Sunday 18 February 2018

A Fiendish Feat


I've recently discovered this page, chronicling the history of Fiendish Feet, a range of yoghurts sold in novelty pots in the late eighties and early-to-late nineties, and I don't have the heart to not include a link to it somewhere on this blog, so in tune with its ethos the page is.

One interesting thing is that there was originally an Egyptian-themed character, Pharoah Nuff (their misspelling of 'pharaoh', not mine) sold in a four-pack. Later on, he was dropped and replaced with Slurpy Bertie. The page posits that this was due to racial problems with the original character (due to the relative lack of imagination shown in his replacement and both being the same flavour, suggesting a quick fix more than anything else). However, Nuff was later reused for a different product in the range ('Monster Mousse'), and merchandise shows both him and his replacement together... so was there more to it than that? Was there some outcry that led to them dropping the character, but they liked him and decided to quietly reinstate him later on? (Note that they still haven't fixed the spelling mistake on the second product!) There could be a more innocent explanation - the mousses were sold individually, not as packs, so maybe they'd rather have had the more interesting Nuff available as a standalone? There's a mystery here - one that could possibly be solved if we knew exactly when the character was first changed.

Whether or not that's a mystery worth solving, of course...

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