Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Sometimes a duck is just a duck. With New Quacking Power!

When we lived in South Korea, I got used to reading unusual claims on my food and other household products. The general idea seemed to be that the more English words on the package, the better. It didn't really matter what those words were. Therefore, my bread also gave my life "Happy! Joy! Exciting bakes! Good day Shop!" It took awhile when we got back to Canada to get used to things that did only one task. Now, all that has changed. Multi-tasking has taken over the supermarket shelves.
In my house, I have dish soap that does an adequate job washing dishes. But! It also promises "relaxing aromatherapy" just in case I am tense while doing dishes. My husband gave me a set of three bottles of hand cream at Christmas. Each one has a different scent, which I like. However, each one also does a different thing for my emotions. The raspberry energizes. The sweet pea soothes, the vanilla relaxes. I keep them over the sink in case the dish soap doesn't do it's job.
My bathroom is chock-full of good stuff. My shower gel is "restoring" (I'm not sure what it restores, exactly). My shampoo "unleashes the power". My face scrub is better than a cup of coffee. It claims to "wake you up", "enliven your senses". "leaves you looking and feeling energized for the day ahead". Powerful stuff, that face scrub. The toothpaste people couldn't find a new claim for their product, so they just tossed exclamation marks all over the tube. "Extra Whitening!" "Tartar fighting!" "Prevents Stains!" unlike, you know, the toothpaste that clings to tartar, and turns your teeth yellow.
My absolute favourite packaging claim is on Hubby's cereal. I'm actually surprised he bought it, since he generally scoffs at such things. His cereal box says "Optimum Zen" and "For Inner Harmony" on it. Must be the extra bran.

6 comments:

Kara said...

This cracks me up because recently i was happy to find Palmalive dish washing soap that was lavender scented....sadly, it makes me sick to my tummy to use...multitasking is not always a good thing

Jeannie said...

This post was so hilarious. I love Asian translations. Someone has to come out with a book of them.

Anonymous said...

hilarious :)

OldHorsetailSnake said...

Very good, Mom. Just to think, we laugh at Engrish. Should be looking closer to home, I reckon.

Anonymous said...

Michele sent me.

I remember when I was in Korea there were this bottles of fish sauce in the commissary. If you picked them up to look at the ingredients it simply said, fish, water.

It wasn't sauce for fish, it was a sauce of made from fish. But maybe it was for fish too, I never tried it.

Anonymous said...

Very humerous commentary.... Michele sent me