McCafe day (and a few other brief things)

Hi kids!

I'm back, if only for a few moments. I'm about to head out to the Home Country in a few days and I have so much to talk about, but unfortunately I still have zero time to sit down and write for a few hours. I do, however, have a lovely marketing story for you.

In Sunday's paper, there was a coupon for a free new strawberry frozen lemonade from that arche nemesis of mine, McDonald's. Now, anytime McObesity wants to force food on me, however inexpensively (or free), I usually balk - even if that were the only option available to me. I just can't push myself to eat calorie-laden, sodium bloated nothing foods in order to stay alive.

But as always, curiosity makes me want to know what's actually in the stuff they hand out for free and so I went online in search of a listing of ingredients for the frozen strawberry lemonade over-sugared drink. While I wasn't surprised at the 260 calories it sports, I *was* surprised to see it was mostly made up of fairly natural stuff: lemon oil, lemon juice, strawberry and lemonade concentrate, not artificially flavored. There's some syrup for the berry flavor and the evil red 40 coloring, but other than that, just a combination of natural flavorings and ice.

So I went to the McDonald's website and watched their Sesame Street promotional video: a talking lemon from New Jersey that comes across as distinctly Italian and I wondered where Joe Pesci and DeNiro were. In other words, why Jersey Shore? To sell lemonade?

The talking Jersey lemon makes wisecracks about being "sour" and introduces his "wife", the strawberry who is supposedly sweet, yet says nothing and doesn't even have an animated face like the DeNiro lemon...she doesn't even talk. Still confusing. But the lemon drones about about tangy, soury, sweet, yummy, cold lemonade, the perfect combination of sour and sweet and cold on a hot day.....this repeats over and over again in a carefully crafted dialogue on each animated Sesame Street-ish image you click...and slowly you become hypnotized by the perfect combination of sour and sweet, but always a perfection combination of sweetness and tart lemon....

I COULDN'T STAND IT! My lymph glands (I believe?) began to ache for something sour and the back of my tongue longed for some kind of subtle sugar fix. So I reasoned that I had to run to the store anyway and McChubby is on the way there, so why not swing by and get one, especially if it's free? :-P Whatever I don't drink, I'll share with David and we'll just chuck what we don't consume.

Alas, I got one. Oh the yummyness - but it wasn't all that remarkable. After about four sips, my stomach began to react to the sudden gush of acidity from the lemons and cried "Hold!" so I left the rest for Dave. It now sits peacefully in my fridge. All because of the talking Jersey lemon.

I caved in to marketing ploys. The shame! Like the Royal Wedding donuts, I couldn't resist. Oh well. Whatever calories I did consume, I'll walk them off in London. ;-)

Cheerio! Talk to you all, my invisible audience, when I return. <3

PS: His reaction? "Wow...sweet!...but...ugh...sour!" My feelings exactly.