Night Club Simulator for the Deaf

My Second foray into web design

My First foray into web design

Choccy philly?

As I was perusing Tesco the other day for my weekly dietary requirement of baked beans, vodka and any cereal featuring a terrifyingly happy mascot and alarming sugar content, I happened upon a strange thing.

As I arrived at the refrigerated Philadelphia section, wondering idly about the merits of purchasing the aforementioned delectable cheese spread, I noticed something odd.

There was a newcomer.

Sat next to the regular Philadelphia and its flavored cousins, was a tub, colored not in white, but in the distinctive blue that signifies the presence of that choccy totin’ diabetes-givin’ chocolossus; Cadburys.

This was unexpected. I knew that Kraft, the makers of Philadelphia had bought Cadbury sometime in the past, but I assumed that seeing this bizarre food mash could only be the product of a stroke of some sort, as although it can be perfectly fine for one company to own and run another, Hellmann's mayonnaise and Dove soap are owned by the same people, and I hope to god they never attempt a cross-over product.

Here’s the root of the problem with this new chocolate Philadelphia - cheese. Philadelphia is quite definitely a cheese. It is a fine cheese, don’t get me wrong, but a cheese nonetheless, which makes the idea of adding chocolate quite unappealing. Even as you look at it in the shop, mentally the two worlds of cheese and chocolate are colliding with such force as to make your mind hurt. There have been many successful food fusions in the past; peanut butter and jam, fish fingers and custard, chilli and chocolate, pepper and strawberries, or noodles on toast, but chocolate and cheese is not among these success stories (all of which I suggest you try if you yet haven’t).

I'm boggled by the fact that someone at Kraft at some point decided that this was a good idea. Philadelphia has done well for itself. They practically own the market for spreading cream cheese, to the extent that I can’t even name a single rival (if there are any). They then had another stroke of genius in skipping the middle man and pre-adding many of the things the public love to add to phily, like chilli or chives, and not chocolate. All of these previously existing products are simply fantastic, and form a part of many of my favorite foods, especially the chilli one, which is what I imagine the clouds of heaven taste like. 

So why they would attack the chocolate spread market is beyond me. Cadbury already has an excellent chocolate spread, and the fact is that Nutella is the only sane choice most of the time anyway, leaving the market pretty clearly not lacking some new cheese based wonder product.

And yet what they decided was, that the market needs something that's essentially Cadbury's chocolate spread, but tastes a bit more like cheese, and goes off if you don't refrigerate it.

Nice one Kraft.