Unbiased Reviews by Real People
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Unbiased Reviews by Real People
Nutty Club Trim-ettes: The Biscuit AND Cake Joiner.Mar 28, 2001 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line None that I can determine, thank heavens.
Warning: If you know what a biscuit joiner is (I do not), and you've come here looking for information, you're way out of luck. I have tried to find a category on Epinions in which to fit this review, and have run up once again against that increasingly familiar, frustrating Epinions flaw: the site doesn't list a tenth of the stuff that attracts my wayward interest. But, since the product in question seems, at least according to the packaging, to have something to do with biscuits, then here's where I'll place it, though I suspect - no, let's be honest - I'm certain this is not the kind of biscuit joining that the Epinions staff expects me to write about. So, in violation of the Epinions proscription against writing about something other than the topic in question, I've chosen the nearest search engine match on which to hang this entirely irrelevant review. And in addition, I'm taking the advice of advertisers and patriots alike and performing my sacred American duty of coloring outside the lines here, of thinking outside the box, or, to be more precise, thinking ABOUT the box - my box of Nutty Club Trim-ettes, that is. It's a funny thing, to wake up on a Saturday morning, and have my coffee and read the paper, and learn that there's been another school shooting, and that slavery still exists in the Sudan, and that there's still no cure for the ravages of AIDS, and that our current American government administration has alienated yet another country and repealed yet another environmental protection statute, and amid all those problems, and all the things that desperately need attention in the world, to find myself looking up at the wall and contemplating a box of Nutty Club Trim-ettes as a subject worthy of my attention. But such are the stations of the contemporary cross. Ok, ok, what the heck ARE these Nutty Club Trim-ettes ANYway, you may well be asking. I'll tell you. Nutty Club Trim-ettes, according to the delightful package, are "Colourful Cake, Cookie, and Dessert Decorations" made with sugar, cocoa, glucose, gelatin, starch, vegetable oil, emulsifier, artificial flavour, confectioners glaze and food colouring, manufactured by Scott-Bathgate LTD of Winnipeg, Toronto, and Vancouver, Canada. Their apparent intended function, as highlighted on the side of the box, is for "Decorer vos gateaux et biscuits" ("Decorate your cakes and cookies," as the other side of the box explains in plain English). In other words, they seem to be the Canadian equivalent of what we in the U.S. know variously, depending upon region of the country, as "jimmies" or "sprinkles." The package is a small red box, approximately 3 x 3 x ½ inches, with white lettering and graphics, featuring in one corner an image of an ice cream cone covered in said Nutty Club Trim-ettes and in another an image of an ornate cake with six candles. But the best feature of all is that the front of the box is cut away at a diagonal, revealing the six clear plastic vials inside containing various colors (oops, I mean colours) of Trim-ettes. The colours of the Trim-ettes give one significant pause. As the Niçoise artist BEN wrote, on a sign in his large museum installation "La Musee de BEN," such colours "did not exist in the time of Giotto." There's a pale, thick, Pepto-Bismol sort of pink. There's a sickly, institutional green. There's a simple, flat, chalky, repulsive brown. There's a hideous shade of rusty orange. And there are two vials of mixed colours, which I can only aptly describe as "Scary Clown" and "Terrifying Clown." If ever there was an example of a product to which the aphorism "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" is relevant, it's this. I mean, I suppose someone COULD use these trim-ettes for their misguided, intended purpose, but this would seem unwise from at least two angles. For one, anyone who would think for a second about ingesting these things is, in my opinion, not merely brave, but dangerously stupid. But for another, this is an arresting, visually attractive package, with the product itself integrated into the package design, so queerly lovely that in the case of the box I own, I have taken the precautionary action of severing form from function, and have mounted my Nutty Club Trim-ettes box inside a frame, and hung it on the wall - hell if I'm going to allow these to fall into the hands of small children, or waste something this curiously beautiful on a CAKE. My box of Nutty Club Trim-ettes, thus reduced to utter functionlessness and charming packaging, never fails to at least get a smile out of me whenever I pass by. It's so anachronistic, so light-hearted, so purely irrelevant, so without guile: the consumer product equivalent of a Marx Brothers movie. There's something comical and surreal about these "Trim-ettes," doing what they do for no credibly legitimate reason, so wonderfully irrational in a world of products and people who insist on making sense and having a point and beating down the competition (I may be wrong, but I seriously doubt that the Scott-Bathgate company is going to be pursuing any hostile take-overs of other trim-ette manufacturers). And in this way, Nutty Club Trim-ettes serve as a kind of rest stop in the daily struggle, in the usual day-to-day mundanities, an interstitial reminder that the world isn't ALL seriousness and practicality and sensibility. And somehow, they make it easier to face that other world, and get out into it, and do the work that needs to be done.  |
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