Buddah is in the Eye of the Beholdah

 

You ever get an idea that you think is super great but then find out it was probably a bit of a fail? I get LOTS of GREAT ideas, but I always worry that maybe I’m being crazy. Starting this blog almost two years ago seemed kind of scary and exciting. Some days I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head that I literally feel dizzy. My therapist recently told me that is called “flooding” and this is why we are working on shoring up my boundaries. You guys, I am a giant wreck.

But not MUCH more of a hot mess than the chowderhead who created Zima. Zima was created in 1993 when I was 25 years old, so it seemed extra unnecessary to me. JUST WHY when Seagram’s golden wine coolers were now available in Peach Fuzzy Navel??

Zima was marketed as a “malternative” to beer that was bubbly and clear like water so it didn’t make you have beer breath. It was “zomething zophisticated” but mostly tasted like drinking 7-up while holding a wad of aluminum foil tucked in your cheek. Zima, baby, baby, Zima-Zima, baby, yeah!

And then there was the creepy Burger King that emerged in 2004. This is also the year that Martha Stewart went to jail. The standards of toilet wine were raised, therefore the bar for frightening children during Primetime had to be lowered. It’s Basic Hamburger Math.

Then there are products that could really have been named practically ANYTHING else, like this Cock-flavored soup mix. You can get it in a three-pack from…..where else…..Walmart. Does this have anything to do with that baby born with three penises earlier this month?? His name is Willly.

Or this chocolate bar. Is it from Belgium or Uranus? BE CLEARER WITH YOUR LABELLING, FUN-BOY!

Probably one of the most unfortunate marketing blunders was a weight loss product from the mid-70’s called Ayds. They were these chocolate candies that contained benzocaine, a local anesthetic, and were marketed to help suppress your appetite. Dunno if they worked, but shortly after their release emerged AIDS, which also suppressed appetite. PEOPLE. JUST EAT MORE VEGGIES AND LAY OFF THE ZIMA.

And my last marketing blunder for this week comes not from Walmart, but from CHINA! You thought that big inflatable purple gorilla on the roof was extra? Check out the promo for this restaurant.

These 50-foot naked sculptures were...ummm...erected outside a restaurant that is famous for its delicious soup. And nothing screams soup more than two large, naked men with their soppy junk peeking in the windows and hanging from the ceiling.

When you look up from the street and see a big, flabby butt crack, what else comes to mind but FRAGRANT HOT SOUP.

Try to follow this Chinese logic. The soup is called “Fotiaoqiang” which translates to “Buddah jumps off the wall.” The story behind the soup is that a travelling scholar carried ingredients for the soup in a clay pot, heating them up when he stopped for a rest. While warming the soup, the smell was so delicious that some nearby Buddhist monks scrambled over the monastery wall to try some of the soup.

This soup is a delicacy containing a variety of expensive ingredients, such as venison, shark fin, sea cucumber, abalone, ginseng, wolfberries, rice wine, and quail’s eggs. Wow. Sounds so good, right?

It’s only available in specialty restaurants that serve the nastiest food possible. Have you ever seen a sea cucumber? It looks like a giant poop and tastes like a slimy piece of three-day-old jello. With gravy.

So this restaurant goes all out with this advertising to let folks know soup’s on, but local Buddhists were offended. It was argued that these naked guys were not Buddah but naughty children or monks. Damned weird-ass looking children if you ask me. They don’t even really look like Buddah with his long prosperity ears and Third Eye. That guy on the roof is totally flabby and fleshy, like that guy who ate the wafer thin mint in Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life.” I guess all Chinese people really do look alike, even in China.

Turns out that the sculptures were removed after just two days, probably by local authorities. Nobody is certain who created them or who removed them. Kind of like Asian Banksy.

I hope your week is full of great ideas! Thank you for reading!