Fine Print

I recently attended a lecture by a British marketing consultant, who said Americans tend to study a product's ingredients listing, nutritional info, and fine print more than people from other countries. If so, then the following items must surely qualify as all-American products:

Tilex Soap Scum Remover, 16-oz. spray bottle (The Clorox Company): Although the product name would seem to be self-explanatory, a recent packaging revision has resulted in the word "Remover" being printed in teeny-tiny type on the front label. So if you're looking at the product from more than about six inches away, it appears to be called Tilex Soap Scum. Fine print has a long, proud history of deception in American consumer culture, of course, but this is the first time I've seen it used to hide a product's basic function. A quick survey of my supermarket's home-cleaning aisle reveals that while lots of package designs soft-peddle "Remover" or "Cleaner," none comes close to doing it to this extent, so Tilex has the soap scum market all to itself. (The Clorox Company, Oakland, CA 94612)



Aramark Classic Roast Peanuts, 5-oz. bag (Hampton Farms): There's nothing unusual about these peanuts, but there's an interesting bit of wording in the ingredients listing, which reads as follows: "In-Shell Peanuts, Dry Roasted. Salt Added if Salted." That last sentence is basically a lazy cost-cutting maneuver, carefully phrased so that the Aramark folks can use the same package for their salted and unsalted peanuts. But it also presents a great example of how tautological thinking becomes blindly self-validating: If they're salted, then they have salt -- wow, no kidding! While they were at it, they might have added, "Pepper Added if Peppered," "Sugar Added if Sugared," or "Carcinogens Added if Carcinogenic." (Hampton Farms, P.O. Box 149, Severn, NC 27877)
HDR Corn Chowder, 8.5-oz. packet (Shelf Stable Foods, Inc.): In case you're unfamiliar with current trends in famine relief, "HDR" stands for "Humanitarian Daily Ration." This vacuum-sealed packet of corn chowder, in other words, is meant to feed the starving masses in some impoverished corner of the globe. A note on the package describes the chowder as "a gift from the people of the United States of America," which is pretty damn altruistic of us -- I'm feeling better about myself already. This spirit of philanthropy is also evident in my favorite detail about the product: the net weight, which is 8.5 ounces instead of the standard 8-ounce serving size. As my friend Darin notes patriotically, "The United States doesn't stop at a meager 8 ounces -- we kick in that exta half an ounce! I, for one, am tired of people bitching about U.S. imperialism all the time -- name me just one country as generous with its corn chowder as we are." And I thought the only thing setting us apart was that we read the fine print. (Shelf Stable Products, Inc., Evansville, IN 47715)