A Salad Dressing Will Never Be Ketchup: How Hidden Valley Ranch Is Trying To Kidnap Ketchup And That Shit Is Not Happening On My Watch...Oh, Wait, I Don’t Have A Watch. Fuck!

When it comes to ketchup, I’ve always been a Heinz man. I’ve addressed this on my two other blogs, 365 Bars and MAD. I grew up with Heinz and I’m repulsed when I see Hunt’s ketchup at a restaurant and if it’s a lower form than Hunt’s, they probably spell it, “catsup.”

As much as I hate all other brands of ketchup, at least they look like ketchup and they’re a tomato-based product, no matter how vile they taste. A couple of weeks ago I saw something on EV Grieve (scroll to the bottom of the post) that caused my head to spin counter-clockwise and cave in and I’ve been obsessing over it ever since: Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing is starting a campaign to bill themselves as...“The New Ketchup.”

In a Wall Street Journal article, Jon Balousek the vice president of Clorox, yeah, Clorox owns Hidden Valley, said: “Hey, this is ketchup." Jon, I hate to debate the issue with you, but no, Hidden Valley is salad dressing, it’s not ketchup, but please, tell everyone in Delusionville, I send my greetings. Later in the article/press release it’s explained that this whole “campaign” was hatched after an executive watched his college-age daughter bathe her entire salmon in ranch dressing.

First of all, let’s just pretend that Hidden Valley is ketchup (which it’s not), who in their right fucking mind puts ketchup on salmon? It’s obvious that this executive's daughter is either mentally ill or high on a buffet of mind-zapping drugs, or, most likely, both. She’s probably a shameless little slut too, but that’s neither here nor there, but I did want to throw that out there. So some some zombiefied, psychotically-deranged, drugged to the gills, skankity-wankity college crack whore pours a bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing all over her dinner and all of a sudden a mass marketing plan to change the face of ketchup as we know it is hatched? Somewhere Darrin Stephens is spinning in his grave!

I read where they want to position Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing in grocery stores in the ketchup section, to further the illusion that Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing has been magically transformed itself into ketchup. It’s time to call Hidden Valley out on their bullshit. I think it’s time for a little investigative journalism here at TWM!

I thought we'd head over to my grocery store, The Food Emporium, near Union Square. If they have Hidden Valley salad dressing placed in the ketchup section I'm going to ask the manager to do the right thing and move it.

I'm just going to ignore that fork in the road and keep on moving in a straight line down 14th Street to The Food Emporium.

Okay, here we are at The Food Emporium. Let's go inside...

And find the ketchup aisle.

Here's cans of tomato sauce, my investigative nose says we're getting close!

And I was right, here's the ketchup section. So far I don't see any Hidden Valley and it's nice to see Heinz is the dominant force in the section.

There's lots of different flavors and styles of Heinz ketchup these days...

But I prefer the good old basic pure Heinz ketchup! Pure, bold and beautiful!

They do have some inferior, cheapo ketchup products here. This is a discount ketchup called, "America's Choice." If this truly is "America's Choice," I'm moving to another country that has better taste in ketchup!

And of course they've got Hunt's, who has played second fiddle to Heinz its entire shelf life, but it's nice to see it greatly outnumbered by Heinz in the store! As it should be!

Happily I didn't see any Hidden Valley in with the ketchup, so I thought I'd come over to the salad dressing aisle to look for it where it belongs.

And there it is, the little salad dressing that wants to be a big, bad bottle of ketchup.

Hey look, there's no mention of, "The New Ketchup" on the label. Maybe this is just at the test-marketing stage. My hometown of Peoria is a test-market city, so I beg anyone that lives there to complain about the new ketchup idea and if you see this salad dressing in the ketchup section, please, move it back to where it belongs! This has been a public service announcement!

Further proof that the marketing people at Hidden Valley are lost in la-la land. These are tiny tubs of the ranch dressing that you can take, "on-the-go." What do they think people jog with this stuff?

I thought I'd discuss this whole matter with a professional, so I went to customer service and asked to speak to the manager, who's name is Arthur. I showed him a printout of the Wall Street Journal article and asked what he thought about a salad dressing trying to hijack the good name of ketchup and he just looked at me like I was nuts. And believe me, I know that look. He declined having his picture taken and said any photos would have to be approved by the corporate office. I didn't tell him about the photos I had already taken, and corporate office, if you're reading this, I hope you approve! I decided this day of investigative journalism was over, I was starved and went to the corner deli for a big salad.

I got the salad at the corner deli and went up to the cash register to pay and it was then I saw this in a plastic container off to the side of the register. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed!

Further Reading: Huffington Post, Sacremento Bee and Business Insider.

All I want is the truth,
Just gimme some truth.

Surprise link, click on it, I dare you!

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A Questionable Link!

DJ Gidget has started a new feature at her blog where I ask her three questions and she in turn, asks me three questions. You can find out when I lost the "Big V" and find out other information about the both of us here: Question me two times baby! And don't forget to tune in to "The Secret Weapon," the radio show where "Boris" picks out the tunes and Gidget spins them. It's on Woody Radio right now!

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Bonus Photo From Danny the Freelancer!

After seeing yesterday's Carnegie Hall violin that I got from the Christmas Cottage, Danny the Freelancer sent in this photo of a real violin and here's what he says about it: "When my Grandfather first came to America from Ireland all he had  with him was a tiny suitcase and this 1917 John Juzek Violin handmade in Prague. His first job was playing in the Orchestra at the NY World's Fair in 1938." Very cool, thanks for sending in another great photo, Danny!

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Bonus Big Brother Art From Jaws!

Jaws the Cabbie sent in this art to try to get me to surrender to Big Brother. Thanks, but I'll never surrender, Jaws!