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.