to be able to slap their logos across their bags. I'm not sure what this accomplishes. It's sort of like the subsumption approach - if we can't get people to recognize us for what we are, then we'll just become invisible, and reap the bucks from people who think they're buying someone else's product.

Honest. Have you seen Brach's candies lately? The largest name on the lemon drop bag isn't Brach's - it's ReaLemon ("made with ReaLemon lemon juice!") - which is a Borden product. The largest logo on a certain kind of fruit candy they make is that of Hi-C, which I seem to recall is a Coca-Cola holding. Various cross-promo logos and other brand names clutter their bags. Very few types of candy escape. To give you an idea, I seem to recall that even the tired old circus peanuts - you know, those orange marshmallow things - have the logo of the Ringling Bros, Barnum, and Bailey Circus on them.

Have a look for yourself. The Brach's candies are still hanging in your grocery store where they always were. You just can't tell it's them.

When brands which have a "human" that ostensibly represents the product line - I'm talking Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, et alia - change the appearance of this figure, I'm not sure how they expect people to not notice.

In fact, our brains are wired such that we tend to notice minute changes in the appearance of a familiar figure long before we'll notice any other differences. Ask the Secret Service. The portraits on money trip up many counterfeiters, because most of us don't know how to check for little inconsistencies in numbering or markings, but if something is wrong with Washington's face, the hindpart of our brain will see it instantly.

As such, I'm not sure that I'm happy with what they've done to Mr. Clean lately. They've steadily been making him look more like a real person, and I think I liked him better when he was a cartoon. I think he's been getting whiter, too, but that may just be me. Oh, well.

It's time again for a small list of things which baffle me. In big ways or in little ones.

Chubs "baby wipes" - I really want to rail against that euphemism, but I can't come up with something better to replace it - are now being sold in a box shaped like a giant Lego. The photo implies that you're going to peel the labels off them and give them to the kid to play with. Why, it's a storage box and a stackable toy!

Geez, cheapskate. Instead of cluttering your house with empty towelette boxes, just go out and buy the kid some Duplo blocks, OK? It'll be less white-trash, and the kid'll get tired of them much more slowly. One can only do so many things with empty packaging, even when one is very tiny.

Your child's name becomes a poem
The beauty of poetry, the art of calligraphy

What you get is a really rotten piece of acrostic doggerel, on a parchment-colored piece of paper, done in moderately decent calligraphy, for five bucks. I hate to inflict this on you, but you really must understand the caliber of material here:

Jessica

J is for jewel, heart of pure gold.
E is for expressive, a happy soul.
S is for special, beauty that's rare.
S is for sweet, loving and fair.
I is for intelligent, bright as the sun.
C is for caring, thoughtful one.
A is for angel, a joy from Above,
Jessica, so precious, and so loved.

My main reaction to this is not disgust (although that came first), but shock and dismay that no one's paying me to write these things! I write much better doggerel than this. (For one thing, I understand the concept of meter. Also, I try to avoid false rhyme such as "gold" and "soul," and I try always to preserve my metaphor - what does intelligence have to do with shining like the sun? Don't tell me it's a reference to being "bright" - doesn't work for me, sorry.) I was dashing off acrostics in English class way back in elementary school - and they were better than this. I feel like I'm missing a fiscal opportunity here.

It's probably for the best that I don't do this, though. I would never be able to maintain the level of sheer effusiveness and praise. I'd end up writing something nasty, but considerably more realistic. On the other hand, there might be a few people who'd pay more for that.

Seriously, though. I wonder how much of that five bucks "folk poet, artist, and calligrapher Debra Brim" sees for her hard labor. I should write her and ask her. It's gotta be a harsh way to make a living. Even if it's lousy composition, even if a good fairy were doing all the advertising for free and she were miraculously able to pocket all five bucks of it - five bucks a page for original verse, piecemeal, is still lousy money. You can't even starve to death well on that.

She's probably moonlighting. Or has a spouse who makes better money than she does. Or both.

One more trivial "what were they thinking" which has been bothering me for some time, but which I've considered too minor to relate: What kind of a name is Mardi Gras for a brand of paper towels?

I'm from Louisiana. I know Mardi Gras. And, let me tell you, I can't think of a thing about Mardi Gras which reminds me in the least of paper towels. Nor am I certain what sort of image the name is meant to imply - unless they mean that the towel is excellent for cleaning up after hordes of vomiting drunks.

Even if you're one of the people who has the misguided notion that Mardi Gras is a big, festive event, is a paper towel supposed to seem festive? Is this considered a Good Thing? I would think that "practical" is probably a better image to cultivate. And Mardi Gras is many things, but it is never practical.

Our photo section today offers a mystery of a different sort. To begin with, you need to look at this image.

Good. Now look at the close-up.

What is this woman doing? What is she supposed to be doing? Is she gesturing to the kid with the sloppy joe, telling him to get his ass in here and watch the rest of the game? Is she attempting to look thrilled at the idea of watching the game, but not quite managing to conceal her distaste for the activity? Is she gesturing in outright frustration at the TV set? Whatever it is, she only looks happy at a distance. The real explanation is probably that she's just a bad actress who had to sit through one too many poses. But that's not as much fun.

Oh, and the caption on the ad, which I cropped, is "Tackle the Monday night munchies!" Way to spin a tenuous connection, gents. Even you have to admit that sloppy joes are not the thing to eat on the couch while watching football - which may be the other reason the kid in the foreground isn't on the sofa.

(I want to know what's really in the sandwich he's holding. Can't be actual ground beef - if it were, at the angle he's holding it, it'd be all over the carpet by the time the shutter on the camera closed.)

Oh, well. Nothing like speculating on a little photographic ephemera to while away the hours. Don't think I'm unaware how trivial this all is. But it keeps me out of trouble.

Actually, it doesn't keep me out of trouble very well. Hmm. OK, strike that.

I mention above that I had "done" the peroxide-toothpaste rant before this column ... then I couldn't find it. I had to look up some old comments on that odd two-chambered dentifrice, Mentadent, in the now-deceased URL Watch, before I unearthed the peroxide comments ... all the way back on 23 March.

[2007:] I wrote the above in 1998. I then followed it with the Unilever section of the URL Watch, just for jollies. I've deleted that because almost all of it was outdated, but I think I had better leave the Mentadent note in to help make sense of it. At the time, my notes on Mentadent read:

"Mentadent denies that it uses hydrogen peroxide for bleaching purposes (see 23 March), saying its quantities used are much smaller, and that the purpose of the peroxide is so it will react with the baking soda and make little bubbles in your mouth, which apparently are supposed to be helpful in some way. I kid you not. Read the FAQ. It's the most interesting thing on the site."

I have no idea if this is still the case. In fact, come to think of it, I'm not even sure Mentadent is still around.

and now back to our program

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