Cellar Scribblings

[CellarDweller]

Same here. I'll have to check when I go to the supermarket this week. I do have to look at the Coke section pretty closely to find the Caffeine Free Coke. I've never seen "green Coke," but it's also possible I just missed it because I wasn't looking for Coke in a green carton.

Are they advertising it on the Internet? I've never seen a TV commercial for it.

I seem to remember seeing a commercial briefly, but haven't seen in in a while.


[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gF9lQeMXaw[/youtube]


You can see it in most commercials, where they advertise all their varieties, you can see  a green  labeled bottle or green can in the mix.

Usually, at the end, you'll see an animation of four bottles.  Red (regular) White (diet) Black  (Coke Zero) and green (Coke Life).

[CellarDweller]

Oh, it got cold here today!   

Went shopping after  work, and got some toys to donate to Toys-For-Tots, and an ugly sweater for Ugly Sweater Day at the job.

[serious crayons]

I thought of this because I remember that around here we used to be able to buy a soda called "Mr. Pibb." To me it sort of tasted like Cherry Coke. I haven't seen it here in Pennsylvania in literally decades, but on one of my trips to Wyoming between the Barbecue and now, I found it in a convenience store in Worland.

Mr Pibb is (or was, haven't seen it in decades) fake Dr Pepper.

Note that neither title has a period. I've known for years that was true of Dr Pepper, but I just now looked up Mr Pibb to see if it followed suit, and not only did I see a can label that did not contain a period, but I found this, "The Sad Story of Mr. [sic] Pibb and Pibb Xtra":

http://theplaincheese.com/flashback-sad-story-mr-pibb/

[serious crayons]

I don't know if there's a transatlantic difference, but all things American do have a tendency to gain interest and popularity here.

I'm sure the same intensity in advertising, say, a Finnish or Polish holiday here, would NOT lead to the same result. Even though we have a LOT more people from Finland and Poland living here than Americans. Not to mention more distant countries.

Well, I hope that works out for you all. I don't know enough about either Finnish or Polish culture to assess them, but I can tell you that U.S. culture is pretty screwed up right now. As you probably know. Because everybody, at least in Europe, seems to know far more about this country than most people in this country know about any others.

Sometimes I think of how weird that is. I think, I just happened to be born in the country whose culture and politics dominate much of the world. I could have as easily been born in any of 194 other countries. I guess the closest thing I can feel to that is that I've lived most of my life in Minnesota, a "flyover state" that's not generally considered culturally significant. If I'd lived in New York or LA it would be even weirder.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Note that neither title has a period. I've known for years that was true of Dr Pepper, but I just now looked up Mr Pibb to see if it followed suit, and not only did I see a can label that did not contain a period, but I found this, "The Sad Story of Mr. [sic] Pibb and Pibb Xtra

That I never did see.

[Sason]

Well, I hope that works out for you all. I don't know enough about either Finnish or Polish culture to assess them, but I can tell you that U.S. culture is pretty screwed up right now. As you probably know. Because everybody, at least in Europe, seems to know far more about this country than most people in this country know about any others.

Sometimes I think of how weird that is. I think, I just happened to be born in the country whose culture and politics dominate much of the world. I could have as easily been born in any of 194 other countries. I guess the closest thing I can feel to that is that I've lived most of my life in Minnesota, a "flyover state" that's not generally considered culturally significant. If I'd lived in New York or LA it would be even weirder.

Yes, that's how it seems, at least in general.

I don't know why that is, the reason must be multifaceted and buried deep in history.

[CellarDweller]

That I never did see.

I haven't either.

The article did say people said it was "spicier" than Mr Pibb, and the side of Pibb Xtra says "spicy cherry soda"

[serious crayons]

Yes, that's how it seems, at least in general.

I don't know why that is, the reason must be multifaceted and buried deep in history.

Well, I think it has a lot to do with the United States being for at least a century or so a very wealthy country -- which it still is, though more and more of the wealth is concentrated among the richest people -- and because it has at least since WWII been one of the two to three most militarily powerful countries in the world, thanks to helping win the war and being the first to develop atom bombs, and because it has the size and money to produce cultural products like movies and TV shows that spread around the world (and often are tailored to do just that -- hence all those superhero and other action movies), and because things like fast cheap burgers sold by a giant chain happened to originate here, and because my impression is that more Europeans speak English than any other single language. For example, I have seen, say, German and Spanish people communicate via English.

I'm not saying any of those U.S. things are good (or even necessarily bad), just that they're among the main reasons.

I'm no historian -- so Jeff or anyone else, feel free to correct me -- but I think that in the 19th century, England and France had more influence than the United States, and that in fact people here looked to Europe for cultural leadership. Fancy worldly people spoke French. Women wanted to know the latest French fashion trends. I'm guessing that probably shifted with the wars and also because the previously unexploited natural resources in the U.S. -- land, timber, coal, iron, gold, oil, grains, etc. -- provided new wealth.

Meanwhile, I thought of our conversation about retail influence earlier today. So there's this giant department-store chain here, Macy's. One year I got a job at Macy's around Christmas time, thinking I could use my employee discount to buy my family gifts. And that worked, for a year or two, so I saved some money. Then it got to the point where, although I still worked at Macy's over the holidays, my sons announced that Macy's did not sell anything that they would want.      

There's a sale going on there now, but sadly I don't think the status of their merchandise has improved in my sons' esteem.

[Jeff Wrangler]

For example, I have seen, say, German and Spanish people communicate via English.

English has become a sort of universal language. While French used to be the language that all educated people knew and spoke (the Russian aristocracy spoke French, and French was the language of diplomacy), French has pretty much been replaced by English. I heard years ago that all air-traffic control, everywhere, is conducted in English.

I'm no historian -- so Jeff or anyone else, feel free to correct me -- but I think that in the 19th century, England and France had more influence than the United States, and that in fact people here looked to Europe for cultural leadership. Fancy worldly people spoke French. Women wanted to know the latest French fashion trends

Well, in the 19th century the British Empire was the largest and most powerful in the world. France had great cultural influence; I guess it still has influence in fashion but maybe not as much as it used to.

[serious crayons]

France had great cultural influence; I guess it still has influence in fashion but maybe not as much as it used to.

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about haute couture but from what I do know I don't think French designers necessarily rule over those from the United States or Italy or who knows where else these days. In Gone With the Wind, Rhett gives Scarlett a green hat to break her out of mourning clothes and in the movie she puts it on backwards until he corrects her -- I think the hat reflects what the ladies in France were wearing lately. Elsewhere in that book, and in other 19th-century/early 20th-century things, I'm sure I've heard of American women clamoring to know what French women were wearing so they could update their own (handsewn) wardrobes. In turn-of-the-20th-century books by people like Edith Wharton, Europeans are seen as sophisticated and tasteful, while Americans are still crude and uncultured, even in Wharton's rarefied Fifth Avenue circles.

(That may arguably still be the case!    But few Americans think that way these days.)

Nowadays Americans seem to think of French women as having a great, sort of inherent sense of style, but they don't necessarily try to copy it.