December 14, 2009

Horse 1059 - Merry Christmas to You... Whoever You Are...

Walking around Westfield on Saturday, I noticed three things. The first was that people seem to be in some sort of race to either be as lardy as possible and dress as tackily as possible (I'm sorry but the OED has no variation listed for this) and the other two things were to do with Christmas.

I'm guessing that the Italian chocolatier Ferrero SpA (the same people who make Nutella and Tic Tac) must be going out of business or have a massive stock surplus, for sitting out the front of both Big W and Target were pallet sized arrangements of the not very nice chocolate Ferrero Rocher.
Someone at the company must've have a field day, because now instead of just three in a packet, I've seen plastic boxes of 27 and even a pyramid of 56 of the damn things. They're obviously intended as what former PM John Howard would have called an "aspirational" product, but fail to deliver on that aspiration.

The other virtually ubiquitous item at this time of year is the Gift Card. There are Gift Cards for a range of department stores, supermarkets, music stores, hardware, bookshops, even stationery shops and worst of all, Westfield itself!

Admittedly if you were 10 years old, getting money for Christmas is like winning the lottery and perhaps getting a gift card is better than giving a gift to someone that they really don't want, but really a gift card should be used only and only as a last resort if you still haven’t found something for someone, because nothing says “I know nothing about you” like a gift card, or a box of Ferrero Rocher.

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