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Delightfully Anachronistic Package Design: Jason Bread Crumbs!
Ever since I got whacked in the head with a bright green vinyl-covered putter by some obnoxious six-year-old in the unruly golfing party (“mob” was more like it) behind us some years ago at Putt-Putt Palace down in Redondo (Long gone! Closed down after the settlement!) I’ve had this admittedly unusual preoccupation with anachronistic package design.
You see, when I happen upon a package of something that looks particularly old, I say to myself, “My, but that package looks rather anachronistic; that is to say, it exists here in the present yet is representative of a previous time – and I find this delightful.”
Recently I was in my local ethniceteria, that is to say, a place that sells foods that exist here in this country yet are representative of other cultures – a sort of exotic food “bazaar” if you will – and I found this:
Above: Jason Bread Crumbs! Also available in blue!
And as you would be – hell, as you are now, just looking at it here on my site – I was positively enchanted by this package design. I know you’ll agree that it looks like something we’d find if we had a chance to root around Saul Bass’s kitchen cupboards in the late 1970s.
Unfortunately, I was not the grand prize winner in the 1978 Lawry’s Seasoned Salt “Root Around Saul Bass’s Kitchen Cupboards” Sweepstakes so we’ll never know exactly what was in there. (And lucky winner Della Frankinhoff passed away in 1998 before I got a chance to interview her.)
I did get a third place t-shirt though. My hyperhidrosis (chronic sweating) coupled with my chromhidrosis (colored sweat, in my case, yellow-green due to a neonatal addiction to pistachio instant pudding) rendered it unwearable in a matter of weeks. But thank God for old family snapshots, right?!
On an unrelated note, I really need to hire some sort of online marketing guru to figure out why no one seems to visit this site more than once.
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Buy These Macaroons You Should!
WELL, I’m not Jewish, despite what you might have seen in the showers at the gym. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good macaroo—
Oh, Christ, I’m talking about the Hal Linden shower cap I wear! Obviously! I can’t believe you’d think that I was referring to– …What a bunch of perverts you people are!
Anyway, like you, I enjoy I a good macaroon every now and again and so it being the Jewish Holy Week of Yomover, I think, there’s all kinds of good Jewish things to eat at your local grocery store – björksch, graffilti fish, pickled pigs feet, and, of course, macaroons! Oh, and great big bottles of Matzo-Bismol in case you get a schmertz in the mogn from eating all that good food during the cedar!
But you’d have been a shlemiel to to buy these things at your regular grocer, or from those crooks at Walgreens…
Three-ninety-nine they want to charge you for these things?! Walgreens with your so-called “Hot Buys,” you should be ashamed! P’tooey!
No, you want to get your macaroons at, where else?, the 99¢ Only Store!
Because at the 99¢ Only Store, they’ve got macaroons for 99¢ Only. I bought like eight cannisters! Or, as they say in Yiddish, cannischewitzters!
Sure, they’ll sit in your stomach like a rock if you eat them one after another like a chazzer, so save some for later. The 99¢ Only Store has just about every flavor and type available. Two varieties were even gluten-free, so I snatched them up quick – to prevent those who’ve bought into that whole allergic-to-gluten nonsense from being able to buy them.
Most of the available macaroons, or ‘roons as we roonaphiles casually know them, are from the good people of Gefen Foods. I’m a traditionalist, so the Fancy Coconut Flavored Macaroons, or “regular,” were my favorite. Gefen’s Toffee Time Macaroon Classics were a delight as well, but seemed to lack any real toffee flavor that I could distinguish. Gefen’s Nutty Brownie Macaroon Classics were particularly wonderful, while their Fancy Honey-Nut Flavored Macaroons may or may not be just as good or better, but I haven’t opened that cannister yet. Stay tuned!
The other macaroonufacturer selling their wares at the 99¢ Only store is Glicks Foods. Their Glicks Finest Choc-Chip Macaroons are nice, but seemed a little stingy with actual chocolate chips. I don’t think it’s too much to expect at least one chip in each ‘roon, but sadly, that was not the case in my cannister. Would it have killed them to sprinkle a few extra chips in there? Oy!
So there you have it – this Kippover buy your macaroons at the 99¢ Only Store and save, why not? Or is Mr. Big Shot with the fancy car and the nice clothes too good for the dollar store all of a sudden?
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Snickers Peanut Butter Eggs!
LET’S cut to the chase here, folks! It’s late! Neither of us has time for any dilly-dallying today!
Snickers Peanut Butter Eggs are what’s bueno at the 99¢ Only Store this week!
Yes, they’re Easter-themed, but you don’t have to be a good, God-fearing Christian like me to enjoy a Snickers Peanut Butter egg. The delight your tastebuds will experience is purely non-non-secular, so even if your unfortunate choice of religion has doomed you to an eternity of damnation in the fiery pits of hell, you can enjoy a Snickers Peanut Butter Egg now, here on earth. In fact, you’d probably better enjoy them now – that chocolate doesn’t do to well in environments over about 82 degrees.
Like the rest of my, what?, six regulars, you come to this website for the nudity. You’ve waited long enough. Here you go:
Oh my God, it looks good enough to eat – which is just what I did: I ate it right up! Just as quick as you please!
Our panel nominated Snickers Peanut Butter Egg as this week’s What’s Bueno At The 99¢ Only Store item based on two specific, whaddayacall, criteriums:
1.) Taste: They taste really good!
2.) Price: The 99¢ Only Store is selling them for three for 99¢! You can’t beat that price, I guarantee it! Those crooks at Walgreens, for instance, demand an astronomical 59¢ for just one of these! And my attorney would like me to note, by the way, that Walgreens does not employ crooks! Good people there at Walgreens!Anyway, if you really want to make an impression on a loved one, or a loved blogger (hint hint!), pass on the jelly beans, forget those disgusting Peeps – just fill up an Easter basket with thirty of these babies!
You can’t go wrong and you’re out less than lousy ten bucks because, to reiterate, Snickers Peanut Butter Eggs are flying out the door at the 99¢ Only Store for three for 99¢!
And that’s the before-Easter price!
So can you imagine what they’ll be letting these things go for once Easter is over?!
Oh, you bet I’ll be camping out in front of the store Sunday night to be first in line Monday morning and scoop up all the leftovers at post-Easter further ridiculously discounted prices!
I just hope that unlike that famous mishap with Jesus’ tomb, the Snickers Peanut Butter Eggs boxes are not empty.
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Easter Grass at Goodwill: Buy. Or Buy Not. There Is No Save.
AS YOU KNOW, the Easter Jedi will soon be here, and good little boys and girls their Easter baskets give them he will, mm!
But you already blew $10 at Target for the sacrilegious and ridiculous – or as I say, sacridiculous – plush Yoda basket; you’re going to want to save some money on the grass to put inside it! But where to go? Sure, you can continue with the theme and get swamp grass for free on Dagobah but who wants to drive that far?
Solution: Goodwill! Or as Yoda would say, Willgood! Mm!
Why, here’s a bag of Easter grass that I found at my local Goodwill thrift store and it’s just what you’ve been looking for! And you know you’re saving money buying it at Goodwill! Right? …Right?!
::cough cough:: Um…close-up please.
Holy Christ! And I do mean that, here, in an Easter-themed blog entry more than ever! A buck ninety-nine?! For a dingy old bag of Easter grass that someone donated?!
Look, I hate having to be the one who points this stuff out. It pains me, really. You know me, I love Goodwill. So it just kills me to have to point this stuff out.
Anyway! The other close-up now, Professor, if you would:
Hoo boy. As you can plainly see, this Easter grass originally retailed for 33¢. Thirty-three cents. But Goodwill, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to charge us SIX TIMES that amount. Hell, for that price, you better be able to smoke it.
By the way, my attorney cautions me to remind you to please not smoke plastic Easter grass.
However, the good thing about the particular Goodwill where I found this is that it just happens to be directly next door to one of my other favorite retailers – yes! – the 99¢ Only Store.
Just hop your way down the seasonal aisle and what do you find?
Friend, I suggest you buy your Easter grass here.
But don’t feel bad that Goodwill isn’t getting your business on this one! Because right now, at the beginning of April, they’re your one-stop shop for everything you need for that other upcoming Christian holiday!
Only 266 days shopping days left, folks!
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What’s Bueno? Honey Maid Low Fat Cinnamon Grahams!
SAY! I wandered into the ol’ 99¢ Only Store the other day and guess what I ran into! Guess!
No! Wrong!
I ran into a great big display, an endcap, to use retail parlance, of Nabisco Honey Maid Grahams! Banged my ankle up pretty bad, too! I plan on suing the store! What are they doing putting an enormous endcap where I’m liable to run into it?! No, I’m joking. I’ll find something else to sue them about.
Anyway, back to the grahams! You’re already pooh-poohing these things because they’re low fat.
Yes, they’re “low fat,” but let’s face it, Tubby, you could stand to lose a few! And here I elbow you good-naturedly in the gut!
First of all, your regular Honey Maid cinnamon grahams aren’t exactly oozing with fat to begin with! 5% is all! The low-fat ones? 3%! Christ, why even bother, right? But with so little fat (and no saturated fat in these babies!) Honey Maid Low Fat Cinnamon Grahams are a food you can feel good about eating! Or, if you’re Alicia Silverstone, a food you can feel good about chewing, and your baby can feel good about eating!
Regardless, these are the good type of graham crackers! With the cinnamon and the sugar besprinkled atop each one, giving it a good, textured tooth as we say in the graham cracker game! Oh, don’t worry, pal – these aren’t those grahamscaped, metrosnackual, smooth-topped graham crackers! These are your hardy 45-grit graham crackers! (The lower the number, the coarser the grit! But you’d know that if you hadn’t cut class so much in eighth grade when budget cuts forced Central Junior High to combine Woodshop and Home Ec!)
What’s even more amazing than the fact that you get 14.4 ounces of these things for a buck is that these Nabisco Honey Maid Low Fat Cinnamon Grahams are not only
but, in a rare instance of reaching across the aisle, of putting aside their differences for the greater good, they’re also
And with all the hostility among the major players in today’s dollar store landscape, you’ll agree this is a breath of fresh air. (Or, if you’re Alicia Silverstone’s child, a mouthful of chewed-up graham cracker paste.)
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TP’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes!
WE GET CALLS here at TedParsnips.com all the time from Dick Clark Productions for some of our outtakes for inclusion in one of Dick’s upcoming specials. Now these outtakes – or “bloopers” as they’re called in the business – are those, oh, little mistakes when an actor forgets his line, or gets tongue-tied, or something unexpected happens – often with hilarious results.
Anyway, we’ve sent a batch over that we know they’ll love but we wanted to give you, our regular, what, six readers a sneak preview at one of the funniest.
Now here’s the set-up:
Recently while working on a review for Taco Bell’s new over-hyped, unremarkable Doritos Tacos, we were desperately trying to get one last shot before we lost light. (Remember, we were shooting on-location, on the patio outside the back door.)
All we had to do was get a shot of the taco sleeve while saying the word “infinitesimal” – but someone had other ideas and kept walking into the scene! Let’s watch.
Cut! Let’s try it again!
Will someone get Mr. Whiskers out of there?!
Not again! Okay, places everyone! Let’s get it this time!
Ha ha ha! Unbelievable!
We’ll be right back with some outrageous clips from “Night Court” and later, George Peppard plays a practical joke on his pal Jamie Farr that you won’t want to miss!
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Unlicensed Use of Roy Doty Artwork Alert!
LIKE YOU, I’m an enormous fan of Roy Doty – an unabashed “Dotyphile,” as we call ourselves. As you know, I was one of the organizers of the first DotyCon way back in 1978 – and of course I’ve been an integral part of each one since. (Mark your calendars for this year’s event – July 12-15 – Hilliard, Ohio – Super 8 Motel, Room 216).
I also helped design the award we (hope to) give out each year (“The Roy”) at the Con and I’ve been on hand annually to present it should Mr. Doty ever attend and accept it. (This could be the year!) Legendary is my annual slideshow – with my humorous asides – of Roy Doty Christmas cards that I’ve found doing Google image searches, and, brother, if I’m not dressed up for the Roy Doty cosplay parade and mixer (Saturday night), then it means I’m one of the judges.
So you can imagine how stunned, how outraged I was the other day when, perusing the wares of my local National Council of Jewish Women Thrift Store, I come across this:
Oops! Wrong side.
This!
Nope, not quite.
This!
There we go!
It’s bad enough the people behind this vintage, mint-in-box, 1960s Do-Ray Super Compression Electric Rotary Compressor Air Inflater & Exhauster unauthorizingly used a drawing of Mr. Doty’s (from God knows where; no one person can be an expert on the man’s enormous body of work) but to place it alongside the chicken scratchings of an inferior artist is the height of disrespect!
Can we go in for a closeup?
I mean, that’s totally Roy Doty artwork, isn’t it? It’s not just me, is it? The woman looks especially Dotyesque. Right?
Anyway, if I was Roy, I’d sue Do-Ray right out of business – if they weren’t already out of business, that is. Instead, you’ll agree that what he should do is bid on my eBay auction for this exceedingly rare and valuable piece of Dotybilia! (It’s also great for inflating blow-up furnitures!) You should bid on it too! Be part of cartoonist history! Let’s show Roy how much we care and get a real bidding war going! I got a two-month gas bill to pay here.
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Corndogs! I Don’t Remember Eating Corndogs!
LIKE YOU, I’ve been trying to eat healthier lately. Trying to, ha!, but not succeeding! Recently, I visited my local Wienerschnitzel quick-serve (they don’t like you to call it “fast food”) restaurant and discovered they’ve got one of those good old-fashioned corndog sweepstakes going on with prizes galore, including what I like best, cash!
It goes like this: When you buy a corndog, there’s something printed on the stick – but lucky for you, you have to eat the corndog to see what that is (unless you’re Superman and have X-ray vision). If you’re an instant winner, you could win $10,000, $1,000, or other stuff, like additional corndogs. Yum!
As many of you know, I blow at least ten thousand dollars at Wienerschnitzel every year, so I think we all agree it’s only fair I win that $10,000. Here’s how I’m doing it:
First, I bought a corndog. It came in this neat paper wrapper telling me about the contest. (I’ve saved it and I intend to upload a picture of it to Flickr in thirty years so hipsters of the future can ooh and ahh over its “amazing early 2010s design.”)
Next I unwrapped it. It may look a lot like one of my used Q-tips, but rest assured, brother, that there’s a corndog – and a scrumptious one at that.
Then I ate the damn thing. How was it? Deeeeelicious! But I wasn’t a winner!
Or wasn’t I…? [And here I arch my eyebrows – okay, technically my one long hairy Slovak eyebrow – as though to indicate I’ve something up my sleeve.]
Now here’s where the fun part comes in. Taking my “officially” non-winning corndog stick, I carefully deleted the part where it says I didn’t win $10,000.
And being even more careful, on the other side of the stick, I’ve delicately added verbiage that indicates I did win $10,000.
Now, it’s only a matter of popping this into the mail and letting them know I won, and them sending me my money.
Why am I telling you this? Well, since you’re one of the, what, six people who visit this blog, you can do the same thing – it’s my gift to you for being such a loyal reader! Only don’t do it for the ten grand. They’ll know something’s up if there’s more than one winner. Do it for one of the smaller prizes. Like a “Free 3-Pak of Jalapeño Poppers.” (Just be sure to write small!)
Next time: I’ll show you how to fool the (greedy, union-run) US Postal Service and save money by creating your own postage stamps from old Decca record sleeves – you know, the kind where they have little images of other albums.
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Goodbye, Jinky Singson!
IT IS INDEED with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to Jinky Singson.
I have no idea who she (or he?) is, and likely he (or she?) has no idea who I am.
But nearly two and a half years ago, way back in 2009, on the eighth of September, at precisely nine minutes after six in the evening, Jinky called me – and her (or his?) name and phone number (dutifully obscured below) appeared on my Caller ID.
I suspect Jinky dialed me in error; either hitting a wrong button on his (or her?) keypad, or perhaps trying to reach the production company that had this number before me.
Jinky Singson’s musical name – say it aloud, see how it truly dances off the tongue! – so tickled me that I could never bring myself to delete it. Oh, I’ve wasted no time in erasing from the display the name and number of everyone else who’s called me as soon as I’ve reviewed them. But not ol’ Jinky’s. Never.
And sure, I could have called Jinky back, introduced myself and gotten to the bottom of the mystery as to who she or he is and why he or she called, but I never did. Nor have I Googled the name or number. There’s something to be said, in this age of instant information, for riddles that remain unsolved. Am I so presumptuous to believe I have a right to the answers of all life’s questions? I think we both agree that if I did, I wouldn’t have canceled my subscription to Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown after the second volume (“Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects”) when they started costing full price.
I like to think of what Jinky and I have shared, whoever she (or he) is, wherever he (or she) is, I like to think of what we shared as our own little version of “84 Charing Cross Road,” minus the two decade-long correspondence – but also minus the depressing ending. (Actually, minus any communication whatsoever save for the number on my Caller ID.)
Or perhaps he (or she?) is the W.C. Minor to my Dr. James Murray. Or vice-versa. Without one of us trying to compile a dictionary (as far as I know) while the other is locked away in an insane asylum (Christ, I hope not). Or maybe…! Just maybe Jinky doesn’t actually even exist, and she (or he?) is the Sabine to my Griffin.
Why, you ask, why, now, after so long, am I finally saying a sad farewell to the name of a perfect stranger that I have come to know as a trusted friend – always there, never farther away than a click of the “CID” button on my cordless?
The damn phone broke when I dropped it.
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Peanuts! I Don’t Remember Eating Peanuts!
AS REGULAR READERS OF THIS BLOG KNOW, I went to the 99¢ Only Store today.
And while there, something struck me, and not some obnoxious and pushy ethnic woman with her cart into my ankle – despite the fact that I was in that one on Ventura in Woodland Hills. Mm-hm. Yeah, I don’t need to say any more, do I? You know exactly what I’m talking about. ::cough cough…Slovaks…cough cough::
No, what struck me was this:
Well, that’s not to say a box of these struck me, thrown from some unseen hand, as though that particular 99¢ Only Store is infested with poltergeists. That’s not what I’m saying at all.
But that would be kind of neat if that were the case. It might keep some of those afore-hinted-at ladies in line, if you know what I mean, and by Godfrey, I think you do. Those people are probably very superstitious. I’m sure they’ve got some quaint name that covers all unexplained phenomena. It’s likely, in their typically backwards fashion, they ascribe everything they can’t explain to some sort of mischievous witch or imp or something. From their rich ethnic folklore. Probably.
Above: Oh-oh, vooden spoon gone missink? Probably ol’ Spovienka Bosorka usink eet for to feeds her skriatoks.
No, friend, what hit me was the thought that here, today, in 2012, we have a non-peanut food labeled “PEANUTS” in a very much post-Peanuts comic strip era.
At what point does this get confusing to consumers? If it hasn’t already…?
The box reads “PEANUTS” in big capital letters (in that same hideous typeface they’ve used for the Sunday strip since 1987) and below that, it reads “FRUIT FLAVORED SNACKS.”
“Peanut fruit-flavored snacks? Snacks flavored like fruit but are made from peanuts? What the hell?!”
You know that there are people today who are thinking this, because let’s face it, for about the last twenty years, Schulz’s characters haven’t exactly been in the public eye as they’d once been – like they were when you and me, pal, when we were growing up.
Sure, comics pages carry “Classic Peanuts” now. (A move you’ll recall I predicted even before Schulz passed away; that is, you’d recall that if I’d had a blog then. Because I knew they were going to do that.) But younger generations don’t know these characters as “Peanuts.” If they have any frame of reference for these characters at all, they know the dog from the Met-Life commercials and, if they live in Southern California, from Knott’s Berry Farm.
So perhaps they do know Snoopy. Maybe they recognize Charlie Brown by name. Possibly – possibly! – they could pick Lucy out of a lineup. But I bet most people under the age of twenty-five don’t know these characters – Snoopy, Woodstock, Chuck, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Frieda, (non-Peppermint) Patty, Violet, (non-Fred Berry) Rerun, Shermy, ’5,’ Franklin, “Shut Up and Leave Me Alone” guy, Spike, Miss Othmar, Roy, Joe Schlabotnik, Miss Helen Sweetstory, Archie, Veronica, Jughead, Ida Know, Mr. Wilson, and all the rest – as “Peanuts.”
Schulz reportedly loathed the name “Peanuts” that the syndicate titled his strip. He’d hate it even more now, brother, knowing that its use is further devaluing his once vast licensing empire. So labeling a food product like this as “Peanuts Fruit Snacks” (and not something obvious, like, gee, I dunno, “Snoopy Fruit Snacks”) is confusing and makes less and less sense as the property becomes decreasingly relevant.
Unless these were boxes of peanuts. But they’re not, folks. They’re not.
So who can really blame the ghost of ol’ Sparky for angrily tossing boxes of fruit snacks at the horrid peasant women who shop there? I for one applaud him, and who knows, I might even try to nail one of those hags myself with a box next time I’m at the store.
I think we can all safely presume that as each box hits its mark and bounces off, said target will look surprised, arms back, elbows up, tongue sticking out, and above her head will be a squiggly line with a star at one end of it.
And briefly materializing in the ether, a single onomatopoetic sound effect.
Ted Parsnips
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