UFO Info Week-End

Today’s makers Reckitt Benckiser won’t say exactly how big the market is and MoD spending on Brasso

Today’s makers, Reckitt Benckiser, won’t say exactly how big the market is, and MoD spending on Brasso is, of course, a military secret But you can buy it in Sainsbury’s.. Not that Smash, under new owners HL Foods of Lincolnshire, isn’t real potato; as the pack says, it’s 94 per cent potato, 99 per cent fat free and with vitamin C (just like a potato).TRILLWhatever happened to budgies? So popular were the little Aussie birds that Trill budgie food was advertised on TV. Now it’s barely visible on the shelves, but it’s there.BRASSOBrasso metal polish, first made in Hull in 1905, helped to win two world wars. Part of every soldier’s spit and polish regime for a century, Brasso boasts the Ministry of Defence as its biggest customer, and it’s a multimillion pound brand. It’s not clear what it should be added to, as it’s quite pleasant on its own.

Impressively, Sandwich Spread contains 42 per cent vegetables.SMASHSmash had one of the greatest TV ads ever – the aliens laughing at an old-fashioned potato. Spuds had the last laugh, though, and now everyone prefers real potatoes. Look up phenylalanine – is it a warning or a recommendation? – and it turns out to be both. Phenylalanine is a constituent of the controversial artificial sweetener, aspartame. But it’s a good one; an essential amino acid that can’t be made by the body and needs to be supplied in the diet So good old Dream Topping is good for you.

Sort of.HEINZ SANDWICH SPREAD”The perfect addition to any sandwich,” says Heinz, which makes this tasty retro gloop in Holland. Now, it has been trendied-up to within an inch of its life; the website ( www.spam-uk ) lists recipes such as a Spam black pepper wrap and Spam pizza.BIRD’S DREAM TOPPINGThe ingredients for this “dessert topping mix with sweetener” from Kraft Foods read like a chemistry textbook, but Kraft craftily makes use of a somewhat ersatz formulation: “Contains a source of phenylalanine for vegetarians,” the label says. The Monty Python people and spam e-mail have given this Second World War brand a huge PR boost.In 1937, when it was invented in the US, it was known as “The Meat of Many Uses” – one of which, presumably, was eating. Fray Bentos is one of a swath of retro brands bought up by Campbell’s Soups, themselves no spring chickens in the grocery world.FARROW’S GIANT MARROWFAT PROCESSED PEASThe label on this, another of Campbell’s nostalgia brands, doesn’t seem to have changed in 50 years.

A harvest festival staple, it’s hard to imagine what people do with these. But they sell several million tins a year.SPAMSpam – “chopped pork and ham” – is made in Denmark of 89 per cent pork. The first ingredient of the pie is water (but hey, that’s my first ingredient, too) Then it’s 19.5 per cent beef and 15.5 per cent kidney. In the case of this tinned pie (“succulent steak and kidney in delicious Oxo gravy topped with light puff pastry”), the Fray-ness is more retro than the product itself. These days, Robertson’s is partnered with the late Roald Dahl, who would surely have been appalled at helping to sell such a corporate marmalade.FRAY BENTOS STEAK AND KIDNEY PIEFray Bentos was originally responsible for most of our Argentinian corned beef, but as that delight declined after the Falklands War, it had to get clever. Robertson’s may have been eclipsed by trendier brands, but there’s still a “By appointment to HM the Queen” on the jar.We don’t believe Her Maj eats Robertson’s marmalade, although it’s not hard to imagine Philip grumbling about the disappearance of the trademark golliwogs. And sales growth [yes, growth] is upwards of 7 per cent.”ROBERTSON’S GOLDEN SHRED MARMALADEAnother survivor from RHM’s cabinet of curiosities, Golden Shred is a “fine-cut orange jelly marmalade”, with emphasis, one would think, on the jelly.

We manufacture in South Yorkshire and sell 700,000 units of Pearce Duff annually, across three flavours, worth £0.5m retail. It was regarded even 50 years ago as suitable only for elderly invalids.Getting through to Pearce Duff’s owners, Kerry Foods of Surrey, is harder than speaking to MI5, but I bluster past its cagey switchboard by pretending to be a bulk blancmange-buyer “The blancmange market is just Pearce Duff That’s it,” says the brand manager “The brand started in 1847. But the forbidding green box, with its whiff of school toilets circa 1966, still boasts that Izal is “the best in family hygiene”.The maker Jeyes is sporting when asked the Izal question. “It is bought mainly by the older age group and we have steady sales,” says the marketing director, Jayne Hazlewood.