If you've ever watched an ad for Dolmios you'll remember this line:
"We put the good stuff in so you'll wear the Dolmio grin"
But what exactly makes the consumer grin and bear it?
Billboards have started appearing bearing images of the presumably deceased Italian Dolmios spaghetti elder. The billboards point once to the old man with the caption Old and Chunky and then point to the new jar claiming it to be New and Chunky. The expression of the old man might reveal a hidden clue as to the contents of the jar in hand.
Dolmios are the name in tomato sauce to turn to when looking to add full body flavour and respect to the simple meal of spaghetti.
"Genuine Italian sauce" is the phrase that pays the bills and given form from the drive of the marketing, and the old man—now immortalized in puppet form—stands all too close to the source of the sauce to not have the casual person jump to the conclusion that like the fabled detention halls of bulging bodies, the missing person is within all of the fans of the sauce.
In the past, the good stuff might have been rich tomatoes, but what kind of ingredients are in this new batch? The crushed and pureed corpse of the Dolmios elder?
Written on Friday, 11 July 2003