Help me out here...

[venta]

I just went up to the staffroom for my morning tea and evil-on-toast, and was unexpectedly scared by the bread's packaging.

Robertson's thin-sliced white bread has on it a two colour logo, featuring a cheerfully-aspected stick-figure, and the motto "BREAD IS GOOD FOR YOU" in large, blocky letters.

This resonates in my brain with someone's post-apocalyptic futuristic vision, in which information is presented to the people in very simple, black-and-white terms... Can anyone tell me what the reference is ? Is it 1984 ?

Anyway, it scared me. I had the brown bread, which made no such claims.

Comments

(white) bread is good for you

[thegreenman.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a thumping great lie to me.

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

As I've remarked before, it's an increasingly popular advertising strategy: claim the exact opposite of the truth repeatedly and loudly.

Though I won't mention Bran Flakes ads again, or quisalan will kill me !

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's meant to be a concession to good news, after all the depressing SMOKING KILLS warnings that you see in huge letters on cigarette packets nowadays?

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, they're easily solved with a printer, a Stanley knife and some pritt-stick :)

http://www.smokingcures.com/smoking1.pdf

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

all the depressing SMOKING KILLS warnings

I love them - surely it won't be long before kids are trading them in the playground.

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[venta.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, edling and I were just discussing this idea last night. His fagpacket had one on that we hadn't seen before... Grr. Can't remember what it was now.

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[venta.livejournal.com]

Can you mention it quietly ? I don't think I've heard this one :)

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

There used to be a Bran Flakes ad on TV which went:

"They're tasty, tasty, very very tasty, they're very tasty !"

...the canonical example of the genre !

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

But but they've packed it full of vitamin supplements and folic acid ... ;-)

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[venta.livejournal.com]

Crud with vitamins is still crud :)

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

But it is good for you - in comparative studies against "nothing" it was shown to keep you alive for weeks or months longer. In comparative studies with "lard and chocolate" it was shown to help prevent excessive calorie intake. It's also a gateway food to cheese sandwiches, and everyone knows cheese is great.

Re: (white) bread is good for you

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Frolic acid? Must be good for you.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Lard is good for you. (That's the one I always remember)

There was that rather splendid Bootleg on the BBC last Christmas where chocolate got banned. "Good for you" was a big theme in that...

1984

[mr-flay.livejournal.com]

1984 does have aggressive misinformation campaigns, but they tend to be delivered through TV, rather than by little logos. Though the gin bottles are described almost exactly like the Tesco brand ones you get these days - plain white label, GIN in bold letters on the front. Though in 1984 it was called Victory Gin and had a red V on the label too.

Thinking about it, Victory Gin is not so very far off from Freedom Fries, is it?

Repo Man had plain packaging with generic product titles on the side - BEER, etc - but apparently this is because Alex Cox couldn't wrangle any product placement!

Staffroom bread

[uitlander]

My fundamental problem with this new form of white bread is that it simply doesn't make very nice toast. I suppose I could mention it to Jane tomorrow morning in my 'The Uitlander as Universal diplomat' persona. i.e. when I get the goss out of Jean over coffee.

Guinness

[(Anonymous)]

Possibly "Guinness Is Good For You" is the one you are reminded of:

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~eriksonc/SarahGhana/Guinness.jpg

http://drk.home.sprynet.com/guinness.jpg

Or, at a push, the Wombles song "Exercise is good for you, laziness is not". I have it on CD if you wish to borrow it :-)

-- Richard