Saturday 19th August 2000
Dak the Hamster reports on some strange products


We get a lot of visitors here at the Rodent Weekly - some more eccentric than others. When Nuffin arrived at the offices, I immediately knew I'd hit it off with him - you know how it is? You may never have laid eyes on that hamster before, but you kinda get a feeling about them that's justified by everything they do and say.

We'd done the guided tour and he'd seen all that there was - the pens and paper where new reporters practiced their shortpaw, the planning boards where we arranged our days around the breaking stories and the tea and coffee point which none of us used but which the local landlord insisted had to remain there - and now he was getting fidgety to see more.

Being new in town, we headed for the malls which are a luxury where he comes from - though I can't actually remember where it was he said he was from. Anyway, we hopped on board a trolley as one was taken from the parking lot and gazed out over the foodstuffs as we were pushed gently around the aisles.

It was the chilled and frozen stuff which really caught my young colleague's attention for there, amongst the ice creams and chilled cream and cheeses, were the most bizarre products one would ever have imagined. To be honest, I've never been overly impressed with human food stores and I don't spend much time in them as a general rule but I had to admit that what was now greeting both our eyes was absurd to say the least for there, on shelves in the refrigerators, were products with no fat.

That's right! Ice cream with no fat, butter with no fat, cream with no fat. And, even though there were certain items missing from them, they actually cost more! I could understand - as did my colleague, Nuffin - that to add something must invariably raise the price, but to take something out? You got less than the product was and they wanted to charge you more? Weird - positively spooky.

The manufacturers also seem to have realised the precariousness of their position for they seldom labeled their products as anything other than 'not' the type of food it was being sold as. So, for Ice Cream, we found substitutes called 'Too good to be real' and 'Simply Imitational', both of which belied the fact that what they were representing wasn't reality at all.

The butters and fat spreads were just the same. Here we discovered the products 'I can believe it's a cheap substitute' and, perhaps more poignant, the supermarket's own product called 'I can't believe we can get away with this'.

Nuffin hung his head over the bars of the trolley and began giggling 'What's the point in selling half a product, announcing it to the public that it isn't the real thing, putting a price on it that's greater than the real thing and then expect people to buy it?'

But buying it, people were - in their droves. Time and time again, we saw men and women look closely at each of the products and opt for the more expensive one that had less in - amazing though that sounds. A bit like selling the sunflower seeds as just the shells but with nothing inside.

Humans always amaze me but the last word has to go to Nuffin. After we'd exited into the bright sunshine of day, he turned to me and squeaked:

'Why is it that humans think less is better and price denotes quality?'

Nuff said.

Dak the Hamster writes for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.



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