Pumpkin Publog

Brandwatch: Marathon (and on and on)

Marathon is back! Back!! BACK!! : Mars have cashed in one of their longer-standing “free goodwill” chips by restoring - however briefly - 70s/80s icon Marathon to its brand portfolio (whether it’ll completely replace Snickers, and for how long, are unknowns).  The comments on this Brandrepublic story are withering - how unimaginative, the marketers scoff, how short-sighted.

AS IF! Not that I feel the re-re-brand is anything other than a deeply cynical move but it’s a well-timed one and likely to succeed in the short-term without damaging the brand in the long term. The cohort of consumers who identified with Marathon are now getting beyond the age where they buy countline confectionery - how better to get them to at least re-try the product? Nostalgia - especially for a cheaper age - works well in times of economic difficulty - and so does the parochialism which Mars is tapping into by jettisoning its ‘global’ Snickers brand. It’s a bit of free publicity in a sector where headline-making innovation is thin on the ground. And it’s sufficiently long after the Marathon brand was dropped originally for the move not to look like any kind of admission of error by Mars.

Manga Review #2: Addicted To Curry

For my next go at manga I decided to try one that isn’t famous - Addicted To Curry in fact hasn’t been licensed for publication in English-speaking countries, so I was reliant on online “scanlations” - fan translations on scanned images. The amount of work and dedication that must go into producing these is phenomenal so thankyou O unknown copyright infringer!

I chose Addicted To Curry on title alone. Here is what it’s about: a schoolgirl has been left in charge of her father’s curry house, which is failing because she can’t cook. She saves a dying man in the street who turns out to be an amazing young chef and an old friend of her father’s. Together they work to make the curry house a success! Every episode features: … read on …

KFC AM: Breakfast Chicken Watch

There is a time for fried chicken and I am fairly sure it is not breakfast. (”Speak for yourself!” - massed ranks of FT pubgoers). KFC is launching its new “KFC AM” range this week in London. The menu is “aimed at working men” - it will contain bacon and the “AM Twister” shown on the cover of this week’s marketing suggests….A SAUSAGE IN A TWISTER WRAP???

KFC, listen to your core chicken constituency. KFC AM only makes sense if you mean ONE AM and what you mean is some kind of gravy bucket dirty chicken deal. I can only think that the indie sector has you rattled in this new chicken 2.0 era of the long tail (”Long tail? Stick it in the chicken popcorn maker.”) At this rate SF and HF will be making you a laughing (chicken) stock.

IN SALAD (of all the) NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM(s)

huntin for images of BRANES in pulp culture i came across THIS via boingboing: “In November 2006 Till Nowak created the image SALAD. For this image he created 12 digital vegetable models in 3ds max using photographic references. They were combined to become a tribute to the fantastic biomechanical creations of H.R. Giger and the vegetable portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.”

full size here

Come Dine With Me – Awesome

The Guardian’s “not Nancy Banks Smith” TV reviewer Sam Wallaston is a reliable sort of guy. I watched last night’s Come Dine With Me and was agog. “This is the best thing I’ve seen on Channel 4 in a long time” I exclaimed while watching between my fingers. Sure enough Wallaston’s review: “the worst programme on television”. He didn’t like it. And that’s why I read his reviews. “Never knowingly correct” goes his strapline. (Don’t get me started on his “ha ha geeks eh, this IS complicated and silly” he did the other day on Battlestar Galactica.)

Anyway… COME DINE WITH ME. Last night’s was more than awesome. This show has grown — a day-time staple, it’s gathered celebrity editions, and now it comes in a new format. No longer a short show every day of the week covering 5 people — they now compress 4 people in to a one hour show. It’s a sensation. Well for something that’s come from day-time. (It even has a rip off version on the beeb hosted by Simon Rimmer who seems to be trying to be on telly every day of the week for an entire year.)

But then having established a regular format, with often witty and interesting people who occasionally come to verbal blows, it goes HAYWIRE. Remember that first edition of Wife Swap with the foul mouthed racist woman — it was well train wreck. This was much the same but written by Mike Leigh. … read on …

Sandwich Squeeze

Something that became miserably clear to me last week: Marks & Spencers have brutally culled their sandwich range - goodbye most of the black-label “food to go” range which brought us the Steak & Blacksticks Blue sandwich (probably the nicest EVER CREATED by a British supermarket chain) among others. The black-labels have been replaced by an odd range of tortillas, kinda-sorta-open sandwiches and things which look like someone’s started making a wrap and wandered off before the actual wrapping happens. All these new things cost a lot and have visibly less filling - not surprising given the cost squeeze on food suppliers as prices rise.

There’s been another subtle change in the sandwich range though: everything possible is now branded “British”. … read on …

Wagamama goes breakfast

::: NOTE NOTE NOTE::: apologies for being a breakfasttease but apparently this menu is only on until March 30 2008 so if you want your full English breakfast soba noodles, get in there quickly!! ::: END NOTE END NOTE END NOTE:::

We note that Wagamama (on London’s Trendy Wigmore Street only for the timebeing) has commenced a new breakfast menu (pdf)! Your standard smoothies are still there, but what is this I see? Allow me to extract a few portions that drew my attn in particular…

breakfast yaki soba £5.50
teppan fried soba noodles with egg, smoked streaky bacon,
savoy cabbage, mushrooms and fresh chopped tomatoes (ed thinks: …. …. ….ed does not even KNOW)

wagamama kedgeree £5.50
a blend of sticky rice, naturally smoked haddock, spring onion and a
soft boiled egg bound in a curry sauce (ed thinks: haddock? curry sauce?? BREAKFAST?? BLEEE!!!)

okonomiyaki £4.95 (FOR BREAKFAST??? D00ds)
a traditional japanese style omelette filled with red and green peppers,
savoy and white cabbage and mushrooms topped with
katsuobushi (dried tuna fish shavings) and aonori (seaweed)(ed thinks: b-b-b-but… where will they COOK it?)

asa gohan v £3.95
a traditional japanese breakfast of sticky rice, miso soup and pickles
can also be ordered with grilled salmon (ed thinks: frankly I have sort of been of the opinion that whenever people claim this is a traditional japanese breakfast they are just taking the mickey out of me as in every single dorama I watch everyone is ALWAYS having either toast or cereal and I have not yet seen one single breakfast scene featuring rice, soup or pickles - not even in Gokusen(2) - bluddy kids?? Someone who has actually been actual Japan, not just telly Japan can probably inform me whether this is GENERALLY the case or not- please?)

They will also do you toast, pastries, a regular “full english”, scrambled eggs, coffee etc… but frankly in for a fusion penny in for a fusion couple of yen, am I right?

Pre-Lollards: The great pub winnovation poll!

On the Lollards show three weeks ago, we promised a poll to let you decide WHICH of the fantastic winnovations we ideated in the PUB FOCUS GROUP would most improve your pub experience. Here, at last, is that poll - please pick your favourite three ideas and we will announce the results on tomorrow’s FINAL SHOW* of Freaky Trigger and the Lollards Of Pop.

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*for now - keep an eye on FT for GREAT NEWS for all our listeners.

A dinner with the Pentecostals

I don’t know how many of you have ever attended a Pentecostal church service, or hung around Christians of that persuasion for any meaningful length of time. The last time I spoke with someone I knew was Pentecostal was back in Tennessee; apparently in the UK it’s the fastest-growing Christian denomination of belief. They’re not as insular as the Seventh Day Adventists, but they’re at least as driven — there’s still the faint whiff of the cult about them. The story of Pentecost is the story of true believers surviving a day of reckoning through God’s grace; a wind from heaven scorches the earth and, among flames, boiling smoke and a blood-red moon, His followers become prophesyers, visionaries and “dreamers”. Essentially, Pentecostalism promises its followers that when the sh1t hits the fan, they will be superheros. Or at least Aquarians. It’s a strange cocktail of doomsday science and unbridled narcissism that apparently proves irresistable to more Britons each year.

Unaware of these tendencies lurking so nearby, I found myself surprised that upon sitting down to a dinner party in Holloway, the pleasant Chinese couple to my right who were cracking flavoured sunflower hulls and sucking out the contents with nimble aplomb announced to me, apropos of absolutely nothing (which is how these things always come out), that they were “very religious”. And left it there, picking at their seeds intently.

There really is little I enjoy less than discussing my dinner companions’ religious predilictions, but you have to say something, so I did.

“We’re Pentecostals,” he said, the mound of hulls having now grown to the size of a small anthill. She looked at me and said “Christian!”

“For 15 years,” the man said, grimly, I thought. After dinner was over he went out to the back patio and smoked the rest of a half-finished cigar, by himself.

Before that, though — but after the sunflower seeds — the entire table tasted what our host called “1000-year-old egg”. A delicacy in China and Hong Kong, 1000-year-old eggs are created by essentially burying eggs in mud for several weeks or months, turning the shell black, the white a translucent amber, and the yolk a mysterious dark green. A bit like some crash-landed alien, thawed out only in order to be eaten. (But will it change us if we do?)

The Chinese Pentecostals dug in, and smiled at our giggles and hesitant sniffing. They had nothing to fear from a 1000-year-old egg.

baconbaconbacon!!!

from our friend ms llaura llllew, comes this astonishing piece of high quality pig-based cookery!

what’s next? steak plates? lamb chop pans? or just HOVER BACON?