Pace (which is awful) has been running these ads for years. The appalled cowboys gaging on their food when they learn the picante sauce was made in NEW YAWRK CITY!!!
What sauces are actually made in New York City? I mean, are there any at all?
Pet Food’s Old El Paso.
I once spent an evening have drinks with the actor who played the cowboy geezer who cries, “New York City?!”
I should add that Pillsbury bought Pet Foods (and the Old El Paso brand) in 1994.
I swear that when I first saw the ads out in the wilkds of Utah the cowboys originally said:
"This sauce is made in New Jersey!
“NEW JERSEY!!!”
“Git a rope!”
The version with “New York City” came later.
(Cal Grondhal, editorial cartoonist extraordinaire, responded with a two-panel cvartoon showing the cowboys with the picante sauce on onme side. On the other were sxcientists from MIT holding a complex-looking jar and saying “This cold fusion came from … Where?”. all in the wake of the Pons-Fleischman Cold Fusion at the U of U debacle.)
That must have been the one where the cowboys sit around the fire eating Häagen-Dazs ice cream.
(That was sold to Pillsbury, too!)
I don’t find Pace to be awful. If you’ve got to use off-the-shelf salsa, their red-cap hot salsa is among the best.
(I do prefer Desert Trading Company, but you can’t always find that)
I remember those commecials. My whole family used to wonder why San Antonio would be any better than New York.
Snobby New Mexican d&r’s
I find Sadie’s to be amazing.
My apologies for the hijack and IMHO.
Hey, that is my family and last name you are talking about. Them’s fighten words.
Or Brooklyn?
WAG Kosher?
I don’t understand the joke. Isn’t New York City home to a sizable Puerto Rican community? I would expect to find Latino cuisine there as much as anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
Mexican salsas like Pace, Old El Paso, La Victoria, and Ortega are, well, Mexican, not Puerto Rican. The tomatoes and chili peppers that are key ingredients are native to Mexico and the southwest U.S., not Puerto Rico.
This is my recollection as well. When the New York City version came out, it was jarring to me because it had too many syllables.
And 'Rican food, with some small exceptions, is not known for intense spicyness. When I want hot chile salsa, I go to a Mexican restaurant.
But the joke is that picante salsa is supposed to be a cowboy country food, and it’s somehow “wrong” to get it from an industrial plant in NYC. Stereotype jokes; the image is that the maker of the “NYC” salsa is Billy Crystal’s character from City Slickers… (or, if you will, that it’s George Constanza).
Think of it as:
“Herschel! (pron. “Hoishel”, of course) These bagels were made in a factory in Jackson, Mississippi!”
“Oy! Call my lawyer!”
I don’t know about NYC itself, but the Mid-Hudson region of New York has a substantial Mexican community. So you can easily find real Mexican cuisine, including salsa, in New York.
I seem to recall reading that some portion of the NJ government (the Chamber of Commerce, maybe?) made such a fuss over the original “New Jersey?!?” version that they got Pace to change it.