Friday, August 1, 2008

Tasmania believes, through the power of choc

I've spent most of the day absolutely on edge, mostly because firstly I had a really weird dream that I was drafted to the Gold Coast AFL team and ended up with Cheryl Haworth as a celebrity girlfriend (which was fine, the problem was the team was coached by Mick Malthouse), and then the first thing I saw on the news was a man had his head cut off on a bus (there but for the grace of Metro), then I found out Jess Veronica was involved in some kind of weird porn thing (I thought they were such nice girls) and then for some reason I read that there would never be another Mars Bar on sale ever again in Tasmania. I'd stopped eating Mars Bars about 15 years ago, but the thought that I wasn't allowed to eat another one was a bit harsh, it's like denying Anne Maree Cooksley a glass of champagne at a film premiere. However, salvation was at hand - you could still get Mars Bars, thank God for that, however, by Government decree, they wouldn't be called Mars Bars. The wrapper would look like a Mars Bar, the taste would be that of a Mars Bar, but in an L Ron Hubbard style twist, the product would be called the "Believe Bar" - straight out of Scientology, this mysterious chocolate product would now implore us to believe, to have faith, and in my case go back to sleep and think about my wedding to Cheryl Haworth...

Don't worry though Mars Bar fans, it's all part of a plan - to get a Tasmanian team into the AFL, Mars Bar are tipping 4 million bucks into our campaign and renaming the Mars Bar the Believe bar to make us all believe in the bid. There's an SMS code on the wapper, and you can SMS someone (not Andrew Demetriou, he hates us, he disrespects us, he loathes us etc) and somehow if kids eat a lot of chocolate, this will work and we'll get a football team in the AFL. I love the fact that fat kids can help us get an elite team of athletes down here. They've come up with a jumper, and we'll almost certainly at some point drag Alistair Lynch in to hold up a bunch of Believe Bars in the paper soon. I'd like to think that Tasmanians are too media savvy to think of this as anything but a nice gesture, albeit quite a lame one, but already I heard two girls in a certain shop where a certain girl with blue eye shadow works (she was looking fine today) talking excitedly about it. They certainly believed. I wonder if I ate one, if I would believe Josh Fraser could be a ruckman. I know if I was at my school, the commercial sell out hot bed that it was, we'd have not only been deluged by the Believe Bar push, someone would have given us a talk, we'd have had to do a project on football (and Mars) and the prize for winning would be...more Mars Bars. I can see it clear as day - but as I said, good to see fat kids getting involved, I would have thought knowing Paula Wriedt (yes, THAT one Sam Newman) she'd have spent 4 million bucks on a salad based sponsor.

The problem is, these things never work. I'm glad Mars are on board trying to talk to the arrogant wall that is Andrew Demetriou, but seriously, mascots, gestures, campaigns, slogans, logos - never ever work. No matter what mascot the school dentist tried to get to us with, to get us to clean our teeth, we ignored it. You can get a slogan like "Not happy Jan" into the everyday conversation of bogans, but buggered if they know what it's advertising. Said bogans will buy a Believe bar, and never in a million years SMS the wrapper code. A chocolate bar isn't going to help us get a team, it's just a nice dream. My favourite ever mascot without a doubt was the infamous Scotticus, the Daily Record mascot for Scotland at the 1990 World Cup. I say infamous because some poor bugger had to dress up as him, and as far as I can remember, it was some poor bugger standing in an Ayshire field in a toga and a tartan bunnet. You'd think at the very least they'd give him a shell suit or a nice warm jumper. Kids were kicking him up the arse and trying to steal his toga. He was created by a cartoonist, and he was meant to fire up a nation and lead us to glory - we lost to Costa Rica in the first game, and no one ever saw him again. I like to think someone stole his bunnet, and he went in a huff. I can imagine in a few years, when Tassie still doesn't have an AFL team, I'll see a Believe bar wrapper in the gutter and think, oh yeah, I remember that...what was all that about? And shouldn't it be Believe! The ! makes it more, er, believable...

I had a much better idea than renaming the Mars Bar - bring back DMCs. Younger people don't remember the DMC, and to be honest, there are times I think I made them up - however, they were a pre M&M Cadbury prototype, M&Ms the size of a dinner plate. I've just seen an advert for the Chocolate Lovers ball at the casino in a couple of weeks -a change of pace for the casino in not holding singles balls where Sea FM DJs get casual sex set up for them - and the only way you could get me to go would be to tell me that DMCs were available in the foyer. No doubt it will be a well attended event, and, again, a fair night out for the gentleman who likes the larger lady (tying us back to Cheryl Haworth again). I would think that the Believe bar will have a stall at the chocolate lovers ball, although I was talking to a girlfriend of mine today, and she says that we're wasting our time with all this chocolate nonsense, all we need is Jess Veronica to, in her next nude shoot, discreetly wear a Tassie logo tattoo, and we'll get all the publicity we need. And besides, anyone who has attended a local football game surely knows it's the Cherry Ripe that's the chocolate bar of choice. Especially at Penguin, where they bought a job lot of 2350 palettes of Cherry Ripes in the 80s, and have been selling them ever since. Local football is also the last bastion of the Wagon Wheel, but that's an entirely different story.

It's back to the drawing board then Paula...and back to the wedding reception for me, Cheryl hates it when I'm late...

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