You know how I get riled up when I see otherwise grown-up, sensible people indulge in stupid, pointless, wasteful, and often dangerous stunts, just to get some attention in the social media? One of my regular food story tip-sheets served up two Friday morning, and I can’t resist commenting…
What’s crazier than transforming a Fire Engine into a rolling Taproom?
Okay. The two posts I’m going to spotlight weren’t the only ridiculous stories on my food-news wire. There was also ‘How to get Beer delivered to your door by St. Bernard this Holiday Season’, and ‘OREO and Barefoot Wines create a holiday Red Blend’, and ‘Ohio Man transforms Fire Truck into Mobile Taproom’. But my sense of what’s fundamentally right and wrong in the world is particularly aggravated by the tale of ‘The 850 lb. Cannabis Brownie’. Not to mention ‘Miller High Life selling Gingerbread House Dive Bar Kits’. Really.
The Brownie that rankles
I’ve said before, many times, in this space that I never met a chocolate brownie I didn’t like. But I have, now. It’s that 850 lb. / 386 kg weed-infused brownie – which creators MariMed Brand of Massachusetts claim is a world record. You have to see the thing to believe it:
See what I mean? ANY 850 lb. brownie would be hard to comprehend. But this one takes the cake! (Pun intended.) The recipe called for an unknown amount of flour, chocolate and sugar, but MariMed did disclose that it ‘infused’ the thing with 20,000 mg of THC (the active ingredient in weed).
Food blogger Omari Allen expressed his personal feelings about weed brownies thus: “The amount of THC was not printed neatly on a label. There wasn’t even a label. It was literally cannabis roulette. When it hit me, it felt like I teleported to the other side of the room. ” No so with the new record-holder? Nobody knows for sure.
The 850 lb. monster was created to promote MariMed’s new line of cannabis edibles: ‘Bubby’s Baked’ two-bite brownies infused with essence of weed.
In case you’re wondering, the previous record-holder was a 243 lb. brownie which was not dosed with THC.
The pointless Gingerbread Dive Bar
I obviously don’t agree with food blogger Reach Guinto, that Miller High Life’s holiday Gingerbread Dive Bar Kit is a fun adjunct to the Holidays:
“Miller High Life’s boozy spin on the traditional gingerbread house features premium gingerbread walls infused with Miller High Life, pretzel cue sticks for the edible pool table, a tiny jukebox, Miller High Life wall art and neons made of sugar, and even Vermont maple syrup packets to re-create the sticky floor of your local watering hole.”
Sure, I get it. The idea is to get fans to help display the brand and buy more beer during the holidays. But why a dive bar? I kind of doubt that the idea of making a gingerbread anything would appeal to the ‘Dive Bar’ crowd. Likewise, the idea of a Gingerbread Dive Bar doesn’t have much to recommend it to the usual, family, Christmas-by-the fireside crowd.
What’s even crazier is, the kit is available at www.shop.millerhighlife.com for $50 a pop (while supplies last.
My take
Let’s start where we just left off: do you know anybody who would pay $50 for the Dive Bar Kit? I don’t. Does that make me a stick-in-the-mud or just a normal, mature adult?
My personal take on the Kit is that it’s a poorly conceived stunt that may just backfire on Miller. The Bar is essentially a pointless waste of time, effort – and, if you’re gullible enough to pay $50 for one – a pure waste of money.
As for the mega-brownie, I see another poorly conceived stunt, but one that enjoys more of a connection with the product it’s intended to promote. And it represents a huge waste of food, which could have been used in any number of other ways to help the needy this season.
Both Holiday promotions are equally stupid and essentially pointless. The Gingerbread Bar serves no positive purpose. And the huge brownie is useless: It’s not for sale, and MariMed doesn’t say it has any plans to donate it to any worthy cause. If a truly worthy cause would accept it. Most worthy causes would probably refuse the proceeds MariMed might offer from the sale of a weed product.
And, inasmuch as both stunts promote intoxicating products, they will be seen by many folks as both potentially dangerous and socially unwholesome: not fun at all.
Neither makes the Holidays any brighter or more hopeful for anyone.
Why could Miller not have offered a gingerbread representation of a classic old corner bar and grill, and priced it reasonably? And donated the proceeds to a worthy charity?
Why could the MariMed people not have made a huge non-spiked brownie, carved it up into however many thousand regular 2 in. x 2 in. / 5 cm x 5 cm squares its mass represents? And donated the brownies to food banks and shelters? Or sold them and donated the proceeds to a worthy charity?
Muse on that…
~ Maggie J.