Tetherd Cow Ahead

When I’m writing on my computer, I have one of those widgets that I can pop down which lets me look up a word in Apple’s system dictionary or thesaurus. It’s very useful, if a little less comprehensive than the Oxford English Dictionary or Roget’s Thesaurus both of which I prefer (I wish there was an Oxford widget and a Roget’s widget, but sadly making one for the Mac doesn’t seem a desirable pursuit for either of those two institutions). Anyways, needs must when the Devil drives, so the other day, having cause to use the thesaurus, I typed in the word ‘delicious’ and was amused to see:

Hahahahaha! Wiley ol’ Ezio doesn’t miss a trick does he? Talk about innovative product placement!

As for the secondary meaning – Ezio always was one for the ladies, and it’s surely no surprise to anyone that his sausage is responsible for their delicious languor. ((‘Languor’ – what a beautiful word! And notice how the ‘u’ precedes the ‘o’, defying the pattern of mostly every other English word that ends in with that combination of letters!))

An Australian friend of mine who now resides permanently in northern California was bemoaning to me yesterday that Americans don’t really seem to get the concept of the Christmas plum pudding. So for the education of my US readers, and for the nostalgia for my Australian readers, some reminiscences on the subject.

In my family’s celebrations, the plum pudding was an essential finale to the Christmas dinner. Let me set the scene for you so you can imagine the surreal experience of Christmas in Australia:

To begin with, you should understand that, because it is the middle of our summer, it is usually very hot here at Christmas (sometimes VERY hot; I remember one year at my parents’ place where the thermometer was creeping above 38ºC (100ºF) – and that wasn’t the one in the turkey). ((On that particular day, bushfires raged on three sides of us and the air was black with smoke and soot.)) But because of the English & European ancestry of most Australians, at Christmas we still surround ourselves with the icons of a Northern Hemisphere festival: decorated pine trees ((In our case the ubiquitous pinus radiata)), images of snow and snowmen, songs about chestnuts and open fires and big servings of totally inappropriate food, like roast turkey with potatoes and baked ham. Some years we attempt to escape from the shackles of a heritage that has well and truly outlived its welcome. This year it was our turn to host the Christmas lunch and we suggested that a barbecue & salads might be a nice idea but the looks of dismay and betrayal on the faces of relatives was so great that we caved in and did the turkey and potatoes. It’s mighty hard work flying in the face of tradition.

And I have to confess, even though I could forego most of the other stuff, I would really miss the plum pudding.

When I was a kid, the plum pudding was brought to the table aglow with blue brandy-fuelled flames. We were served generous slices smothered in custard and icecream. But the best part by far was that some fortunate person would get the ‘lucky’ sixpence or threepence hidden somewhere inside. Even though the the tradition of the plum pudding probably comes from the early nineteenth century, the notion of ‘lucky coins’ or ‘touch pieces’ probably reaches back as far as medieval times. In our case, the coin was always a pre-war minted sixpence, which was suitable to be cooked in a pudding owing to its high silver content (about 98%). After the war the coins were minted with about 50% copper, and could no longer be used. ((I remember that if we got the sixpence in the pudding, we had to ‘trade’ it with mum & dad, or our grandparents, ‘for luck’. Thinking back on it, the probability is that they kept a pre-war sixpence for the pudding, and traded it with a coin of recent minting that the lucky finder could go and spend))

When decimal currency was introduced in Australia in 1966, the copper content went to above 75% and so they were right out. ((Interesting tidbit from Wikipedi: “In May 2007, owing to the high market value of copper and nickel, the bullion value of the Australian 5c coin was about 6.5 cents, though there were no reported cases of hoarding or melting down of the coins despite the apparent 30% gross profit to be made from doing so.”)) Nevertheless, someone still always got a lucky coin – I later found out that it was slipped into the pudding just before serving, to avoid the probable copper contamination.

The plum pudding in the picture above was made by my mother-in-law and is truly excellent. Very fortunately for me, the rest of the family, completely stuffed from the turkey and roast potatoes, hardly ate any of it at Christmas dinner, so most of it is sitting in our fridge being whittled slowly away by moi.

From today’s Sydney Morning Herald:

Faced with the overwhelming rejection of iSnack 2.0, Kraft has done an about-turn and ditched the name of its new Vegemite cream cheese blend.

I have to defer to Ben (comments on this post) and admit that it does have the whiff of an advertising hoax, despite Kraft’s protestations to the contrary:

The new name has simply not resonated with Australians. Particularly the modern technical aspects associated with it ~ Simon Talbot, company spokesman.

But as I see it, if it is a publicity stunt, then the po-faced attitude from Kraft is baffling. Talbot also stated:

At no point in time has the new Vegemite name been about initiating a media publicity stunt. We are proud custodians of Vegemite, and have always been aware that it is the people’s brand and a national icon.

Ben would undoubtedly say this is some kind of clever misdirection, but in my opinion, that kind of ploy can only work if the intended victims feel like they’ve been outfoxed or are amused. Since neither of these cards seem to be in play, all that’s left is bewilderment. Are they trying to cover their asses because it’s a crap joke that backfired? Are they sincere? Are they afraid that they’ve been caught cynically exploiting a loyal legion of fans? Is it all an attempt to spin out the publicity a little more?

Who knows? In the end, all that Kraft and their advertisers have done is to attract attention to a concoction of dubious desirability, and to confuse everyone. The Product Formerly Known As iSnack 2.0 will ultimately live or die on its market appeal, not on an advertising campaign. Since I believe it’s a poorly conceived grab at expanding market share by trading off the back of a cultural icon, my money is on die.

Conversation in our kitchen last night:

Violet Towne: The dealer called and said that they’ve set aside 250 grams of the Cuban for you. It’s ready to collect.

Me: Cool.

Viridian: Dealer?

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I get my coffee from Jasper in Brunswick St, Melbourne. It is the heaven of coffee.

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Good iMorning iCowpokes!

Well, down here in sunny ((That’s sarcasm, in case anyone missed it.)) iMelbourne we have just survived the insanity that is iGrand iFinal iFootball whereat the official name for the new Vegemite product (formerly known as ‘Name Me’) was kicked off. And as promised, the iCow is bringing the new name to you hot off the iPress.

I know what you’re thinking – that image above is a cheeky Photoshopped pisstake of the actual name which I’m going to reveal to you in due course…

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Was that long enough for the cold reality sink in? Yes dear iFriends, the people at iKraft, demonstrating a dorkiness that transcends anything I thought was even possible, have climbed on the iBandwagon and, in some kind of bizarre and incomprehensible grab for what we can only assume to be their concept of coolness, named their product iSnack 2.0. It’s worse than I could possibly have imagined. And I can imagine pretty bad possibilities.

How many kinds of wrong can be encapsulated here? The whole ‘i’ phenomenon has become so hackneyed and feeble that it’s really only Apple that can carry it off in any way, and that’s solely because it’s their heritage. Aside from anything, the ‘i’ was originally intended to designate ‘internet’ and if there’s one thing that Kraft and Vegemite has demonstrated extremely clearly, it’s their complete lack of intertubes acumen. Further to this, as if to underline their credentials as people who have totally missed the boat, they’ve appended the meaningless (but OH so hip…) ‘2.0’ to the name – if anything it would be Vegemite 2.0, not iSnack 2.0, which by any proper reckoning has just come out of beta and is in v.1.0.

What were they thinking?

Well, dear Acowlytes, as promised a post or two back I[tippy title=”*”]Actually, Violet Towne did the acquiring…[/tippy] acquired over the weekend a jar of the new Kraft product provisionally known as ‘Name Me’, in order that I could taste-test and review it for you in time for the launch of the official moniker next Monday.

As you can see, it comes in a jar that is similar to Vegemite, and sports the Vegemite logo. On opening, the main thing I noticed is that, unlike regular Vegemite, this is a vacuum-sealed product. As all Australians know, after you open a bottle of normal Vegemite it will keep pretty much forever in the cupboard without any fear that it will either go off or get eaten by bugs. Vegemite is one of the incorruptibles.

Not so with ‘Name Me’. It needs to be kept refrigerated and is ‘best consumed within 4 weeks of opening’ – a legacy of the cheese base, I guess.

The most disconcerting thing about the new Vegemite product is the appearance. It looks exactly like melted chocolate or Nutella. I can already see this as the basis for numerous schoolyard practical jokes and school lunch tragedies. Not to be daunted, and mindful of my service to The Cow, I spread some on a piece of crusty bread and gave it a go.

The bottom line is that it’s not that bad. It tastes more of plain ol’ Vegemite than anything else – just as if you’d put a bit of actual Vegemite on some very buttery bread. I was happy to eat it, and the whole jar will no doubt get consumed in due course. The real sticking point for me as a potential customer, and the hurdle that I think Kraft has to jump, is that I don’t really see the point. It doesn’t offer anything that I wouldn’t get with my usual Vegemite hit, but it has the drawback of needing to be kept in the fridge, and looking like it should taste sweet and chocolatey. It is the Paris Hilton of toast toppings; it is all appearance and no substance. Its reason for existence is completely questionable.

Add that to the fact that we already have a number of products that more than fill the salty yeast-extract niche, and my projection is that in a year or two’s time ‘Name Me’ will be nothing more than an evolutionary dead end in the taxonomic record of breakfast comestibles.

Anyway, come Monday ‘Name Me’ will actually have a name, and that should be entertaining. I’m sure that Kraft is desperately hoping that, like the competition run for the name of the original Vegemite back in 1922, it will whip up a truckload of consumer interest and go on to make them megabucks. I predict that they won’t have the gumption to stick out ten or more years though – the period of time over which Vegemite languished until it finally took off in the late 1930s. I bet they won’t have the guts to pick the name out of a hat, either, like they did with the Vegemite name competition. That would be anathema to the control-freak culture of modern advertising.

If they did have a hat it would have to be a big one though, and these are some of the names that would be in it – a random selection from over 13,000 suggestions on the ‘Name Me’ site – along with my estimations of their likely success:

•Cheese Plus (Too much like Cheese Pus)
•SpreadEzy (Yawn)
•Super-fun-mite (What?)
•AusCream (Eww)
•Creamdelight (Double Eww)
•Vethen (Vethen? What are you smoking?)
•Score!!! (So you got some of what they’re smoking too…!)
•YamYam (No No)
•Lunch Mate (Snore)
•Sloppymite (You’ve never worked in advertising, have you?)
•VevletMite (And you never finished school, did you?)
•I LOVE IT! (OK, calm down. I’m sure you do, but we’re looking for a name here…)
•Stampede! (Oh – on account of the sloppy brown appearance? I think not)
•Hero (No – we don’t need another one)
•Grail (Steady on there Crusader! Don’t overreach)
•Downunder (Er… again, not good connotations, given the appearance)
•Chanuw (That thing’s a keyboard – you’re not meant to hammer it randomly with your fists…)
•Moorishmite (Did you really mean to spell it like that?)
•DivinityVegiDip (Yup – that really rolls off the tongue)
•Magic Mono (You’re not supposed to inject the stuff, pal…)

Someone stop me! 13,000 of the damn things! I’m beginning to see the kind of daunting task that Mr Kraft and his troops face! Stay tuned to The Cow for the real name when they announce it. It can’t be worse than any of these.

Can it?

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*Actually, Violet Towne did the acquiring…

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