I love music. I love food. Rarely do those two forms of sustenance come from the same creator. Hey, Jason Toon here with another Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture. This week, we're hanging out at the intersection of grooves and groceries.
For a place where music is constantly piped in, the grocery store is about as un-rock 'n' roll an atmosphere as possible. Try dancing in one, or shouting woo-hoo and throwing the devil horns, or waving your lighter aloft, and you'll be asked to find another source for procuring your staples. Only a few visionary artists have boldly lent their names to packaged food products over the years. Not for them the usual bored star sidelines like restaurants and wineries, nor the half-measures of "collabs" with junk food purveyors and fast food joints. Let us salute some of the trailblazing acts who dared to make themselves the brand, to attempt the Knievel-scale leap from jukebox to shopping cart.
Bing Crosby Ice Cream, 1953 Almost 50 years after his death, Bing Crosby still has a decent case to be the most popular, most influential recording artist in the history of the world. So it makes sense that he'd be the first to hit on the idea of lending his household name to household goods. His Bing Crosby Ice Cream was just a licensing deal with local dairies: no evidence exists of Der Bingle in a lab coat mixing up bold new flavors. It wasn't exactly "White Christmas" in the sales department, either. Maybe Bing overestimated his selling power, or maybe he was just ahead of his time.
Beatle Bars and Beatles Licorice Records, 1964 Of the deluge of Beatles merchandise in 1964, very little of it was edible. Here's a box of generic ice cream bars with most of the moptops looking decidedly unenthused: Paul is frozen in terror, Ringo's about to cry, and George sneers with contempt. They seem more cheerful on the packaging for their licorice records, especially given that the "treat" inside is a disc of black licorice. Of course, there's no chance the Beatles had the first thing to do with these products, including being aware of their existence.
Jimmy Dean Sausage, 1968 Nobody could ever accuse Jimmy Dean of indifference to the products bearing his name. "My hogs are virus-free," he assured the Philadelphia Daily News in 1970, presumably the only time that sentence has ever been uttered by a Grammy winner. By then, the singer of the #1 smash hit "Big Bad John" had also been the first fill-in host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and hosted his own show that brought Jim Henson to national prominence for the first time, and he would soon appear in the James Bond movie Diamonds are Forever. What else was left but to start a sausage company with his brother? Dean became more famous than ever dispensing down-home sausage wisdom in decades of folksy commercials: "Sausage is a lot like life. You get out of it what you put into it." What Dean put into his sausage brand makes it the only one on this list that has transcended its star patron (so far).
Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia, 1987 and Phish Food, 1997 OK, maybe these are more like those "collabs" I mentioned earlier, like Lady Gaga Oreos. But I'm including them anyway because they came decades before anybody else did it, and because they're the perfect union of brand and bands. The bearded, swaying, barefoot mellowness of it all just makes perfect sense. But you'd need a buttload of those little Ben & Jerry's cartons to make it through one of the interminable sets played by each band. Especially since (insert your own munchies joke here).
New Kids on the Block cereal, 1990 You know what's weird? Among the kajillion licensed cereals in the '80s and '90s, there were pretty much none for music acts. Scrolling through Discontinued Foods, it seems like there was a cereal for every Nintendo game, Saturday morning cartoon, and point guard whose team made a deep playoff run. But the only music one I've been able to find was never even actually released. New Kids on the Block cereal was a prototype circulated to drum up interest among distributors and stores. Evidently it didn't drum up much, because it died there. Like trading cards, promotional breakfast cereal was one of those things that just didn't translate to music.
Rap Snacks, 2002 This is another one where the artists aren't entirely the brand. But the whole brand is about featuring artists, so I say it counts. Rap Snacks were launched in 2002 by James Lindsay, a born snackophile: "Like some sort of snack-mad scientist, he would often take various types of chips and mix them together in one bag in search of the next great flavor," the company history says. I feel you, James. Striking thematically appropriate deals with hip-hop stars and including positive messages on every bag, Rap Snacks were a fixture of corner stores for years. Lindsay has recently brought the brand back and expanded into candy, ramen noodles, and more.
Nelly's Pimp Juice, 2003 In the early 2000s, two things were everywhere: energy drinks and my fellow St. Louisan Nelly of "Hot in Herre" fame. Naturally these two icons of the aughts had to come together. Pimp Juice stirred up some controversy when some Black religious and political figures objected to the name, "inspired by" a then-recent Nelly hit. He pointed to the lyrics of the song to explain that it didn't have anything to do with prostitution: "Pimp Juice is anything that attracts the opposite sex; it could be money, fame, or straight intellect." The drink itself was huge for a few years, selling millions of cans around the world and spawning a dozen more hip-hop energy drinks. But by the end of the decade, the fad of blinged-out caffeine missiles crashed, taking Pimp Juice with it. In 2019, a VICE writer opened a 15-year-old can of Pimp Juice and found that it was "almost tasty."
The Killers Hot Sauce, 2020 On the face of it, there's no obvious connection between hot sauce and the stadium indie rock of the Killers, no particular reason the band behind "Mr. Brightside" should also have any aptitude for working with "aged chilis, habanero peppers, cayenne peppers, and hickory-smoked sea salt." On the other, they worked with a local Las Vegas sauce company to develop the flavors and manufacture The Killers Hot Sauce, and they sold out of all 2,500 sets they made in a few weeks, and that faux-boombox box is pretty neat. So who am I to judge?
Patti LaBelle's Patti's Good Life, 2008 Now Patti LaBelle, there's somebody you might expect a credible hot sauce from. The soul legend started her Patti's Good Life line with hot sauces before gradually expanding to frozen entrees and baked goods based on her recipes. Comfort food with touches of classic Black home cooking, dishes like her mac & cheese and sweet potato pie have been a huge hit at Walmart and Target, hitting $200 million in sales in 2022. As much of an icon as Patti already was, someday she just might join Jimmy Dean as stars who are more famous for their food than their music. Rap Snacks has made the occasional appearance on Meh, often to the surprise and confusion of people wondering what Rick Ross has to do with ramen. If these past Shoddy Goods stories be the food of love, read on:
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