Every trip to the grocery store is a lesson, a new discovery. At Target, for example, the Market Pantry graphics are being upgraded across the line. The old look was dull and generic, and the tubs of lunchmeat might as well have said HAM-RESEMBLING PINK SLICES. But with just a few new graphics on the packages, they now look appealing. Bravo: Just because your budget can't afford the high-end items doesn't mean you don't deserve good design.
Companies are always redesigning things, because we're easily bored and respond like crack-addicted lab monkeys when something NEW appears on the shelf. My favorite line: "New look! Same great taste!" As if people think, "They changed the typeface on my peanut butter — now I fear they added cumin and jalapeños!" No.
Now and then, though, you find a line on a package that expresses some great unspoken truth. Nature Valley's granola bars have a big orange NOW on the box, and it gets your attention: Something is happening here. Something wonderful. But what? Tell me! I want to live in the NOW of the Nature Valley experience!
Here's what the smaller print says: Better Crunch. Easier to bite!
You know what that is? A frank admission that those bars were made out of ceramic. It was like chewing one of those figurines Grandma had on her shelf. What's holding these oats together? Shellac?
Sorry, Nature Valley. You don't get off that easy. You can't just say "Easier to bite!" We want some sort of apology for 20 years of shredded gums. Obviously, you had customer surveys about the bar's texture, and the term "kiln-fired" came up a lot. There was a reason that companies brought out softer breakfast bars; they didn't have to say "GREAT TASTE, FEWER BROKEN CROWNS" because the mere use of the word "soft" set them apart.
That innovation led to an amazing array of breakfast bars, half of which might as well just admit they're recontextualized cake. A caramel-drizzled cheesecake breakfast bar may be a GREAT SOURCE OF ENERGY, but so is a B-12 injection in the buttocks; doesn't mean it's good for you. But the Chocolate Peanut-Butter bar is considered a breakfast item because it's a Fiber One bar, and somehow fiber absolves the sins of sugar. If someone made doughnuts drenched in butterscotch and sprinkled with wood chips, it would sell, well, like doughnuts. Because of fiber! No one knows what it is, except that they don't get enough of it. Why can't they make it in aerosol form, so we could breathe it? Someone invent a fiber candle, please.
When Dominos realized that their pizzas were indistinguishable from the box in which they arrived, they made a great mea culpa.
So let's suggest some other apologetic label changes:
Diet Dr Pepper Cherry Vanilla — "Hey, to be honest, we were in a really dark place and that just happened somehow. Sorry. We fixed it so it doesn't taste like sweet paint thinner anymore."
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter — "The company would like to confess that it has had access to data that proves people were perfectly capable of believing it wasn't butter. There was that one guy who got really upset and wouldn't leave the testing room and hunched in a corner muttering 'Going to my butter place, going to my butter place,' but he was a statistical anomaly. We did not mean to insult anyone who found themselves readily able to discern the difference between our product and true butter. We are thus renaming the product 'It Is Conceivable One Might Be Unable to Intellectually Process the Possibility That This Thick Yellow Paste Isn't Butter.' Same great taste!"
Cap'n Crunch — "After corporate documents were revealed on WikiLeaks, we feel honor-bound to confront several questions. As for the Ooooops! All Crunch-Berries editions of the cereal, the cover story about a factory accident resulting in this version of the cereal is manifestly fiction; obviously, sophisticated marketing and distribution was involved. It is unlikely an industrial accident would be celebrated with custom graphics, yet some may have believed there was an actual mishap in the Crunch-Berry production line. We assure you that our standards are high and exacting, and Cap'n Crunch now is 17 percent more amenable to the softening effects of milk, so your upper palate will not resemble a sponge rubbed the wrong way on a cheese grater."
Windex — "Our Multisurface Streak-Free Shine Disinfectant Fluid Stuff says '23 percent More Free' on the bottle; the small print says 'than 26oz bottle.' We realize this is like saying that the Windex train left the station at 2 p.m. going 56 miles per hour, and the SprayKleen train left at 1:43 going 62 mph in the other direction, and what time would they pass each other? We apologize for making you think about math, if only for a moment. There, there. It's OK. It's over."
James Lileks — "Research shows you expect columns to conclude with a tidy line that sums everything up.
"Please accept our apologies."
james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks
