Sound the trumpet When the Sweet & Salty Caramel version of Bugles corn snacks appeared last year, Mr. Tidbit didn't mention how really -- dangerously -- tasty he found the combination of crisp and sweet.
But when he heard about new Sweet & Salty Chocolate Peanut Butter Bugles a few weeks ago, he didn't expect to be as deeply moved. Frankly, they sounded terrible. He was very wrong.
Mr. Tidbit can no longer cloak his excitement under the cover of respectable journalism -- or even the kind of journalism he normally produces. If you like chocolate and peanut butter -- especially if you like chunky peanut butter -- oh, man!
Mr. Tidbit must say, though, that the allure of these sweet Bugles isn't very clear in the chips and pretzels aisle, alongside the regular Bugles. They really belong with the candy bars.
What's in a name? This isn't about a new product, nor even a new flavor of an existing product; it's just about new package design. But Mr. Tidbit briefly found it disruptive to his usual savoir-faire -- or is it his usual sang-froid, or his usual je ne sais quoi? In any case he wishes to keep you from some disturbance involving a foreign-language cliché. So:
Beginning in around 2004, Pepperidge Farm began shrinking the American city names that distinguished its various large (eight-to-the-bag) cookies, so that eventually the names were almost invisible on the front of the bag. Now, suddenly, what had been the largest word on the bag ("Chunk" for example) has been made tiny, and the city names are back, and so large that -- especially if you began buying a particular cookie during the downplayed-name phase and had never really noticed its city moniker -- you might have some brief difficulty locating the cookies you want, which could be disruptive to your usual something French.
The cookies named for European cities -- Milano, Brussels, Bordeaux and so forth -- never downplayed their names in the first place. You're welcome.
AL SICHERMAN
