Yes, but I should have thought that the real import of the question was not so much, “Why do Canadians call it Kraft Dinner?,” but rather “Why does Kraft market it under the name Kraft Dinner in Canada?” Admittedly, there may be no readily available answer to this (short of unearthing some long-forgotten memo from a Kraft marketing executive), but I think it’s a reasonable question to ask.
Many products are marketed under different names in different countries, but you can often see why the change might have been made. In the case of “Kraft Dinner,” however, the phrase is so blandly generic and non-descriptive that one wonders how they came up with it.
Since Kraft has no problem using the name Macaroni & Cheese in the U.S., surely it’s understandable to wonder why they don’t do so in Canada as well?
Mac n’ cheese is not called Kraft Dinner. Only Kraft Dinner is called Kraft Dinner (or more commonly K.D.) If someone says they had K.D. then you know that it was the stuff out of the blue box. If someone says they had mac n’ cheese then it was probably home made.
As it was apparently originally marketed as Kraft Dinner in the States as well (as mentioned above) I would assume that Canada had a more developed brand recognition for the name than the US did at the time (I know that the K.D. recognition seems ubiquitous in Canada now)
Perhaps there were not enough lines in my second post in this thread.
If I spread the information out over more lines.
Kraft Dinner was the original name for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in both the US and in Canada. I remember when it was called Kraft Dinner here waaaay back in the dim mists of time. It is not our Canadian continental neighbors who need to explain themselves but we here in the US.
14th century ORIGINAL RECEIPT: 95. Makerouns. Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh, and kerue it on pieces, and cast hym on boiling water & seeþ it wele. Take chese and grate it, and butter imelte, cast bynethen and abouven as losyns; and serue forth. - Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury). New York: for The Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.
Kraft Dinner was the original name for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in both the US and in Canada. I remember when it was called Kraft Dinner here waaaay back in the dim mists of time. It is not our Canadian continental neighbors who need to explain themselves but we here in the US.
This has got to be one of the most beautiful, insightful, trenchant and lyrical post I have ever read in this forum. Surely the gods themselves are shitting their cosmic togas in orgasmic disbelief and awe. BRAVO! Bup
I agree, Biggirl. Bup has managed to provide information and provoke thought in just these two amazing lines. We owe him our gratitude for fighting ignorance in this thread.
But Kraft IS a brand, and it has enough brand recognition that (enough) consumers know what it is. I don’t know if a Kleenex box says “tissues” or not, but it really doesn’t need to, either. When I see Charmin wipes, I assume they are for wiping bottoms and not windows.
