I want to start out this Flog post with a new product report. Now this product is a food, I count it as food, I eat it and actually really love it, and its not a food I have any real issues with, especially now that the corn syrup has been removed from most brands. And, if you are old enough to remember the Reagan years, it counts as a vegetable, too. And you know I support vegetable consumption wholeheartedly.
But this product report is really more about convenience, and how we are totally motivated and driven by it. This week’s show is called an Inconvenient Food. Food is inconvenient. Real food, not the easy-to-grab thing, the pre-made thing, but food. It’s inconvenient because you have to make an effort for it. An effort we’ve made quite valiantly for 100,000 years, but now seem to be stymied by.
What is the product? Well, it’s the newly designed ketchup packet introduced today by you-know-who the biggest ketchup producer. I don’t want to get sued or anything, but you know who I mean. We are all familiar with the 9 gram ketchup packet. Did you know its 9 grams? Me either. So, the ketchup packet engineers started to get reports from the fast-food chains that their drive-thru French fry orders were starting to decrease. And fewer French fries eaten means fewer ketchup packets sold to the chains. Hmm, a problem for sure.
So in step the packet engineers, or packeteers, as I like to call them, to do some research. Turns out that most people weren’t ordering fries in their cars, because the opening of the packets and subsequent applying of ketchup to fries created too much of a mess and was too difficult and inconvenient to do while driving, which is when the majority of the French-fry eating is done. Driving in a car, whilst eating fries, one cannot apparently apply ketchup successfully. Very inconvenient.
So, the packeteers engineered a new packet. First change in the design since the introduction of the ketchup packet in 1963. It is 3x the size, and has two application choices. One end can be torn off and the ketchup squeezed out, like the classic packet, but now, the other end can be peeled off, and the packet becomes a little dipping cup. So now you can dip and drive, as you cram fries into your mouth while driving. Very convenient. no more drippy mess, no more squirting the ketchup into your mouth then adding fries. Just peel it back, and dip between texts. Life really gets better and better every day, doesn’t it? Oh, and remember, if you don’t want to eat shit…