Ithaca Blog

Monday, July 14, 2014

Saving Grace For Rold Gold (A Bit More About Pretzels)

A few weeks ago, we wrote about 300 words here on Paul Newman brand pretzels. This is probably too few, but go back and judge for yourself.

There is probably less to say about Rold Gold pretzels, although if anyone can push it, it is us.

I got a bag of Rold Gold pretzels at Wegman's. They probably have Paul Newman brand, but segregate it over in the natural foods section, which somehow doesn't seem kosher to me, plus it can be a little wearying in Wegman's after a while (we love Wegman's, but sometimes in the way we love the gym, that we are happiest leaving).

Rold Gold makes a fine pretzel, but talk about wearying, check their on-bag salesmanship. They try too hard.

Their pretzels are "utterly chompable." They take you "straight from the big crunch to great taste," which I hadn't really noticed, and still don't. I would prefer not to have to. They "are made to satisfy even the most discriminating pretzel lover," which actually puts me off, if Rold Gold thinks I go around thinking of myself as a discriminating pretzel lover as part of my psychic identity. I don't.

A big knock against Rold Gold, in our booklet, is that they are part of Frito-Lay, Inc. We didn't know that. We always think of pretzel companies as small, independent enterprises from places a lot of Germans used to live. Somehow it makes us feel fat eating anything by Frito-Lay, even though you can eat an entire bag of pretzels and get only 1,300 calories. Something about that red-and-yellow Frito-Lay logo on the bag makes you feel you eat from convenience stores.

But here is a saving grace for Rold Gold. We have been aware of their product a long time. But it never occurred to us before: there is no such word as "rold."

We like it when someone can toss a linguistic curve like that past us. Of course, maybe they simply can't spell. But they've been around since 1917. You think someone would have noticed by now.

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