April 5, 2022

Cracker Jack introduces Cracker Jill.

 

At the product's website, it says: "Sometimes all it takes to believe you can do something is to see someone who looks like you do it first. It is in this spirit that Cracker Jack proudly introduces Cracker Jill. A team of new faces showing girls they're represented even in our most iconic snacks." 

What is the something you're supposed to believe you can do? Eat caramel-coated popcorn and peanuts? I think we knew that all along. And I've always felt represented by iconic snacks. I mean, Mary Jane made me feel like I could...

 

... simper and squirm like a complete idiot.

48 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

I tried to get an image that looked like the traditional Mary Jane packaging I knew when I was a kid. But I don't think, back then, it said "produced with genetic engineering."

PM said...

Frankly, that's a crackerjill idea.

rhhardin said...

Etymologically then it's like jilling off, a female version derived from jacking off.

Enigma said...

In the year 2000, just as the dotcom bubble was faltering, runt AOL bought Time Warner. The bubble crashed very soon, as did Time Warner's value. If only they'd waited two years...

This smells the same: A very, very, very old and stodgy vendor gets woke just in time to go broke.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Jack Nicholson and a Cracker Jack story.

👉🏽 https://youtu.be/LjxsyYujivs

The Neon Madman said...

"I mean, Mary Jane made me feel like I could simpler and squirm like a complete idiot."

Oh, come on now. That's a hanging slowball right over the plate, if I've ever seen one (to continue the baseball theme).

lonejustice said...

I don't see anything in the Cracker Jill ad about trans athletes.
What if Cracker Jack wants to identify as Cracker Jill?

Readering said...

Guess I stopped eating candy. Did not realize produced with genetic engineering to be a thing.

rehajm said...

..now ya get a picture of a fuckin' snake!

mikee said...

Bazooka Joe bubble gum had the best named spokesperson, and really bad jokes on the wrapper.

From the child porn of Coppertone suntan lotion ads to Brooke Sheilds' Calvin Klein nonunderwear ad, to todays Alexa dimming the lights during the Superbowl, be glad you had just a twee child on Mary Jane candy, and not a sexy chew.-

mikee said...

As to the product Cracker Jack, I recall more caramel on the popcorn of boxes opened in my youth. Perhaps cost cutting is also an issue in the demise of the brand, not just unwoke branding.

JK Brown said...

So are we to take "cracker" as a "noisy boaster"
" What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?" --Shak. [Webster 1913]

or as the derogatory term applied to poor Southern whites, often considered on level with the slang applied to blacks?

And what of "jack"? As the clown, boor, or servant as Chaucer and Shakespeare used it or as something cut short, diminutive as in "jack rafter"? Or the male of certain animals, such as in jacka...

A "jill" is defined as simply "a young woman; sweetheart"

Perhaps this would be a good time to call for the dropping of "Cracker" giving it's derogatory meaning?


"The Cracker Jack name and slogan, "The More You Eat The More You Want", were registered in 1896. Some food historians consider it the first junk food."

"It was named by an enthusiastic sampler who remarked: "That's a crackerjack!" (Crackerjack is a colloquialism meaning "of excellent quality")."

==========
Crackerjack \Crack"er*jack`\, n. [also spelled crackerjack.]
[prob. from crack + jack, a man.]
1. An individual of marked ability or excellence, esp. in
some sport; as, he is a crackajack at tennis. [Slang]

Syn: jimdandy, jimhickey.
[Webster 1913 Suppl. +PJC]

Jeremy said...

I always thought that snack brand was exclusionary based on race, not gender. They could go with Caucasian Jack, or Wypipo Jack for a modern twist. Or Human Beings Snack to be safe.

Ann Althouse said...

@The Neon Madman

I can't believe you quoted all that and didn't cut and paste.

MayBee said...

"Am I not a beloved iconic snack food?"

-- Little Debbie

Curious George said...

Loved Mary Janes as a kid. I see Necco on the label. Wasn't a fan of Necco Wafers but they were said to used as a substitute for quarters in Chicago area tollbooths until authorities made changes to stop their use.

tommyesq said...

I can't believe you quoted all that and didn't cut and paste.

Certainly would have been simpler...

Iman said...

He ate the paste!?!?

The Neon Madman said...

I did that on an old tablet, and copy-and-paste kept wanting to grab too much. It was easier to type it out.

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

If a company should suddenly put a man into their marketing of a product that has previously only known a woman as an icon, the male icon will be assumed to be (or explicitly be) a man who thinks he is a woman or gay. No hetero males need apply to be re-sexed marketing icons.

Counter examples greatly appreciated, I can think of no case where a normal man has been allowed to trample the exclusive turf of a female marketing icon.

Kevin said...

How about Cracker Lia?

It would be more in touch with the times.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

If I was a women. I'd be pissed. Steadily degrade your product for 40 years and then get all inclusive? Too little, too late.

n.n said...

cracker (n.2)

Southern U.S. derogatory term for "poor, white trash" (1766)

Jack

In England, Jack became a generic name applied familiarly or contemptuously to anybody (especially a young man of the lower classes) from late 14c.

They're diverse and inclusive. One step forward, two steps backward.

tcrosse said...

Apropos of nothing:
Jack and Jill worked in the mill
and business was starting to slack off
So now the mill-owner doesn't know
Whether to lay Jill or Jack off.

Václav Patrik Šulik said...

What cracker is this same that deafs our ears
With this abundance of superfluous breath?

– William Shakespeare
King John, Act 2, Scene 1.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

feminists with bad ideas.

Does it taste bitter too?

Wince said...

Who you callin' "Cracker," sucka?

John henry said...

About time. Good on Cracker Jacks.

I am amazed and pleased that she isn't transsexual, queer, lesbian or other wierdnesses. Just a simple American woman.

She really should wear the navy uniform like the crackerjack, though.

But I guess close enough.

John LGBTQBNY Henry

Ann Althouse said...

“ I did that on an old tablet, and copy-and-paste kept wanting to grab too much. It was easier to type it out.”

Harder though to get the words right.

Joe Smith said...

Girls are the best.

So much better than boys at everything.

Except being girls.

Girl power!!!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

By the time poor Jack Returned up the hill
Somebody else Had been lovin' Jada


It doesn't quite work.

Dave64 said...

I can see the memes coming for this! A wrinkled old toothless meth smoking hag, yup that's old Cracker Jill!

Assistant Village Idiot said...

"Sometimes all it takes to believe you can do something is to see someone who looks like you do it first."
No, this is not true.

Also, Baby Ruth and Tootsie Rolls are named after girls. Pastries and baked desserts were usually named for women.

Geoff Matthews said...

Shouldn't Cracker Jill be white?
Could the first lady be Cracker Jill?

gpm said...

>>Necco Wafers . . . were said to used as a substitute for quarters in Chicago area tollbooths

Necco wafers used to be made in Cambridge MA near Kendall Square. That area in Cambridge was quite the center of candy making at one point, along with Schrafft's in Charlestown (probably a remnant of the slave trade or something). I haven't checked recently, but fifteen or twenty years ago there was still a hundred-year-old factory in Cambridge (purchased in, I think, the 90s by Tootsie Roll, a private company headquartered around 79th and Kenzie on the Southwest Side of Chicago) making sugar daddies and a few other candies. We handled/won a state tax case for them and visited the factory at one point.

Necco wafers are one of the vilest candy products ever conceived. The major use of them in my childhood was as fake communion wafers in what were undoubtedly sacrilegious games.

--gpm

--gpm

gpm said...

Forgot to say that I love Mary Janes.

--gpm

Balfegor said...

Re: TheOne:

Counter examples greatly appreciated, I can think of no case where a normal man has been allowed to trample the exclusive turf of a female marketing icon.

I can't think of an example, but if you asked me for the reverse, I couldn't think of one either. I just don't think companies Rule 63-ing their own brand mascot characters has been a thing.

Mikey NTH said...

And Cracker Jill is such obvious pandering it should be mocked as third rate propaganda.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

Ok. We get it. You want to be like the guys. The first step is to stop being such a pussy about everything.

Joe Smith said...

'Necco wafers are one of the vilest candy products ever conceived.'

Necco wafers are one of the greatest candy products ever conceived.

Fixed it.

And they will survive a nuclear war.

Bonus awesomeness...

cf said...

I don't know about the historic applications, and I am out of touch these days, but in the 80s-90s "Crackah" was an epithet SoCal Blacks used in throwdowns with white boys. Nowhere else?

If that was a common enough reference in the communities, It's mind-bending to imagine Black chickies, or any other, want to be any kind of "Crackah".

who did this marketing? did they do focus groups? phht

MadisonMan said...

I assume no nuts?

Mason G said...

"Sometimes all it takes to believe you can do something is to see someone who looks like you do it first."

So I guess, as a white male, it's okay for me to disregard anything that women and minorities might do because they "don't look like me"? Is that the message here?

n.n said...

The audacity of diversity! Pretty girl. Pass the Cracker Jills.

gpm said...

>>Necco wafers are one of the greatest candy products ever conceived.

Chacun a son gout.

>>And they will survive a nuclear war.

That part I'll sign on to.

--gpm

BUMBLE BEE said...

Black folks be sayin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qileP4bAzek

Balfegor said...

Re: Assistant Village Idiot:

Also, Baby Ruth and Tootsie Rolls are named after girls.

Wait, Baby Ruth wasn't a play on the famous (male) ball player Babe Ruth? That can't be right . . . am I missing a joke here? Are Tootsie Rolls also somehow based on a man?

MadTownGuy said...

"Cracker Jill Biden." Has a ring to it.