First of all: No. Just, no. But we’ll come back to that.
It’s been a testing couple of weeks for the public’s trust in brands.
Pepsi tried to capitalise on the refreshing taste of civil unrest and ended up choking on their own fizz.
United Airlines rewrote the rules of customer service by dragging an innocent doctor from a plane, then blamed him for having the gall to sit in the seat he paid for.
And now this from McVitie’s: they say that the chocolate on their biscuits is actually coating the bottom, not the top of the biscuit.
As we said: No. Just, no. But we’ll come back to that.
It all started here: an office debate over which side was the top of a chocolate Hobnob.
‘Debate’ is an interesting choice of word, because a debate implies that there are at least two defensible viewpoints to have on a subject.
Of course, just as one can debate the existence of gravity or the roundness of the Earth, one can debate the topness and bottomness of chocolate biscuits, but you do so at the risk of being tried as a witch and burned at the stake for heresy.
In spite of this, McVitie’s have sided with the heretics.
From the McVitie’s point of view, it’s simple:
The biscuits move along a production line on a rack, which then pass through a delicious-sounding “reservoir of chocolate”, which coats the ‘bottom’ of the biscuit, leaving the ‘top’ chocolate-free.
If this were taking place in a court of law, this would be the defence’s Exhibit A – their one and only exhibit.
Then, if it pleases the court, may I present the case for the prosecution*.
Your Honour, I put it to you simply: No. Just, no. Here’s why.
Here’s a picture of a bicycle being assembled in the Brompton factory in West London. You’ll notice that, at this stage in the assembly process, the wheels are above the handlebars.
Does this then mean that the wheels are actually on the top of the bicycle? Have we, the foolish public, been riding our bicycles the wrong way round for all these years?
Should we be wedging the back tyre between our arse-cheeks, grasping the spokes of the front wheel to steer and dragging our feet along the floor like the Flintstones pedal a car?
Just because something is made in a particular way doesn’t mean that it is defined by that process. Most babies enter the world head-first, and yet the handstand is not our default mode of existence.
I put it to you that the method of production does not determine the specifications of a product; rather, it is the other way round.
If McVitie’s specified that the chocolate be on the bottom of the biscuit and then built their factory in accordance with that specification – which, according to the answer on Facebook, does not appear to the case – then that would be fine.
It would be utterly ludicrous, but in terms of commitment to an ideology, ultimately fine.
Except it wouldn’t be fine, because why the fuck would the chocolate be on the bottom of the biscuit? In which happy kingdom of thought does that pass for logic? Just look at this for one minute.
Look how beautiful that looks. Look at the shine, the texturing, the perky peaks and inviting troughs of the layered chocolate. Who in their right mind thinks that belongs on the bottom, hidden from sight?
Moreover, chocolate has a tendency to melt, and if you’re on a deep-dive into the packet, this can get your fingers all mucky. You can hold a biscuit by the bottom, but you can’t hold it by the top, so if you’re trying not to get covered in chocolate, you want the bit in contact with your hands to be chocolate-free.
Aesthetically and ergonomically, there is no reason for the chocolate to be on the bottom of a chocolate biscuit. It doesn’t make sense, and we’re not having it.
McVitie’s, you’re overruled.
*I know the prosecution goes before the defence in court, but it didn’t fit with the metaphor I was using, so fuck off.
