Yummy in the Tummy, Odious for the Ear

I was handed a free food sample on the street yesterday. A pre-made, perfectly round, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, designed to save you the laborious task of having to make a fresh one yourself. Smucker’s, who make this gastronomical delight, call it an ‘Uncrustable.’ Mmm, appetizing. Sorry, but any use of the word ‘crust’ not preceded by ‘bread’ or ‘pie,’ just makes me think of a dirty bathtub, or an unfortunate dermatological condition – not what you want when you’re biting into something the contents of which could arguably resemble the latter. I take issue with the name, not only because it grosses me out, but because it doesn’t reference the main selling point of the product.

From their site:

Simply keep them in the freezer, then pack them in your lunch in the morning. By lunchtime, Uncrustables® are thawed and ready to eat.

The selling point is that they’re on hand, ready to grab, whenever you befall a brown bag emergency, not that they don’t have crusts. It’s true they don’t have crusts but given that the ‘soft bread’ barely resembles bread, the convenient lack of crust goes unnoticed. What should it be called instead, a PB & Scurry maybe? An instawich? At least then the door is left open for other lunchtime favorites – tuna, ham & cheese. Slowly defrosted cheese. Delicious.

Am I making too much of this? Gross moniker or not, we know people are going to buy them – this is America after all, a nation long in the habit of replacing natural foods with processed ones and then shipping them half way across the country in a refrigerated container – and we’ve certainly bought poorly named products before. iPad is a recent example – it’s full of amazing features but absorbency isn’t one them. Or what about a golden oldie? SPAM. Even if it is an acronym for ‘shoulder of pork and ham,’ neither the name, nor product, is any more appetizing than the apt suggestion that SPAM really means ‘something posing as meat.’ I’ve eaten SPAM, would buy an iPad if I could afford one, and in the interest of full disclosure I should admit I even ate the Uncrustable, the whole thing, but, I didn’t buy it and I only moderately enjoyed it, so it doesn't count.