Archive for the 'Junk Food' Category

Yes, it’s worth mentioning again

Published on March 30, 2011 in Junk Food and Rants. 0 Comments

To our loyal fans, we offer a long-overdue apology: It’s been more than four years since we last posted. (Can you believe how time flies?!) moving forward, we promise frequent posts about a campaign that still stops us in our tracks as we meander through the aisles of America’s best grocery store. We’ve also got plans to add a bargain-watch/couponing section in the near future, so be sure to keep an eye out for that.

So for this first post back after a long hiatus, we want to again draw attention to the box of a certain cheese-flavored cracker. (Yes, it’s worth mentioning again.) Publix calls them Cheddar Cheesy’s. We say that’s WRONG, Publix, WRONG! Where are your grammar nerds?! Where are your editorial geniuses?! Every other package we’ve seen from you is a work of art… But this one commits apostrophe abuse. The crackers don’t belong to a character named Cheddar Cheesy, do they? It’s been five years since we first posted on this topic, and still the glaring error remains. Every time we’ve shopped in the last five years, we’ve stopped by the cookie and cracker aisle, just to see if it’s fixed yet. But alas, no. Please, Publix… Fix this error!

the crackers belonging to Cheddar Cheesy

Published on September 17, 2006 in Groceries, Junk Food and Rants. 1 Comment

Okay, this one drives me nuts. The design is great, obviously. It follows the style of the rest of the junk food / snack food products: A carefully arranged product shot reinforces the humorous tagline beneath the image. cheddar cheesy

However, I can’t get past the name. There’s a big red apostrophe! This indicates the crackers belong to a person named Cheddar Cheesy. I don’t think that’s what they meant…I suspect they were after a standard plural form of cheesy. Standard English rules dictate the plural of cheesy is cheesies. Not cheesy’s. Now, I know apostrophe rules and plural possessives can be tricky to master, but don’t they pay people to proofread?!
Come ON, Publix, please fix this one. It makes a grammar geek like me lose sleep.

car popsicles!

Published on July 31, 2006 in Frozen Food, Groceries and Junk Food. 3 Comments

what’s your favorite? orange. red. purple. the famous summertime treat of childhood has made its way to the shelves of publix. car pops

this is an interesting one, packaging-wise, too. product shots combined with color drawings turn the pops into speedy-looking cars that no child will want to turn down. the emphasized product name is equally intriguing: first, it’s a serif font. most of the “junk food” snack items so far have used a sans-serif font, and only the healthier, more traditional groceries feature the fonts with feet. secondly, this package is an example of a perplexing subset of the new design: the emphasized word isn’t the product name itself. it’s an adjective. the product name is in the smaller subhed typeface below. i don’t quite understand this one: it seems to me that it would be better to emphasize the product—makes it easier to identify from across the store, plus it’s just a more intuitive and customer-friendly approach, in my opinion.

mmmmm…vanilla wafers

Published on July 28, 2006 in Groceries, Junk Food and Personal Favorites. 0 Comments

i waited with great anticipation for this product. i happen to like vanilla wafers a lot, but when you buy the kind without the “v” it’s pretty expensive. something like twice the price. yet at the same time, purchasing the store brand in its pre-redesigned package days wasn’t all that appealing either. (the old box was yellow, it was pink, it was white…a regular rainbow of colors and stressful fonts.)

vanilla wafers the new package, though, was worth the wait. it’s one of the first ones i saw to feature what i call the “teasing tagline” technique: they combined a product shot with a simple drawing and humorous phrase.

what a creative way to spark interest in a commonplace product! beyond that, it creates interest in the whole product line—each variety of cookies and crackers uses the same approach. (it invites the question, “what will the next one say?!“)

as with all other products in this area, they used a mostly sans-serif typeface and no space between words (two colors instead).

here’s a question to ponder: will they change out the drawings every so often? seems to me like that would be a great thing to do—customers would have a reason to check out the products whether or not they intend to make a purchase. and we all know Americans are suckers for impulse buys when they like the way a product is packaged…

Archive for the 'Junk Food' Category

Yes, it’s worth mentioning again

the crackers belonging to Cheddar Cheesy

car popsicles!

mmmmm…vanilla wafers

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