Friday, December 21, 2007

F-odd: Haribo Zanzigliss

In the interests of fairness, seeing as I had written about the popular Bassett's Licorice Allsorts, I felt compelled to pick up the French offering, Haribo Zanzigliss.

First off. What the hell is Zanzigliss??? I wiki-ed it, I googled it, I can only conclude that its a stupid name.

Secondly. Why is there a English Queen's Guard on the front with these crazy licorice pieces trying to make him laugh. So the packaging begins by making fun of the English and tourists. Alright, I have no problem with that. And there's also a little icon with a weight with its arms (weights have arms? This one does!) on its hips, looking very proud that it weighs 300g.

Now we get to the inside. From the outset we can see it's a much, much heavier licorice to whateverthehellitis ratio, unlike the Allsorts, which were dominated by colored coconut *shudder*.

On closer inspection, we find an assortment of licorice wheels, licorice twigs, fondant-type flavored filled licorice as well as the sandwich of licorice. However, I also found these:

I know what you're thinking. WHAT THE *(insert epitaph of preference)* are THOSE???

Come on. Couldn't you guess?? A pointy hat, slanty eyes and a frowny moustache. It's a Chinese of course! Wow, Haribo has gone international! Wonderful!! I bet all Asians, myself included, feel wonderful at being part of a truly international bag of Zanzigliss.

But wait.......... there's more!


Hang on...... what's this?

Curly haired, big nosed thick lipped figurehead.... are there any stereotypes we haven't covered?


I'm not even going to go there.


Also, don't let us forget the mock Lucky Luke type character, which I believe, represents the West.


I don't know what the Haribo people were smoking when designing these type of things but I can't wait to find out what other crazy things they have going on in their fun packs. I've never picked up much beyond the Goldbears and cola bottles which I enjoy.

Can I just ask, who IS is the target market for these things? White supremacists?

Oh! I almost forgot to say how they taste... too distracted by the weirdness. The fondant is pretty gritty and awful but the licorice itself is fine I guess.
Oh and in case you want to know where to buy these, I picked them up at Toys R Us, you know, the place where you buy toys of learning and fun for kids.

Those crazy Europeans!

3 comments:

hater said...

oh my g-d! I can't believe the racist licorice....it's so wrong it's funny. It reminds me of when I was in Israel and we had breakfast and there were two types of pudding: chocolate and vanilla. The vanilla pudding cup had a cartoon of a little blond blue-eyed boy on it. The chocolate pudding cup had a cartoon of a little culy haired African boy...you know, someone gets paid to come up with these marketing plans.
I will see you very very soon at the wedding! Let me know if you need anything Canadian!
Lauren

Anonymous said...

Oh my god, this is too funny. Not to mention weird. Did the Chinese character have buck teeth too? Well, in Hong Kong we had Darkie toothpaste - remember the photo on the box?

Charmaine said...

That is bloody hilarious - if I weren't so repulsed by the idea of liquorice I'd probably buy a bag just for the fun factor.

Just discovered your blog through a piece on Aziacity, glad I did!