2 minute read
Retail Randoms
by 55 North
What would Colonel Sanders say?
You can picture the brainstorming session in Asda’s development kitchen: “Kids love cake. Kids love fried chicken. Kids love birthdays. What about a birthday cake that looks like a bucket of fried chicken?”
And so, it came to pass. A snip at only 12 quid, the Asda Birthday Bucket Cake offers soft Madeira sponge layered with jam, covered with frosting, coated in a speculoos biscuit crumb and topped with ‘nuggets’.
Sadly, for ketchup fans, the ‘tomato sauce’ squirted all over the top of the brute is in fact a drizzle of raspberry jam.
The cake also has more red traffic lights than rush hour in downtown Tokyo, and a portion (there’s 20 per cake/bucket) will supply you with 14% of your daily energy requirements. While it may not be underpinning the government’s anti-obesity strategy any time soon, the Birthday Bucket has proved popular on social media, with the canny shoppers of the Money Saver Online Facebook group hailing it variously as “amazing”, “the best of both worlds” and “clucking delicious”.
However, we’ll leave the last word to group member Hannah Jane: “Looks good but bet it tastes like shite”.
Actually, we’ll leave the last word to anyone who knows what speculoos is, and didn’t have to look it up on to Google. Anyone?
Pardon the con-fusion
The Pot Noodle brand has trod a long and sometimes controversial path since Golden Wonder launched it on an unsuspecting British public way back in 1977.
In fact, it has travelled so far and weathered so many storms – take your pick from ‘Have you got the Pot Noodle horn?’, ‘The slag of all snacks’ or ‘Hurt me, you slag’ taglines – that it has apparently forgotten its Oriental roots.
That’s if the latest press release from current brand owner Unilever is to be believed.
It appears that three new flavours – Katsu Curry, Chili Chicken and Thai Green Curry – are rolling out in 100g packs with an RSP of £1.39, and all EVU vegan validated to boot.
All well and good, but to name the trio as ‘Pot Noodle Fusions’ is a marketing bridge too far.
Call us old-fashioned, but adding Asian flavours to instant ramen is not exactly what The Week In Retail would call fusion cuisine. Now if you were to pour chicken nuggets over a birthday cake...
