Curious coupon Mr. Tidbit usually reports only about new grocery products, but a coupon offer he recently encountered is so strange he can't resist passing it along.
Mr. Tidbit is, of course, aware of marketing campaigns suggesting that, as long as you're buying product A, you might also buy product B, which goes nicely with it.
(In an unusual one in 1995, Dole bananas carried stickers reading "Try Jell-O." Mr. Tidbit thought at the time that, if it made sense to remind people that bananas and Jell-O are tasty together, it would seem more useful to put "Try bananas" stickers on boxes of Jell-O. People about to prepare some Jell-O can adapt more easily to the idea of tossing in a banana, he reasoned, than people about to eat a banana can adapt to the idea of first preparing some Jell-O.)
Anyway, Mr. Tidbit just found this very peculiar coupon on a frozen pizza: Get $1 back on the purchase of any two Tombstone or DiGiorno pizzas if you buy ... wait for it ... a tub of Cool Whip!
Indifferent dip Attempting to recover from that disturbing idea, Mr. Tidbit strolled over to the Cool Whip case, where he discovered a new product: Cool Whip Dips. At this point there seems to be only chocolate flavor, but the plural "Dips" suggests that others might follow.
How does chocolate Cool Whip Dips (labeled "whipped dip"), differ from chocolate Cool Whip (labeled "whipped topping")? The dip is slightly thicker (it contains modified food starch), but Mr. Tidbit would say the taste, while a tad sweeter, is not much different. Biggest distinction: For the same price as an 8-ounce tub of chocolate topping, you get a 6-ounce tub of chocolate dip, so the dip costs 33 percent more.
Dipping suggestions, on the underside of the label, include strawberries, banana slices, and, of course, cookies, which everyone knows need help. (Pizza, thank goodness, is not mentioned.)
AL SICHERMAN
