Allow me to go officially on record as adoring those wonderful people at Time Out NY.  As if they weren't already tapped deeply enough into Gotham to lead any lost Nebraskan to just the right underground-alternative-bossanova dance party, they just went ahead and gave New York's very own Peeled Snacks a review for the ages.  James Oliver Cury's Critics' Pick entitled "Nutty Logic" proved to me that Peeled Snacks' concept, its reason for being, is entirely "gettable"- Mr. Cury got us so perfectly, I wish I could shake his hand and kiss his grandma on the cheek.  Instead, I just think I'll send him some free snacks.  Write a good review of us in your super-distributed magazine and I'll send you some treats too!

That's just the latest dose of good news that we've endured here at Peeled Snacks' World Headquarters.  I imagine that there's more to come (gosh, I hope so), but with every dollop of press that we get, I always find myself wondering just why nobody thought of this sort of treat before, and if they did, why they aren't doing it.  Don't confuse this for second guessing Peeled Snacks- every time I eat them (which is frightfully rarely thanks to the maddening frugality of our wonderful president Ms. Waibsnaider) I'm SHOCKED by how tasty they are.  This is more of an epistemological quandary.  Like, did the Cheetoh exist before somebody invented it, or did it take shape only on the first assembly line to crank those dusty little nuggets out?

In this maddeningly marketing-driven world then, does an invention even matter?  Who cares if a product is invented if it isn't marketed?  And who cares about the marketing unless it actually causes the product to move like hotcakes?  When is a thing a thing- when the Big Bang (or G@d, if you go for that sort of thing) mixes up the first atomic ingredients, when some mad scientist (i.e. Ms. Waibsnaider) concocts the idea, or when Mr. James Oliver Cury touts the thing enough to make it profitable?

 

Poem for the day:

What's the nutritional content of sand

mixed with an apricot sadly fallen

from my slippery, salty, wave battered hand

onto the glistening eastern beach?

Do the gritty shavings of long lost seashells

add to the non-soluble fiber quantity

thus making my fallen apricot even more

of a hall monitor in the high school of my abdomen,

or does it go straight to the hips,

like the poly-unsaturated fat

caked into the pecan-chocolate fudge I ate

at the candy store late last night? 

 

Hope your Mondays are somehow better than your Sundays...

-Peeled Skinny 

Posted by iankusc at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We DESERVE this, allright?  This has been sought after, this has been worked for, and this is IMPORTANT.  THIS, of course, is a VACATION!!!!

That's right, Peeled Snacks is taking a little time to rest on its laurels and watch the waves come in- three whole days worth, in fact, which (given our crazy spring) should be enough to maintain our official status as "not completely out of our minds".  Don't worry though, as  Peeled Snacks will still be up an running during our bried absence.  We've been plotting and planning ways in which we can stay in touch and manage business from afar- we've signed contracts, built infrastructure, managed crisis, and gone through all sorts of hoopla to make this happen.  In fact you could say that we've spent more time planning the logistics of this little vacation than the vacation itself will last, but alas, such is the plight of the modern small business owner.

 In honor of our little jaunt, our petite voyage, our brief little excursion, I offer up this little ode to ponder while I'm away...

 

Thought I'd climbed the right ladder out,

thought that last shootin star I wrastled

would drag me out beyon yer fences,

would gallop me t'where that big ol' sun

meets its maker ev'ry dang twilight. 

Supposed I'd made a right turn t'wards Amarillo,

whin you'd  be makin a lef' t'wore Carson City,

an' yon.

Well, I's wrong 'bout all that,

'bout the  ladder an the stars an that sun

goin' down

(well, down it dropped, but I ain't seen it),

and sure 'nuf I saw you in Texas.

But it weren't nuthin to fuss 'bout,

er ta git a cowboy riled up.

I jus' did what it is I always done when I see ya',

An you thanked me and wint on yer way.

Posted by iankusc at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have you checked out Al Gore’s latest sonorously delivered dose of buzz-kill, “An Inconvenient Truth”?  Well, neither have I, but I GUARANTEE that come its arrival in Netflix, it’ll be #4 in my queue… for a while, probably.  For those of you in the Netflix know, the #4 spot is reserved for that movie that you really think you should see, but which you keep bumping in order to catch Jim Carrey’s latest bit of goofery.

 

Anyway, were I to have seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” I’m certain that I’d right now be well armed with dozens of reasons why the world is falling apart and it’s all George Dubya’s fault, but seeing as I haven’t caught it (better add it to my Netflix queue now while I’m thinking of it), I have to rely on first-hand experience with which to extol the current administration’s environmental “policy.”  Of late, I get to look at record temperatures across the Rockies, Sedona’s burning Mc-Mansions, and oodles of melted Peeled Snacks Shock-olate.

 

I’m given to understand by people in-the-know that the term “Global Warming” gives the wrong impression about what’s REALLY going on, and that “Global Climate Change” is a more apt term.  I hardly know the difference, given that the sweltering weather waiting outside my air-conditioned apartment seems to be “changed” only so far as it has been “warmed,” but as the Republican Intelligentsia repeatedly reminds me, I’m no scientist.  I’m just part of a business that has to ship a lot of chocolate to Arizona, and let me tell you, it’s truly a miracle that any chocolate whatsoever is eaten in the American southwest between April and October.  We can safely assume that Arizonans take responsibility for some or all of the Ice Cream manufacturing to satisfy its summertime population of cone lovers, but Arizona remains a LONG way away from Peeled Snacks’ upstate New York plant, nearly as far from Hershey, Pennsylvania, is separated via at least one ocean from Nestlé’s hidden alpine chocolate lairs, and via an astronomical distance from, well, Mars.

 

Peeled Snacks obviously is painfully new to the trials and travails of distributing chocolate, that sweetest stuff on Earth (invented, no doubt, at 11:58 PM on the 6^th day in heavy anticipation of the 7^th), and we’re right now concocting some radical strategies to meet our customers’ ample Shock-olate demands.  If anyone somehow has a copy of the M&M-Mars playbook, or at least the pages in the playbook that talk about summertime Snickers distribution, I’d be forever in your debt for five minutes alone with the pages and a photocopier…

Posted by iankusc at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So "Spark" has hit the shelves, and many people, many MANY people, are buzzing about it.  Being slightly too cheap to buy a copy (at least thus far-- don't worry Mr. Winsor, I can't hold out forever), I've groused over the online portions, and have savored the blog pieces.  Can I recommend a book that I haven't yet read?  Well, I'll recommend it to myself, and if you overhear the conversation, you do what you feel's right.

Will "Spark" make as many waves as jolly Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point"?  Tough to say, but it hardly matters.  Books of this nature, books with this heavy marketing theme, now litter Barnes & Noble's tables (not the shelves, the TABLES), and receive heavy mentions by TV talking heads, newspaper columnists, and probably (though we're as of yet unacquainted) Ma and Pa America.  Ideas like "Activation" and "Opportunity Costs" now get played around with in the kitchens of Burger Kings, and half of America’s eyes are scoping for niche markets.

I'm under the impression that Marketing used to be the work of the Wizard of Oz.  That is, it used to be concocted behind the proverbial green curtain, and the razzle-dazzle that issued forth from behind said curtain wasn't scrutinized for how much eye of newt it contained.  Today, though, at least on an intellectual basis, marketing ploys are open to being dissected by whoever wants to take a crack at it:  there goes 20% of America paying attention to that man behind the curtain.

Marketing seems to have gone civilian, much like border patrolling recently went courtesy of our patriotic, paranoid minutemen brethren.  Perhaps this has happened before, when thanks to cynicism, irony, or just intellectual mustering, the public pierced Madison Avenue's veil, forcing those yahoos (of whom I suppose I can count myself a member) to start over from scratch.  Thank heavens that Peeled Snacks isn't marketing driven.  I mean, it'd be nice if marketing would take the wheel for a while, but for the time being it’s just the quality of the fruit and the nuts in the driver's seat.  Of course, those that have read Spark will see right through that last sentence....

 

Poem for the day:

At long last I have finished thee,

Ended your life on my shelf, swallowed you

My whale, your Jonah.

Staring at me you have dared me

threatened me with nourishing eyes,

and finally I fell for you, hard.

Last me throughout my belly, no further.

Fulfill my coffers with fruit and nuts.

Afterwards, I care not what comes of you.

I have finished thee, snack. 

Posted by iankusc at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Peeled Snacks often inspire me to write poetry.  How about you?  For a while I thought that our bags should have limericks on their backs, but someone with sensibilities more tasteful than mine overruled me.  Okay, so snack food and poetry don’t mix…
 

I seem to remember a very creative Cheetos packaging series featuring rather detailed ballads about the misadventures of Chester Cheetah.  The snacks themselves?  Addictively awful.  The poems?  My muse for years and year.

Here’s my chance to outdo the marketing minds at Frito Lay- 3 haikus about Peeled Snacks…

 

I’ll have the green one.
No wait - which one has chocolate?
Yeah – the green one then.

 

Roll on, dropped almond.
So sad that here we part ways.
But, squirrels need almonds.

 

What’s that? That’s no date!
I know dates when I see ‘em.
They look like “Newtons”.

 

Okay, so those are all pretty simple, pretty safe.  I’ll try to make it a habit to publish little ditties about Peeled Snacks as often as I can think to.  It could very well be that Peeled Snacks taste even BETTER if eaten while reading poetry.  Please don’t quote me on that.

Posted by iankusc at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How many jokes or puns can you make out of the word "Peeled"?  That's a question that I ask myself frighteningly often.  Mass a-peel, court a-peel the doctor gave me a "peel" to make me feel better...  I'm convinced that there are hundreds of groan inducing puns out there waiting to be exploited for the benefit of a quick Peeled Snacks joke, but somehow most of those jokes elude me CONSTANTLY.  Very frustrating, that.  If you can think of a good Peeled Snacks joke or pun, email me at ian@peeledsnacks.com and if it busts my gut, I'll send you something good to eat.

Here's a funny thing about crafting a new product- you think you know everything going into it and you're just executing a perfectly designed plan, but then all this STUFF starts happening that you never expected.  Just last week (here's a great example), Peeled Snacks found their way into the lovely, recently slimmed fingers of none other than Mariah Carey.  Life & Style Magazine (a periodical hitherto fore unknown to me) displays on its cover this week a photo of a 40-pounds-lighter-then-she-was Ms. Carey, and gives Peeled Snacks partial credit for the weight loss.

Recently Ms. Carey (can I call you Mariah? No? Ms. Carey then...) and I came within six degrees of separation when the she recently rented a posh Caribbean bungalow from a client of my prosthedontist father-in-law. She received high marks for good tenanthood from her hosts, and thus I forgave her for all those extra notes that she sang in "Always be my Baby." Now suddenly there's a second tangential run-in with Ms. Carey (or, rather, Ms. Carey's celebrity), and I find myself singing her praises, digging up her old CDs, and pondering naming my first daughter "Mariah."

What is it about celebrity that makes things seem more important?  Thank heavens for that importance, frankly, but how weird is it that when my mother, who, you know, gave birth to me and all, tells me to eat spinach I ignore her, but when some photo-heavy rag infers that Liv Tyler eats Popeye food, I’m suddenly ready to buy organic Mongolian spinach at 8 times the price?

A brief note about Ms. Carey’s weight loss- she does look great (as opposed to, say, that day back in 1995.  You know, that day?  That day she looked BAD?  Yeah, that was scary), but frankly, she looked lovely before the weight loss.  If Peeled Snacks helps her stay trim and healthy, well GRAND!  But honey, you couldn’t TRY to look bad!  Well, except for that one day in 1995…

Yours,

 EN "Peel-en" K

Posted by iankusc at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 Last Friday I whisked off and caught a marketing seminar for corporate bigwigs at venerable Columbia University.  The seminar's nearly useless title was "The New PR", and as it took place at the VERY end of a long, lovely Friday, half of the attendees were a tad tipsy from lunchtime anti-teetotaling.  This made for a frank, whimsical, often rambling discussion by a bunch of PR veterans about what the heck they were going to do about this "internet" stuff.
In all fairness, many attendees were tech-savvy and eager to gobble up any insights into that web thing that they could.  An uncomfortable majority, however, piped up regularly with ideas about how marketers and PR gurus could wrest control of our current cultural marketing discourse from bloggers, MySpace, and the like.  As ideas about viral marketing and grass-roots publishing were bandied about, hand after hand shot up hoping to interject with an idea about how to thwart this wired tide of philistine publicists and their crude, sometimes troublesome, entirely untamed opinions.

One anachronist in particular sticks out in my memory- in the face of a discussion about blogging corporate executives, this one fellow offered that neither the public nor executives could be entrusted with the idea of shaping a brand.  To him, the virtues of anything that you'd find in your local market weren't open for debate; Madison Avenue, which should be well compensated for its autocracy, should determine them.

Well, isn't that just the cutest thing?  It's like he was standing in the middle of 5th avenue during the Puerto Rican Day parade directing pedestrian traffic!  There's no way that ANYbody could ever fight a tide so strong as the Puerto Rican Day parade, and there's no way anybody's going to stop the web.

There are questions in my mind about whether or not marketing trends are progressive (like, they just constantly keep moving and changing), or they're cyclical (as in, one day snake-oil salesmen will be all the rage all over again), or what.  But to my mind, right now with blogs being just that easy to publish and MySpace accounts pushing more mail than the post office, there's simply no competing with grass roots marketers.  At lest on a price per hit basis.  That said, Coca-Cola still wins every battle, right or wrong.

Posted by iankusc at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)