To someone whose ambition in life to be a freelance illustrator working in an office is tantamount to being emprisioned. Thankfully a sort of stockholm syndrome (and being able to pay the mortgage) makes it bearable... but only just!

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Penguin - Posh biscuit or sub-standard choccy bar?

There was once a time when the humble Penguin was a trustworthy snack, falling as it does somewhere between (or should I say betwixed? ...erm,no.)biscuit and chocolate bar. It was this that made it such a good indicator of class. As a young boy I lived next door to a wealthly family whose mother was quite posh. She wouldn't let her sons watch Grange Hill as she deemed it too common and in their biscuit tin there were always Penguins and maybe a Breakaway or a Club. In our house these snacks fell well and truly into the special occasions only chocolate bar category, albeit a slightly sub-standard one. But whatever it's position was in the hierarchy of chocolatey snacks, in the intervening years, since "I were a lad", it has since declined, as I found out when I espied a tempting 2 for 1 offer at my local Co-op. The quality of the Penguin itself remains as it always had. A poor relation to the like of a Club perhaps, but still yummy. No, what dissapointed me was the wrappers. Traditionally penguins came in four different colur wrappers, red, blue, yellow, green, decorated with a picture of a penguin ...nice. At the time when I stopped paying attention to these thing on a regular basis the penguins on the wrappers were featured in different poses. This was a bit humourous and a bit of a novelty but still exceptable. Nowadays, much to my chargrin, they are now adorned with images of mobile phones, djing equipment and other tacky images. My memory doesn't recollect whether old penguins had jokes on them or not, but todays do. And what really made me cringe was one particular joke, which goes as follows;
Q. Whats Green and smells?
A. The Incredible Hulks Guff.
Erm, OK ...is this the worst kind of purile dross or what? Ugh! Ok some dumb moronic kids may find this kind of joke amusing, but that doesn't mean itis OK to put it on a choccy bar! I can imagine that if Penguins had been like this in my day then my posh neighbours would have certainly banned them, along with Grange Hill, from their house as being too common and rightly so! So where does this leave th humble Penguin Bar? Too common for posh people, too decadent for the plebs, it's only possible place it could be accepted is in the homes of well monied yobs. The sort of home where the kids have all that money can buy except manners and good taste. Shame.

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