Wednesday, June 4, 2008

labels

There's a restaurant from whom I periodically get take-out, and if you make a particular order, it apparently comes with their random free drink of the day, either something in a can or a juice-box type container. As far as I can tell, it's always something from a company called Yeo's. I've gotten a guava drink that's ok, but mostly, I find the drinks to be much sweeter than I prefer. Recently, the drink they gave me was ice lemon tea. OK, I like iced tea, I'd be willing to try that. And because I'm me, I was looking at the front of the box, and after reading it, I just started laughing.



Ummm, ok, so what particular quality makes iced tea with lemon an "authentic asian drink"? Hmmm, let's look at the ingredients: water, cane sugar, lemon juice, tea extract, natural and artificial flavors and citric acid. Yeah, screams asian with those ingredients, doesn't it? OK, it says it's a product of China. Well, heck, if that's the benchmark, then there's all kinds of authentic asian toys floating around out there.

Labels on Chinese products greatly amuse me.




One of the other free drinks I've received is a soursop juice drink. Ummm, ok, what the heck is that? Let's look at the ingredients: water, cane sugar, soursop juice, random other chemical stuff. OK, not so much helpful. No clue what soursop is, never heard of it.



OK, well, here's one description of what soursop is. And here's more information about soursop. It sounds interesting, and I'd probably be interested in trying the actual fruit, but since the fruit drink is going to be mostly sugar with maybe a hint of what soursop actually tastes like, I'm going to pass on the drink.

However, I do think that the fruit name would make a good insult term - "You are *such* a soursop!" I like it.




A co-worker got a package via FedEx a couple weeks ago, and I happened to be there when she got it, so we were looking at the package, and the label just cracked me up.



My favorite part is the fourth line of the instructions. I just think that's funny. But then as I was thinking about it further, I thought it was pretty stupid. What if they were delivering this package to a residence? What difference would it make if the person was intoxicated? They're home. If they're intoxicated and wanted more alcohol, wouldn't it actually be a better idea for more alcohol to be delivered to them rather than them having to get in a car to drive to get some, potentially putting people's lives at risk?

I also find it amusing that they ship enough alcohol so that having a ready-made label like this is necessary.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a Cuban restaurant that I frequent that serves a Guanabana shake, which is the Spanish name for soursop. It's actually pretty tasty. I didn't know that it's also called soursop. That name doesn't really sound too appetizing to me.

Wow, I've never seen that FedEx label before, but then I've never had alcohol sent to me. Did they make her show her ID to prove she was 21?

Anonymous said...

Re: Shipping so much alcohol....

Two words for you: Wine Club. ;) The wine club we belong to happens to ship via UPS but it doesn't surprise me at all that FedEx handles a lot of alcohol. Just about every winery with a tasting room, if not more, has a wine club. Some are monthly, some are bi-monthly, but the idea is, Subscribe, Pay $XX per month/time period, we ship you 2-3 bottles of wine.

I haven't been carded when I've signed for my wine. I've occasionally asked the driver, "Do you want to see my ID or do you believe I'm old enough?" One time we weren't here so I gave our teenaged sitter the heads up: UPS is coming but it's wine. (Her parents belong to 3 wine clubs so she knows the drill.) When UPS came, she answered the door and said "Sorry, I'm not 21, they said to come back on Monday." The driver actually tried to flirt with my sitter. "You LOOK 21! Are you sure you're not 21!" She assured him she wasn't and closed the door.

Cindy said...

Dodie - Mmmm, cuban. Hmmm, maybe I'll have to try that sometime. The only cuban I've had is Versailles, which I love, but I only ever have their #6 chicken - roasted chicken with garlic. The lemon sauce and plantains are YUMMY, but the husband isn't happy with all the onions that come with it that I love.

Adrienne - I hadn't even thought about wine clubs! OK, I get not being able to deliver to anyone under 21 - that makes sense. But does UPS have a funky label about not delivering to intoxicated people or anything else weird on it?

Sherry said...

The wine that I had delivered via UPS only had a label that said "Adult signature required -- min 21." No weirdness about not delivering to an intoxicated person.