I'm A Word Nerd

I went to the pharmacy today and on the counter was a little display container for Snickers bars. I love Snickers. Not as much as M&Ms, which I had a passionate conversation with Nancy about yesterday (during which she defended both the advent of Blue M&Ms and Pretzel M&Ms, two positions which I warned her might jeopardize our friendship). But if I were going to blow an entire day’s worth of Weight Watchers points on candy, and M&Ms were unavailable, Snickers would be my second choice.

Why? I would have to say it’s unequivocally the nougat.

I’m not certain what nougat is beyond sheer caramelly goodness, but it sure does resonate with my tastebuds and is well worth the immediate after-effect of having my teeth feel like they’re covered in fur. So I did give that counter display more than just a furtive glance. I knew I wasn’t going to buy a Snickers bar, but I just wanted to rest my eyes upon the logo-type and have a small, private moment fantasizing about its chocolatey chewiness.

NOUGATOCITY. That’s what the logotype read. Huh? Am I hallucinating?

Nope. Some genius coined this word and talked the appropriate Mars Brand Manager to print it on the backside of the candy bar.

I love that.

I love when big package-goods companies have fun with language. Like the time I was waiting for my son to come out of Lacrosse practice and out of sheer boredom I started reading the package copy on the bottle of Kiwi-Strawberry Vitamin Water that was sitting beside me in the cup-holder. It was a whole paragraph about a study that had been done which demonstrated that people didn’t need the letters of a word in the right order to be able to read it. Just the first and last letters of the word had to be correct. Everything in between can be willy-nilly, and to prove it, they wrote this assertion in just that manner.

If I wasn’t a die-hard Vitamin Water fan before, I became one then.

It doesn’t take more than a little effort (and a lot of courage) to add some whimsy to your product packaging. That Snickers bar logo made me smile for half an hour. But, that’s me. Word nerd.