Could It Be…Butter?
Posted by Derek C.F. Pegritz
Lovely model, International Superstar, and longtime Pegritzian crush-object Elysse Sewell has some pics of mysterious food products. Ms. Sewell has just returned from China and Other Points East, so I assume these products are from China, yet their thoroughly All-American names seem to indicate a domestic origin. Where’d you get ‘em, Elyse? Let a brotha know so he can get some, too!*
Admittedly, Butter It’s Not! has a more demonstrative, almost Shakespearian pomp to it, making I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter sound wishywashy and positively pedestrian. But what the hell is up with this product?!
Well…I guess it could be. It’s context in the butter aisle no doubt suggests, logically, that it probably is butter—however, there is still a non-zero chance that it might be anything from cottage cheese to wadded-up newspaper to a small, loaded handgun. The challenge implicit in a product called Could It Be Butter? no doubt deters a lot of prospective shoppers, it’s the kind of thing that draws me to it like Republicans to scaremongering. I would buy another tub every day expecting to one day, if I’m lucky, crack open the tub to discover a Golden Ticket or a first edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s Something About Cats and Others.
*Plus, I will use it as a convenient opening to at last be able to skeeze on you.
butter, isn’t it? [Elyse Sewell]
Categories: China, Ads, Food, Madness
Posted at 10:15 pm on November 15, 2007
9 Comments -
Is “Fred Meyer” also like a bastard relative of Oscar Mayer?
Comment by Adam — November 15, 2007 @ 10:19 pm
Fred Meyer is a chain of grocery stores. Or used to be, there aren’t any near where I live anymore.
Comment by Mike — November 15, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
Fred Meyer is a chain of supermarket/department store hybrids. Sort of like taking a Kmart and attaching it too a Safeway. Plentiful in the Pacific Northwest, though they may be regional. The FM brand ICBINB! knockoff is readily available in all their stores, and not even remotely Chinese. I can’t say about the other knockoff, but since it was presumably photographed in the same store, and I’m comfortable assuming that Fred Meyer is not a huge presence on the other side of the Pacific, I would bet that these are American-made photos.
Comment by etho — November 15, 2007 @ 10:41 pm
Reminds me of the SNL parody commercial called ‘That’s Not Yogurt’, though I could not find, in the quick time it took me, a readily available link for the video - if it exists. If anyone has the archives then it aired on 3 Oct. 1992.
~Epheros Aldor - Apostle of Cale
Comment by Epheros Aldor — November 16, 2007 @ 1:25 am
Could it be Butter? is apparently owned by Ventura Foods, CA, who market it as Gold’n’soft on the US market.
http://www.goldnsoft.com/
I don’t get what this thread is about… laughing at the Chinese appetite for butter substitutes? Laughing at American ICBINB! imitations? Trying to hit on a girl via the medium of butter?
Since you’re getting such a kick out of this, here are some other buttermilk products:
Utterly Butterly
What, Not Butter!
Not Butter But Better
Beautifully Butterfully
Butter Me Up
Butterlicious
Simply Buttery
Assault and Buttery
- er, okay, I might have made the last one up, but the rest can be found in various UK supermarkets…
Comment by HyperboreanGuy — November 16, 2007 @ 5:55 am
“Assault and Buttery” doesn’t exist?!? Now that’s a product I would buy.
Comment by revston — November 16, 2007 @ 9:36 am
Well, you can’t buy it in the grocery store, but the Deseret News (but, alas, not the Orem, Utah police department - they just settled with assault, disorderly conduct, and criminal mischief) has charged a father and son with it. And I love that, if you live in the Alaskan bush, Fred Meyer’ll mail your groceries to you. But, then I just kind of generally am fond of the store. It’s so big! I think it was the first place I ever saw a cart-elevator, which struck me as a crazy and audacious thing to have.
Oh, and on indistinguishable packaging: Dorothy Gambrell!
Comment by jeff n. — November 16, 2007 @ 5:26 pm
I saw this at King Soopers the other day with a Kroger label. I’m in Colorado.
Comment by Bryan — November 21, 2007 @ 2:01 pm
The word ‘Butter’ simply hasn’t been said enough in this thread.
Butter butter butter butter!
Butterbutterbutter!
Comment by HyperboreanGuy — November 21, 2007 @ 8:36 pm