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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Screaming heebie jeebies
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bib
Shipmate
# 13074
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Posted
Here we go again. I went to the supermarket to stock up on bread and milk on Boxing Day to be met with a vast array of hot cross buns and Easter egg displays. The store claims that 'people' demand this but I think it is just a commercial cash cow that they are pushing - nothing to do with public demand. I've decided to shop elsewhere and boycott this supermarket. After all, I'm a member of the public and they won't take their display down. What's happening where you live? ![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
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"My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End, accept the praise I bring"
Posts: 1307 | From: Australia | Registered: Oct 2007
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anoesis
Shipmate
# 14189
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Posted
I haven't actually been in to a shop of any kind for [counts on fingers] 6 whole days, which is pretty much my definition of being on holiday - so I couldn't say what is going on in my neck of the woods.
However, if I were to go to the supermarket tomorrow and discover Easter paraphernalia, I can tell you that I would be A.) annoyed, obviously, and B.) surprised. Really quite surprised. Maybe Easter is unusually early in 2017 though?
I hate how there's always got to be something on that we are supposed to be getting all rarked up about. It's finally getting hot, the last couple of days. Could they not just put beer and sausages on special?
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The history of humanity give one little hope that strength left to its own devices won't be abused. Indeed, it gives one little ground to think that strength would continue to exist if it were not abused. -- Dafyd --
Posts: 993 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2008
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Lothlorien
Ship's Grandma
# 4927
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Posted
Par for the course in Sydney, unfortunately. Boxing Day sees Easter merchandise on sale. Just check the shelf lif of those buns. Weeks away. They must be stuffed full of preservatives.
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Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.
Posts: 9745 | From: girt by sea | Registered: Aug 2003
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
Haha - I bought the twins Kinder eggs for Christmas ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
It's the second front of the war on Xmas ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Nothing Eastery in my supermarket, but a plethora of half price unsold Christmas biccies and choccies. Now in my house. It will last me to Candlemas (the day before my birthday).
They always have HXBs, all year, though. That battle is lost. Unless we took on the trade description of their not actually being hot.
[ 28. December 2016, 08:34: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by bib:
The store claims that 'people' demand this but I think it is just a commercial cash cow that they are pushing - nothing to do with public demand.
That's rather incoherent. If there was no public demand then nobody would buy the stuff and there wouldn't be a commercial cash cow to exploit.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by bib:
The store claims that 'people' demand this but I think it is just a commercial cash cow that they are pushing - nothing to do with public demand.
That's rather incoherent. If there was no public demand then nobody would buy the stuff and there wouldn't be a commercial cash cow to exploit.
Up to a point, maybe.
But I guess the question is if there is a pre-existing demand from the public that such goodies be on sale so early. The fact that some people will buy these items when they see them on sale does not mean that it would even remotely have occurred to them to request them if they were not on the shelves. Any "demand" for them may well have been entirely manufactured by the retailers' planting the idea in the customers' minds.
[ 28. December 2016, 09:44: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
Anyone ever heard of Consumer Resistance?
What came first, consumer shit or the desire to immerse ourselves in it?
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by bib:
The store claims that 'people' demand this but I think it is just a commercial cash cow that they are pushing - nothing to do with public demand.
That's rather incoherent. If there was no public demand then nobody would buy the stuff and there wouldn't be a commercial cash cow to exploit.
Up to a point, maybe.
But I guess the question is if there is a pre-existing demand from the public that such goodies be on sale so early. The fact that some people will buy these items when they see them on sale does not mean that it would even remotely have occurred to them to request them if they were not on the shelves. Any "demand" for them may well have been entirely manufactured by the retailers' planting the idea in the customers' minds.
I guess I depart somewhat from my fellow leftists in assuming that, if you decide to buy something, the responsibility for that decision rests on your shoulders, even if it would not have occured to you to buy it in the absence of an advertising blitz.
As a thought-experiment, apply, at an individual level, the usual logic used to absolve buyers in the aggregate...
JILL: Jack, you bought hot-crossed buns in December?! What the hell were you thinking?
JACK: Sorry, Jill, but try to understand. There was all this fancy advertising and a beautiful display case. The supermarket basically created the need in me to buy those buns.
I don't think most of us would find this a convincing defense, coming from a spouse. So why is it supposed to make sense when applied to consumers as a group?
[ 28. December 2016, 11:02: Message edited by: Stetson ]
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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american piskie
Shipmate
# 593
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Posted
Hot Cross Buns are an all-the-year-round staple here. Very nice for breakfast, too.
Posts: 356 | From: Oxford, England, UK | Registered: Jun 2001
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by bib:
Here we go again. I went to the supermarket to stock up on bread and milk on Boxing Day to be met with a vast array of hot cross buns and Easter egg displays. The store claims that 'people' demand this but I think it is just a commercial cash cow that they are pushing - nothing to do with public demand. I've decided to shop elsewhere and boycott this supermarket. After all, I'm a member of the public and they won't take their display down. What's happening where you live?
What? They skipped Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, and St. Patrick's? Your stores under-serve the public's "demand" for consumer holidays. Tch tch. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
[ 28. December 2016, 12:08: Message edited by: Lyda*Rose ]
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
The stores can't let those shelves designated "seasonal," lie fallow! If Christmas stuff comes down something has to go up. I actually like seeing the Valentine things go up so I can get in another chance for a box of assorted soft centers before Lent. There have been a few cruel years when Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday landed on the same day and a knock came in the evening with a Girl Scout and her cookies standing in the door.
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Well, I haven't been shopping since yesterday (!), but I can't say I noticed anything untoward in my local Co-Op.
Hot Cross Buns and Cadbury's Cream Eggs are all-year-round staple food items (quite rightly so), but from past experience, I would expect to see Valentine's Day junk on offer any time now... ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
Just as long as they get the liturgical colours right (shades of cerise/pink, of course), I don't give a f**k.
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
Posts: 10151 | From: Behind The Wheel Again! | Registered: Jan 2004
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Pyx_e
Quixotic Tilter
# 57
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Posted
And now a word from our sponsor:
Try "the blood of the Lamb." Allows you to wade in shit and smell like heaven.
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It is better to be Kind than right.
Posts: 9778 | From: The Dark Tower | Registered: May 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Waitrose reductions now down to teeny tiny under a pound prices, so past Candlemas. Also, allowed me to buy replacements for the lights in a wreath which died last night - may have been a bulb, but I found the wire was stripped by the transformer, so that had to be scrapped. I have been winding 96 LEDs (£3.75) round and round a foot diameter wreath. Battery operated, so no stripped wire problems in future.
They used to stock saffron buns, and richly fruited buns, which satisfied the hunger for that sort of thing.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
I guess I depart somewhat from my fellow leftists in assuming that, if you decide to buy something, the responsibility for that decision rests on your shoulders, even if it would not have occured to you to buy it in the absence of an advertising blitz.
Absolutely, Stetson. The consumers can only blame themselves for the decision to buy. I was only questioning whether the "demand" was a pre-existing one which the retailers were obliged to meet in response.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Presumably, at least with foodstuffs, the retailers are more interested in levelling demand than creating it? By which I mean that an individual's overall demand for food is fairly constant, so if I am lured into buying the hot cross buns it will be at the expense of the jam doughnuts. But from the retailer's perspective, it's probably not efficient to have a demand for hot cross buns that spikes between Passiontide and Easter but is otherwise non-existent.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Presumably, at least with foodstuffs, the retailers are more interested in levelling demand than creating it?
Not at all. Retailers are far more interested in creating a demand for extra luxury foodstuffs, for extra expensive "convenience" foods, and generally trying to get you to spend more of your budget on fancy food.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Yeah, but there's still an upper bound to the amount of food I can physically eat. And I wouldn't class hot cross buns as particularly luxurious.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
FWIW, hot cross buns were on sale two weeks ago in my usual supermarket.
JOhn
Posts: 5929 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: May 2001
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by anoesis:
Maybe Easter is unusually early in 2017 though?
April 16 this year. Last year maybe this could have been the excuse- there were eight days between Candlemass and Ash Wednesday, which seemed like very little breathing room.
quote:
Originally posted by anoesis:
I hate how there's always got to be something on that we are supposed to be getting all rarked up about. It's finally getting hot, the last couple of days. Could they not just put beer and sausages on special?
That's essentially the seasonal aisle here from the end of Graduation season in May through the first of September. It helps that, other than the 4th of July, our holiday season and nice weather season fall on the opposite ends of the year.
I suppose they could do a New Year's aisle, but it would seem a lot of work for one week, and they have to keep the nicotine replacement gums and patches behind the desk anyway. (We do get a week or two of TV advertisements this time of year for gyms, stop smoking aids, dating services, and any other resolution-related businesses you could imagine.)
[ 29. December 2016, 20:09: Message edited by: Og, King of Bashan ]
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
I do wonder if anyone has ever gone into a store between Christmas and Ash Wednesday and asked for hot crossed buns or easter eggs. I can't really imagine that happening.
That said, most people are so ignorant of Christianity and its traditions these days, it wouldn't surprise me at all if people had no idea that hot crossed buns had anything to do with Christianity let alone being specifically a thing tied to Easter. I imagine that is they're in the shops the day after Christmas people probably think they've got something to do with Christmas. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
If it bothers you, plan a visit to the States. I never see hot-cross buns here, whether in Lent or in Advent or any other time of year. Most Americans have no idea what they're about. I think I had them once when I was a child-- but they had raisins in them, so well, there would be no more of that nonsense.
Our "seasonal aisle" here is being quickly turned over to the Valentine's schlock. Candy hearts and enormous greeting cards mostly.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Our family gets them every year. For many years. From Safeway. (American Tesco).
And many local bakeries carry them, but they only sell them within the product freshness date of Easter. Because frozen hot cross buns?
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
When I lived in the northeastern U.S. they were in all the bakeries; here in the Southwest a few stores carry what they call Hot Cross Buns, but the dough is flavorless, and in some cases -- the icing is bright yellow.
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Yeah, my family thinks hot cross buns are bright yellow. They also think potatoes au gratin involves Velveeta. I wish I were kidding. But the high number of European expat conclaves around here means that, pretty much since statehood, on the Peninsula, somewhere around a week before Easter ancient family owned bakeries will begin promising buns. One year I beat the family to the punch and found the good ones at a Portuguese bakery on the Coastside.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
When I lived in the northeastern U.S. they were in all the bakeries; here in the Southwest a few stores carry what they call Hot Cross Buns, but the dough is flavorless, and in some cases -- the icing is bright yellow.
Icing! (Speak on rising tone showing finding this incredible.) Not yellow or any colour. Egg glaze. Piped flour and water cross. Thassorl.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
I enjoyed my Cadbury Mini Eggs today. Brought in by a colleague and bought at the Co-op.
More like Heaven than Hell.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Indeed - available all year round, and not just for the Feast of the Birth of the Easter Bunny. They can be used to celebrate the Vomit of Saint Valentine, the Advent of the Great Pumpkin, the WinterFest of SunReturn, and other religious holidays!
Well done, Mr. Co-Op! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
Posts: 10151 | From: Behind The Wheel Again! | Registered: Jan 2004
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
It must be the week after Christmas as people are moaning about Easter eggs and hot cross buns in the shops
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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
Posts: 12860 | From: The Valley of Crocuses | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
We're so fortunate here. We get 6 weeks of St. Valentine's Day cards and candies and chocolates and mylar balloons. Then it's St. Patrick's Day shamrocks and hats and knee socks and knickers and "Kiss Me I'm Irish" buttons. Only then do we get the eggs and Easter lilies and such folderal.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Siegfried
Ship's ferret
# 29
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Posted
I've never seen Easter stuff before Valentine's Day, except in craft stores, where they're always 2 holidays ahead!
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Siegfried
Life is just a bowl of cherries!
Posts: 5592 | From: Tallahassee, FL USA | Registered: May 2001
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
Went to the supermarket this morning -- they're still featuring pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bread, pumpkin crumb cake, etc. etc. I picked up a pumpkin-cheese coffee cake and am looking forward to enjoying it.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Don't they know that one of Santa's many tasks is to return the Great Pumpkin back to the favoured Pumpkin Patch of His (the G.P., that is) Advent?
IJ
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
Posts: 10151 | From: Behind The Wheel Again! | Registered: Jan 2004
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David Goode
Shipmate
# 9224
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Posted
There appears to be some pedigree for hot cross buns at Christmas, I'm afraid to say. I haven't checked the reference, but, according to the Oracle, Wikipedia, Elizabeth David's book "Yeast Buns and Small Tea Cakes" says that:
"In the time of Elizabeth I of England (1592), the London Clerk of Markets issued a decree forbidding the sale of hot cross buns and other spiced breads, except at burials, on Good Friday, or at Christmas. The punishment for transgressing the decree was forfeiture of all the forbidden product to the poor."
Posts: 654 | From: Cambridge | Registered: Mar 2005
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