Today I had a task to go up to the supermarket and select some Australian goods to send to someone overseas – someone who had no experience sampling typical Australian snack foods. I started i the sweets aisle, and I basically went bananas. By the time I left the aisle I had a dozen different types of sweets, mostly in bags, but also a few chocolate bars. Of course I chose the iconic musk sticks, although I’ve yet to meet a non-Australian who can bear to eat more than a single bite.
I had so much stuff I completely forgot to get anything savoury, and even neglected to get some Vegemite. I went straight to the post office to get a box to pack it all in, and did that at home, then went back out to mail it. It cost nearly twice the cost of the sweets in postage, but that was inevitable. The person I’m sending this too is sending me a return package, full of American goodies. These packages will probably take a month or more to arrive, but it will be cool for both of us to open them up and see what’s inside.
New content today:
My half-Australian wife (born and raised in America) has some explaining to do! I’ve never heard of musk sticks. Even while we were in Australia a couple decades ago!
[Later…]
Okay, my mother-in-law has some explaining to do! My wife’s never heard of musk sticks either! I suspect I’d like them just as much as I like Vegemite. Which is to say “not at all.”
Hah, yes, probably. 🙂
Update: Both my wife’s sisters remember having musk mints before. They are very split on whether they are good or not. (Wikipedia wasn’t kidding about being polarizing.) Her brother didn’t comment.
In my mock outrage, I forgot a recommendation for the future. My wife’s uncle loved Close-Up toothpaste. He’d stock up on the rare times he came over. It’s cinnamon flavored. Apparently you don’t have cinnamon-flavored toothpaste in Australia? You might request that in your next care package.
I’ve heard of cinnamon flavoured toothpaste, but yeah, it doesn’t exist in Australia. Toothpaste here is MINT. That’s it. That’s all you get. You can have any flavour as long as it’s mint.
Honestly I think part of the reason is that if any other flavour were introduced here, consumers would reject it because if it’s not mint it won’t feel like it’s doing the job right. (Which is basically how I feel about it. I’d try it out of curiosity, but I wouldn’t feel like I was cleaning my teeth properly.)
That is the default flavor for toothpaste here as well. Unless it’s for kids. Then there’s a variety with bubblegum being particularly popular. (At least anecdotally in my house.) According to Wikipedia, Close-Up was introduced in 1967 as the first gel toothpaste. I remember the television ads for it when I was a child in the ’70s, but honestly had to check Wikipedia to make sure they were still making it.