Sunday, October 10, 2010

The trouble with biscuits.

Imagine for a moment you are a biscuit manufacturer and you have a biscuit brand to sell. It is a biscuit aimed at the family market; a precursor of the chocolate finger perhaps. How would you describe them?

Let's try words like 'Choctastic!' 'Bite size biscuit covered in real milk chocolate', 'Yummy' and 'crunchy-scrumptious!'. Let's use images redolent of rich choco-creaminess......

Compare and contrast with the line that Crawfords came up with - CHOCOLATE TABLE biscuits - which turn out to be 'cigarette shaped biscuits covered with fine milk chocolate'. How sensibly descriptive is that?

Turn the tin round for more information:
'A Safe and Pleasant Confection for Children and Grown-ups'

Doesn't it sound rather like medicine?.......and 'Safe'? Safe? Safe biscuits?

What a peculiar bit of copy. What are the qualities of an unsafe biscuit? What kind of fool biscuit manufacturer would try to flog an unsafe biscuit to the unsuspecting public and thrive? Were there really people out there so suspicious that without those comforting words those cigarette shaped treats would be left on the shelf?

More questions than answers as usual and will file this tin in the 'Lost World' section of the study along with the book from my previous post.

PS My subsequent and minimal research (all 2 mins of it) indicates that biscuits can indeed be unsafe but still begs the question would we buy and eat them if in doing so we exposed ourselves to the dangers lurking in the biscuit tin? Don't dunk folks. Give custard creams a wide berth and remember Jaffa Cakes are deemed safest of all.

9 comments:

Diary Farmer said...

Jaffa cakes - yuk!! Give me proper biscuits any day. A packet doesn't last long in this house!!

Elizabeth Musgrave said...

How can Jaffa cakes be safe? The taxman says they're not even a biscuit! (I think, although I may have got this quite the wrong way round. All I am totally sure of is that there was a tax case about whether Jaffa cakes are cakes or biscuits.) I think I will just go to bed now.

Pondside said...

*sigh* I'm off to google jaffa biscuits....and of course, to those of us on this side of the pond we call biscuits cookies, while biscuits are the fluffy paking powder tea biscuits that everyone's mum made to serve with butter and jam.

Jayne said...

Yes elizabethm you are right about Jaffa cakes, biscuits or cakes similar to Pringles not crips but potato snacks, now we also have safe and dangerous? biscuits/cakes!

Frances said...

What a modest claim that tin makes for the biscuits that once filled it. Does that company still exist?

You've got me thinking now about dangerous biscuits, and how to fit that concept into the expression about something "taking the biscuit!"

xo

Annie said...

Love the tins. I will have one of the safe ones thanks :-)
A x

Twiglet said...

A lovely old tin but I usually am in too much of a hurry to eat and don't bother to read the labels!! Maybe I will from now on - it will slow me down and I might lose a pound or two!

Anonymous said...

I agree it's not really a great way to sell biscuits!! Lovely tins though...

Funnily enough I happened to see Oxo flavour chocolate on Antiques Roadshow last night. What a horrible idea!

I'm really enjoying your blog. :D

Kirsty.A said...

Where did you find this lovelt old tin? Skip-hunting again?