Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Marketing Idea: Creep Out the Buyers

So it has been a little while and now I have a few lighter things to share. First off, I would still be in bed right now due the fact that I have no class or work and was up until after midnight finishing a book, but my phone rang half an hour ago. My sister attends college up near the NY border and she lives with our grandparents to save money. The problem on snowy days is that they have no internet so she doesn't get emails from professors saying class is canceled. She called because one news station said the college was closed while the other four didn't and the weather line at her school didn't say anything. So being the good, but grumpy sister, I am, I checked her school website and her email and we decided she should probably go to class. She's going to be mad if that one tv channel was right. Oh well.

Now that I'm up though, I decided to share something I noticed when I went grocery shopping Monday. I just got back to school Sunday as our spring term started this week. I hadn't been here for six weeks so I went to the store. One of my favorite winter food items is chili so I stocked up on kidney beans as they were on sale. Obviously stores realize we like chili when it's cold. Anyway, I picked up Hanover beans because they were actually cheaper than the store brand and when I was putting them away in a cupboard, I noticed this:
Is every brand now making creepy mascots? What kid wants to play with a stuffed kidney bean or a chick pea? And why does the chick pea have a mustache for hair? I don't know about you, but the kidney bean looks a little more like something else at first glance, and definitely not something with which I would want to play. Give me a Serta sheep any day.