Heart and Mind

The Toms, their Grandmothers, and the Grandmothers of the Future

There's an episode of the Simpsons where they reference a fictitious juice company that has the slogan, "The iced tea brewed by hippies, but distributed by a heartless, multi-national corporation!" By making that kind of statement, they could be spoofing any number of companies out there that try to promote an image of a small, personal operation, despite the fact that it couldn't possibly be accurate. The one that immediately came to mind for me when I first saw the episode was "Nantucket Nectars," a manufacturer of Snapple-like beverages that claim to be the product of two non-corporate, non-tie-wearing, New England granola-types who both share the name "Tom."

It's all marketing, of course, and probably a good angle at that. People would rather think they're drinking a wholesome fruit or tea beverage (a "Nectar," no less) that was squeezed by "juice guys" on the shores of Massachusetts then something that was bottled by some corporate food distributor with motives that started and ended with capitalistic intentions. And maybe—maybe—there were two low-key guys with good intentions brewing iced tea up in Massachusetts at one time that sparked an idea that perhaps evolved into the current company, but the heavily manufactured drinks you can get at Target are hardly the products of some lemonade stand on a boat.

Well, I grabbed a Nantucket Nectar lemonade for the ride home from Target today, and as I was driving, I asked my wife to read me the bottle. They always have some kind of spin about the Toms on there, and I find it delightfully entertaining. Here's what they had to say about the guys and their tasty lemon drink:

"When they set about making [their lemonade], Tom and Tom remembered how their grandmothers made it. ...with pure, squeezed lemon juice and lemon pulp. Their grandmothers would never think to use artificial colors or ingredients, so neither would they."

If I wasn't suspect already, I have a really hard time believing that this isn't just corporate marketing and copywriting at it's best. It just seems so hokey to believe that they both had grandmothers who were lemonade purists and that this was the motivation behind the way they would choose to make their lemonade.

It's not like it couldn't be possible, but it's just such a cliché. Half the food products out there seem to tote that they make their goods "the good, ol' fashioned, homecooked way" that either mom did or, ever more often, the way Grandma did. And companies with tons less "hippie credibility" than Nantucket Nectars do this all the time. (Particularly ones that make jarred spaghetti sauce.)

And this all got me thinking about the whole "just like grandma" angle. That's a piece of Americana lore that we all know and understand, even if our grandmother's weren't like that. My grandmother did some grandmotherly things when it came to cooking the old-school way, but I know for a fact that her iced tea source was powder from a can. So, ultimatley, my question is: will this piece of lore of "grandma" meaning "old, quaint, and from a time when we knew how to do things right" continue? Because, let's face it, the grandmothers we knew in my generation have dwindled and the modern day grandmother is usually the people that we called, "Mom." And we didn't think they were all that old fashioned back in the day.

And, of course, it's only going to get worse. Some time within the next couple of decades, grandparents are going to start to be people who met through eHarmony and had MySpace pages and text messaged on their cell phones. In other words, there will come a day when people from this supposed screwed up generation that is not in touch with the right way to make lemonade or cook an ol' fashioned Sunday meal will be the grandmothers. So will people still say, "We make lasagna like Grandma did," when, in reality, most grandma's called up for take out or heated up a frozen dinner?

posted by Steve @ 9:47 PM