Monday, May 19, 2008

Via Dad via email comes this amusing article about the invasion of the Oreo cookie to the UK. The money quote for me:

Some Britons might think the Oreo is strange-looking at first. But she’s confident that they will fall for the Oreo and what she calls the “child-like, delightful ritual” of licking the cream and dipping it in milk.

Others disagree. One tabloid newspaper has attacked those “Yanks” who are trying to “snatch the biscuit from our mouths and replace [it] with a tackier piece of inferior confectionary.” Another described the Oreo as “an imperial juggernaut of a biscuit backed by one of the world’s biggest food companies.”

Emphasis mine. That is too funny - like we’re trying to invade Britain by first taking over their cookie dominance. I’m sorry, the Oreo beats out McVities any day.

He describes British biscuits as “thoroughbreds” specially designed – in a Darwinian process of the survival of the dippiest – over generations to suit British tastes. For example, he notes, “Our love of tea-dipping has influenced the selection of flour and the temperature at which biscuits are baked. Our biscuits are built for dunking.”

Yet the Oreo, because of its high-sugar content, is “woeful” when it comes to being dunked in tea, he says. “In my experience, it dissolves. It’s not a survivor in tea terms like the British biscuit is.”

Oreos are designed exclusively for milk dunking, dude. Milk!

Still, Faizaan Sackett, a recruitment consultant, has found himself “raging” at Oreo ads on buses, seeing them as part of “the American invasion of snacks.

“Before we know it, the next generation of kids will not know the word biscuit at all,” he grumbles. “Whether it’s fast food, TV chat-shows, or cookies, we must resist all that is American for the sake of our own souls.”

Yeah, because we’re evil that way - soul sucking Americans with our dangerous cookies.

There are comments attached to the article. The funniest thing I’ve seen in the PC wars is the following:

Seems to me I last had Oreos about thirty years ago. The commercials show people dunking them. I never bothered (graham #### are better dunked). To each their own. I’d take no offense if the Brits don’t take a shine to it. And, frankly, I wonder why Nabisco is bothering. Some things don’t translate well into other cultures. I don’t do Oreos any more. I’d rather bake a batch of butterscotch oatmeal cookies than buy pre-packaged stuff.
fatesrider 2:51 AM

Apparently, the PC-bot could not discern that “cracker” in this instance was not a racial slur, but in fact tied to the preceding word “graham.” Somehow it strikes me as sad that an online newspaper is censoring reader comments like that.