BEFORE YOU GO
RETAIL RANDOMS
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K C U R T E H T T A H W It was George Bernard Shaw who said: “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” They are also oceans apart when it comes to ice creams. We have the Magnum; Yanks have the Choco Taco. At least, they did until makers Klondike axed it recently. If you’ve never heard of the Choco Taco, it’s a chocolate-coated taco-shaped waffle cone packed with ice cream, peanuts and artificially flavoured fudge. Which makes one wonder why it got the chop; it sounds a million times better than a boring old Magnum. Oddly enough, both Magnum and Klondike are owned by Unilever, the world’s largest soap producer. Which is ironic, given the lather US shoppers got into over the Choco Taco’s demise.
A Twitter storm erupted, the co-founder of Reddit offered to buy the manufacturing rights, and a senator threatened to invoke legislation to keep the frozen treat in stores. But what has this to do with the English language? In response to the
public outrage, Klondike tweeted it was “working hard to find a way to bring Choco Taco back to ice cream trucks”. Trucks? You mean vans, Americans, ice cream vans. And anyone who says otherwise will receive a swift kick in the fanny.
TATTOO HULLABALOO
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so Ralph Rivera must be feeling extremely flattered. Regular readers will that recall that our 100th edition featured reckless Ralph, after the Australian got the barcode from his supermarket loyalty card tattooed onto his arm. Now, 10,000 miles away and
16 editions later, a Tesco shopper from Horsham in Sussex has done the same with his Clubcard QR code. The father of seven children, Dean Mayhew describes himself as “not the cleverest of guys”. Perhaps. Most people realise their colossal error once their firstborn takes a dump on the floor. And – if he’d bothered to read The Week In Retail – he would have discovered that the inside of the forearm is not the easiest part of the body to present to a self-scanning checkout. Rivera almost dislocated his shoulder getting a beep and, as the video shows, Mayhew fails miserably; a staff member with a hand-held scanner has to rack up his points instead. Mayhew said: “Anything you can do with a normal Clubcard I can do with my arm.” Let’s see you scrape baby poo off the carpet then.
WEDNESDAY 3RD AUGUST 2022/ ISSUE 116/ SLRMAG.CO.UK I 33
