Titchies Go Home
Like most Brits I am hard-wired for Weetabix. The automatic morning reflex: coffee if you're a character in an American newspaper comic strip, Weetabix if you're me. Single biscuit, splash of milk (these days soya milk). Weetabix owns the mental gap between wanting breakfast, and being awake enough to ask yourself what you'd like for breakfast. Because nobody, save perhaps ex-pats, actually wants a Weetabix. It's just the default choice.
It sits well with a typical British attitude towards food - guilt surrounding items that might be considered luxurious or plentiful. Witness the pleasure British tourists get by feigning shock at the size of American restaurant portions. We've the worst of both worlds, the remains of a national obsession with the simplicity of war-time rationing, and a weakness for the abundance of convenience food. Weetabix provides a one-size-fits-all guilt-free breakfast.
And apparently the perverse "butter on Weetabix" snack has been around forever. The following is from a 1940s print ad:
There is such a lot of nourishment in such a little Weetabix. Never a scrap of waste. Every crumb counts. No cooking. And don't forget that Weetabix can be eaten dry or with anything in the larder that is good to 'spread.'
More Weetabix is being made, but if at times it is difficult to obtain this is because more people are buying it.
I've often thought of Weetabix as somehow working class. An unpretentious, perfunctory breakfast of whole-wheat chipboard. But if this, rather than the fry-up, is just the breakfast of the British proletariat how can you explain the existence of Weetabix Organic? Weetabix is almost universal.
And while its psychological dominance renders it mostly invisible to British eyes, it's jarringly significant when used as a marker of Britishness for others. "Pucks of Weetabix" establish William Gibson's mirror-world of London and it turns up as one of those authentic British cultural references in Buffy.
And what could be more hideously British than the Weetabix Crew (aka the "Neet Weet Gang") stars of the 80s TV ads (and, incredibly, an 8-bit computer game). Weetabix happily presented their anthropomorphised product as a gang of skinheads (bovver boots, braces over a white t-shirts) continually threatening the "titchies" (other, lesser, cereals).
Now, I'm not saying that all skinheads are National Front supporters, but surely there must have been enough ambiguity in the adverts to make people uncomfortable? Sorry if I'm getting a bit Paul Morely. It was the 80s, 10 year olds were listening to Madness. Kids loved Dunk and the gang. Then again, kids probably also loved Robertson's Golly.
I collected the tokens on the packets and sent off for the "Weetabix! OK!" merchandise. Bowls, mugs, and (my personal favourite) a sickly yellow t-shirt featuring the Weetabix product logo. If it hasn't already turned up alongside Atari logos in the Camden Market T-shirt knock offs, I want to know why.
That's another odd thing about Weetabix, the free gifts were unglamorous. In an age were other cereals offered instant gratification in the guise of a plastic object of some form, Weetabix would have you collect tokens to later send off for a book about dinosaurs or something. While the Kellogg's cereals promoted exciting American tie-ins, Weetabix would often promote something either educational or identifiably British in some way.
(I've recently started to see boxes of Frosties in shops that don't have any prizes inside. They look odd. Naked. Alien. More real, yet somehow false. Like seeing a text-heavy front page from an era before newspapers became dominated by photos.)
Now, not only do I read that Weetabix has now been sold to American investors but this cultural lynchpin doesn't even originate in the UK. It's only bloody Australian.
Crikey. Next you'll be telling me Heinz Baked Beans are American...
Unclassified: posted at 00:42, link
