The holidays are here and, as usual, packing the shelves are certain over priced gifts that I wonder if people actually buy year after year.
Like those IMPORTED cookies. All colorfully wrapped individually, packaged like 12 to a cheerful box, made in England or somewhere and costing about $14. They usually, I discovered, taste like something between stale chocolate and cardboard, yet they show up every year.
Then those imported candies. They go like about 12 to a box also and are usually gaily wrapped and cost about $10 and taste like they have been on the shelf since last year.
I still cannot get over those HUGE baskets full of plastic, colorful straw, upon which rests a 1 pound ‘summer sausage’, a wheel of assorted, tiny wedges of soft cheese, a 4 ounce tube of salami, a 1 pound Danish canned ham, 6 hard candies, a 2 ounce brick of cheddar cheese, a 2 ounce brick of SMOKEY cheddar cheese, a cheap cheese knife and cutting board and a pack of GENUINE ENGLISH WATER crackers (which means no flavor) and selling at $14.95. (AFTER Christmas they can be found marked down 6 or 7 times to about $5.) Do any of you ACTUALLY buy those things?
I dearly love the men’s cologne scam. The center aisle has a BIG display of men’s Cologne priced down to $5.00 for a 2 ounce bottle of something or other in a BIG colorful box. Across the store is the same stuff, priced at $9.00 a bottle and in men’s toiletries, it sells at the usual $12.00 a bottle. (Yes, the posted prices all ring up! It depends on what section of the store you buy it in.)
Then the $20 coffee sampler. Four 1 ounce bags of ‘imported’ coffee, two cheap coffee mugs, two tin spoons and a packet of thin wheat crackers. (Wholesale price about $5. Retail total for all items bought separately = $8.50.)
How about fruit cake. THAT stuff NEVER goes bad, not that it is very edible either. It has a bunch of uses, like paper weight, door stop, table decoration, boat anchor, rat killer, tire stop and land fill. I like preserved and dried fruits but whatever treatment they give those fruits which go into those cakes cannot be either safe or legal.
I even read up on an ancient recipe in an ancient cook book about making one of these colorful and worthless cakes. Now, THAT baker had the right idea for into the cement-like mix, he dumped enough rum to float a battleship. Then the finished cake was wrapped in muslin, soaked with MORE rum and stored in a cool shelf in the cool house for around a month – to ‘age.’ Upon bringing out for presentation, the outer layer of cloth was removed and the inner layer soaked with MORE RUM! I figure after the first mouthful, those who actually ate it got too blitzed to know what they were doing.
The leftovers could be cut into chunks, lit on fire and used as pot warmers.
You people seen anything similar to these examples out there, coming back year after year for fools to buy and HAVE you suckers, er…ah… fine people actually BOUGHT any?
