last week i sent an open letter to retailers everywhere, ranting about the utter stupidity of BOGO sales, and since some of you really enjoyed it, i thought i would go ahead and rant some more. this week i turn my ire towards the candy industry.
what's your favorite candy bar? not just any candy, but an actual candy bar, usually covered in some kind of chocolate and substantial enough to sink your cavity-laden teeth into. it's a question that gets asked often around here for some reason, probably because it is difficult to answer, and the response is often a moving target. this week i like twix, but last week i was saying mounds or caramello. we just can't settle on one favorite, so we keep having the conversation.
some years back (i have no idea when - this is a rant not a research paper) candy bar companies thought it would be a great idea to make smaller versions of the candy bars, presumably to cut down on the calories and fat and so forth that people are eating when they open the package and eat one candy bar. that's all well and good. i have no problem with that.
my problem is with the name.
"a rose, by any other name, is still a rose," goes the old adage, and while that is true, if you call a rose a foul feces flower enough times, i am probably going to just stop smelling it. there is power in what we name things. which is why i carry such disdain for the fools who sat around the table at some candy bar executives meeting, like a bunch of dilbert wannabees and said, "hey, you know what would be a great name for these tiny little teases of a candy bar? how about fun size?"
and that's what they all agreed to. fun size. shorter than a quarter. barely a bite. more like misery sized.
let me be clear: i understand that we eat too much and especially too much of the wrong stuff. i get it. and so i have no problem with making tiny little hints of candy bars and packaging them and selling them to people who want to believe that they have the self control to eat just one of those things (when in reality, they simply eat 5 of them at a time, which defeats the whole purpose. and don't tell me that you are burning extra calories by opening a few more wrappers, i've already used that line myself and trust me, nobody buys it), but i have a problem when you lie to me about their size. don't call it fun size. it's not fun. here's a short list of preferred names that would be infinitely more honest:
-tiny size
-low-ish calorie size
-prolong type 2 diabetes for a few more years size
-waste of packaging size
-leaves you wanting more size
-not enough to satisfy size
-just enough chocolate to let you know what you're missing size
see? there's a bunch of winning names in there! it wouldn't have been that hard. but no, we let the candy companies get away with utter deceit, chopping their candy bars into tiny pieces, shrinking the wrapper, and writing the word 'fun' on the side. and we reward them by buying bags of them! what is wrong with us? but not me, if i go to the store to buy a twix bar, i find the one marked king size. if i'm going to eat chocolate, i'm going to go ahead and do it. i'm not going to put a little dab of it on the end of my tongue and imagine what it would taste like if there was more than 1.34 bites in my candy bar. i refuse to give in to their trickery.
imagine if the car companies caught on? they would take your basic toyota and turn it into a car about the size of a go-cart. it would have all the right parts, just shrunk to scale. it would look just like your camry, but you'd only be able to get your lower leg inside. but hey, it's fun, right? and plus, you could buy a whole bag of them for just a little bit more than you would pay for one regular-sized car! think about it! that's a whole lot of fun!
do you see what i'm saying? would you buy fun size (read: tiny) packages of laundry detergent? baking flour? how about tiny slices of american cheese? furniture? (excuse me sir, you might be interested in our fun-sized couch, perfect for your old G.I. Joe toys).
so, america, will we continue to cave-in to the lies of the candy companies? will we keep pretending like fun should be shrink wrapped in tiny little bite size morsels? i say NO! i say that if they want to keep packaging tiny portions of their product and trying to sell it to us, then we should give them tiny portions of our money and tell them, "it's a fun price!"
that would be sweet.
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what's your favorite candy bar? not just any candy, but an actual candy bar, usually covered in some kind of chocolate and substantial enough to sink your cavity-laden teeth into. it's a question that gets asked often around here for some reason, probably because it is difficult to answer, and the response is often a moving target. this week i like twix, but last week i was saying mounds or caramello. we just can't settle on one favorite, so we keep having the conversation.
some years back (i have no idea when - this is a rant not a research paper) candy bar companies thought it would be a great idea to make smaller versions of the candy bars, presumably to cut down on the calories and fat and so forth that people are eating when they open the package and eat one candy bar. that's all well and good. i have no problem with that.
my problem is with the name.
"a rose, by any other name, is still a rose," goes the old adage, and while that is true, if you call a rose a foul feces flower enough times, i am probably going to just stop smelling it. there is power in what we name things. which is why i carry such disdain for the fools who sat around the table at some candy bar executives meeting, like a bunch of dilbert wannabees and said, "hey, you know what would be a great name for these tiny little teases of a candy bar? how about fun size?"
and that's what they all agreed to. fun size. shorter than a quarter. barely a bite. more like misery sized.
let me be clear: i understand that we eat too much and especially too much of the wrong stuff. i get it. and so i have no problem with making tiny little hints of candy bars and packaging them and selling them to people who want to believe that they have the self control to eat just one of those things (when in reality, they simply eat 5 of them at a time, which defeats the whole purpose. and don't tell me that you are burning extra calories by opening a few more wrappers, i've already used that line myself and trust me, nobody buys it), but i have a problem when you lie to me about their size. don't call it fun size. it's not fun. here's a short list of preferred names that would be infinitely more honest:
-tiny size
-low-ish calorie size
-prolong type 2 diabetes for a few more years size
-waste of packaging size
-leaves you wanting more size
-not enough to satisfy size
-just enough chocolate to let you know what you're missing size
see? there's a bunch of winning names in there! it wouldn't have been that hard. but no, we let the candy companies get away with utter deceit, chopping their candy bars into tiny pieces, shrinking the wrapper, and writing the word 'fun' on the side. and we reward them by buying bags of them! what is wrong with us? but not me, if i go to the store to buy a twix bar, i find the one marked king size. if i'm going to eat chocolate, i'm going to go ahead and do it. i'm not going to put a little dab of it on the end of my tongue and imagine what it would taste like if there was more than 1.34 bites in my candy bar. i refuse to give in to their trickery.
imagine if the car companies caught on? they would take your basic toyota and turn it into a car about the size of a go-cart. it would have all the right parts, just shrunk to scale. it would look just like your camry, but you'd only be able to get your lower leg inside. but hey, it's fun, right? and plus, you could buy a whole bag of them for just a little bit more than you would pay for one regular-sized car! think about it! that's a whole lot of fun!
do you see what i'm saying? would you buy fun size (read: tiny) packages of laundry detergent? baking flour? how about tiny slices of american cheese? furniture? (excuse me sir, you might be interested in our fun-sized couch, perfect for your old G.I. Joe toys).
so, america, will we continue to cave-in to the lies of the candy companies? will we keep pretending like fun should be shrink wrapped in tiny little bite size morsels? i say NO! i say that if they want to keep packaging tiny portions of their product and trying to sell it to us, then we should give them tiny portions of our money and tell them, "it's a fun price!"
that would be sweet.
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