Category Archives: Retail

Oh Yes! (Sweet Potato Creme-Filled Chocolate Cakes)

Posted on by

There’s a new H Mart not far from where we live – a smaller version of the Korean supermarket in Niles, Ill. It took over space formerly occupied by an independent Asian grocery store (whether that was Korean, I don’t know). I visited the new H Mart over the weekend, and for a discount got some Haitai brand Oh Yes! “Premium Chocolate Coated Sweet Potatoes Filling Cake.”

Oh Yes! A good name. Catchy. Wasn’t that something Molly Bloom said?

I wondered about that sweet potato filling. But for a couple of dollars for 12 cakes, I was willing to give it go. The ingredients are simple: cocoa powder, cocoa mass, white sugar, and sweet potato cream. You get about a third of your DV in saturated fat in each cake, with none of that trans fat. There’s also some carbohydrates in them, but very little else.

Haitai is a South Korean food company, lately owned by Crown Confectionery, another Korean entity. Naturally, I had to look up Haitai’s web site, and found some other product names that I like, all of which look like confections: Baked Potato Stick, Choco Homerun Ball, Bravo Cone, and Babamba.

About Oh Yes!, the web site says (all sic): “Oh Yes! (1984) is our one and only soft chocolate cream cake, which has been on demand for many years due to its soft and delicious taste that melts in your mouth. It is proudly making monthly sales of 4 billions won.”

I liked the Homerun Ball description, too: “The idea of our snack product, Homerun ball, was originated from the Korea Baseball Organization in 1981. It’s unique name was derived from its particular baseball shaped appearance. Homerun ball contains chocolate inside every round ball, and is a easy to-go snack that is great to take out to any event. The Homerun ball is successsfully reaching monthly sales of 4.2 billions won.”

So, a few more Homerun Balls than Oh Yes! cakes sold each month. Anyway, the sweet potato favor does take a little getting used to, if you’re used to regular cream fillings. But the cakes aren’t bad.

Summer Ephemerals

Posted on by

Late in the afternoon today, after a mostly sunny day, storm clouds rolled through, and for 15 minutes or so we had a heavy downpour. About 30 minutes later, the skies were clear.

Early this evening, I saw the flick of fireflies. Brief but luminous. Luminous but brief.

Another thing with a brief life: stands set up to capitalize on the Blackhawks’ victory. This one stood in Schiller Park, Ill., on Tuesday.

I have no intention of being among the madhouse crowds downtown tomorrow.  It’s enough that I got to see the Art Institute lions in headgear last time around.

April Mayhem

Posted on by

I got to know Boylston St. fairly well in 1995. I didn’t walk there every day, but often enough. Part of the street features rows of small, upper-end shops and these days, an Apple Store, though I don’t think it was there then. And I think I remember walking by the Boston Public Library and noticing that the marathon finish line is painted permanently in the street.

We didn’t watch the marathon on Patriots’ Day that year, which is the Massachusetts (and Maine) state holiday to commemorate Lexington & Concord. Rather, we watched a parade on Mass. Ave. in Arlington. Two days later, while at work downtown, I heard about the mayhem in Oklahoma City on the radio. This time of year seems to inspire losers with bombs.

I hear about today’s mayhem on the radio as I drove along today, between errands, in the company of Ann. The only memorable one of these errands was to the pet store we visited last week, to return a brush the dog didn’t like, and buy a tag that could be engraved with contact information in case she runs off. I’d imagined that we’d buy it, and then send it somewhere for engraving.

That was me, thinking old-fashioned thoughts. The store had a laser-based machine that only does one thing: engrave animal tags you’ve just bought, no extra charge. Simple to use, fascinating to watch.

Disraeli & Gladstone with a Spot of Jam

Posted on by

The product-package jokers who brought us Avocado’s Number Guacamole have created British muffins. Actually, that isn’t even a joke, just a cute name for English muffins offered at Trader Joe’s, of course. I bought a package the other day and confirmed that they’re exactly the same as what we North Americans call English muffins.

I wonder what ideas they rejected. UK muffins? Albion muffins? Anglia muffins? Or, pushing things back a little, (Anglo-)Saxon muffins? Considering that the ultimate owners of Trader Joe’s are shadowy German billionaires, maybe Perfidious Albion muffins.

Anyway, the name isn’t the really odd thing. The package also features images of Disraeli and Gladstone. It doesn’t claim any connection between the famed prime ministers and the product; they’re just there for decoration. I would have gone with Palmerston and Peel, just to be alliterative.

Maybe they figured that Disraeli and Gladstone were better known than any other 19th-century PMs, but are they really? How many American muffin buyers are going to recognize them? What gives, Trader Joe’s packaging whizzes?

The No Alarm Clock

Posted on by

Dear Sterling & Noble:

I’d had such hopes for the alarm clock of yours I bought a year or so ago to replace one I’d had for several years that had quit working. The older one – not one of yours – didn’t have a snooze button or a small light for the clock face, either. Your model did. Sure, it was cheap and made in China, but what isn’t? I was looking forward to fumbling for your clock in the middle of the night, hitting the light switch, and actually being able to see how long I have left before the work day calls me downstairs to do remunerative tasks.

And a snooze button! That’s a tool for living, because some of the best of life is found in the hazy in-between world of semi-consciousness after you wake up, but before you get up. Some of the oddest dreams, too. Or dream-like states. Without a snooze button, you have to re-set the alarm if you want to continue semi-consciousness but also wake up more-or-less on time, and even that simple mechanical act wakes you up just a little too much.

Anyway, I’m happy to say that the clock still keeps decent time. Also, the light works. But alas, the alarm isn’t working after only a year. The clock hasn’t been dropped (much) and the battery is fresh, so those aren’t the problems.

Actually, it sort of works. But it does a half-assed job of things, spitting and sputtering the noise out, as if it doesn’t really want to wake up, and then shutting down all together. Sorry, but an alarm needs to be robust, at least in my household. I’m a fairly light sleeper, but no one else around here is. Also, there’s the small matter of the alarm going off before it’s supposed to. Again, half-assedly, but at 30 minutes before wakeup time, no noise is good noise.

Since the clock is so cheap, I’ll simply buy another. That’s how things go sometimes. Still, I’ll take note of the clockmaker, and your brand now has at least one strike against it.

Sincerely,

Someone who would prefer life without alarm clocks, but knows the world demands early rising sometimes.

Noisemaker, Noisemaker, You Have No Complaint

Posted on by

Pauline Phillips was still alive? Maybe I was confused by the fact that Eppie Lederer’s been dead a while. I think both of them were in the San Antonio Express-News in the late ’70s, and I would have been hard-pressed to say who was who after I’d read the columns. That notion would probably have aggravated the sisters, and their editors, and in fact anyone who believes readers care about bylines, which they do not, but that’s source amnesia for you.

I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have admitted reading Ann Landers and Dear Abby back in high school, but I did sometimes, and intermittently for years afterward. They were windows into worlds where people had problems I had no inkling of, back before people-with-weird-problems became a staple of 24-hour television.

Pictured: a recent moment of ordinary interaction between Ann and I, which for some reason I liked when I saw it. I didn’t know Lilly was taking the picture when she took it.

Speaking of things supposedly gone, I recently bought a box of chocolate cupcakes under The Snack Artist brand, which belongs to Safeway. They look and taste exactly like Hostess Cupcakes, down to the Jack Lew signature squiggle on top, except they’re a bit flatter. So I’ve done my little part to confirm that as far as consumers of insanely sweet snack cakes are concerned, not much was lost with the demise of Hostess. (Jobs were destroyed, of course, but that’s another matter.)

Back again on Tuesday, after MLK Day and the 57th Inauguration ceremony, which is different from the number of swearing-ins, since not all holders of the presidency began their terms on March 4 or January 20. This is the seventh time that the constitutionally specified inauguration day falls on a Sunday, with the public ceremony the held next day. James Monroe set that precedent in 1821 after checking with John Marshall, who signed off on the day’s delay.

The last time was on January 21, 1985, during an intense cold spell that affected much of the country. Heavy snow had fallen in Nashville, and I didn’t have to go to work. I didn’t have a TV at the time, so I listened to the event over the radio. It was so cold in DC that the swearing in was in the Capitol Rotunda.

Vain Bibble Babble

Posted on by

Back on a work schedule. Full schedule, that is, because work didn’t quite stop, even between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Yuriko’s back at work, too, even though her employer is Japanese and were this Japan, the New Year’s holiday would last through the third.

The Christmas tree still lingers, but oddly enough the dry tree-removal schedule this year has the tree out on the curb on the morning of January 7, so the last day of the tree being up coincides with Twelfth Night. Not that I’m particular about that, but Epiphany does seem like a good time to clear away the last of Christmas.

I saw the following on a sign at a grocery store today: Miss Your Twinkies? It was advertising a house-brand cream-filled sponge cake. Judging by the box, at least, they looked very much like the product of the defunct Hostess. But I decided I didn’t miss Twinkies all that much. And besides, they won’t be gone all that long.