Diamond Shreddie.

I’m something of a connoisseur of radio programmes, particularly from the ‘50s and 60’s; one of the few modern comedies that takes my fancy is “The Museum of Curiosity.” The idea is that three notaries, usually a comedian, an author and a scientist, each donate a virtual exhibit, and give an interesting justification of the merits of their gifts to the museum. Items have included: absolutely nothing, the big bang and, on the programme I heard the other day, a Shreddie (mounted at an angle of 45 degrees on a silk cushion) which was donated by an advertising executive.
 
Back in January, 2008, Kraft (the manufacturer in Canada) started marketing the new and exciting diamond Shreddie in competition with the old and boring square Shreddie. They even took the novel step of selling boxes containing a mixture of both varieties. In spite of the advertising campaign being childish in concept, it was a remarkably successful promotional stunt and even won an award for innovation.
 
It is an expensive Blip, costing me £1.39 for the Shreddie in the photograph. Unfortunately, one of the differences between the Canadian variety and the British one is that ours are rectangular rather than square; it proved to be remarkably difficult to trim such a brittle wafer to shape and resulted in much wastage, with many of the attempts ending up as tiny, irregular pieces.
The current British manufacturer of Shreddies is Nestlé, a company with rather long standing reputation for dubious business ethics which made me a little uncomfortable with this posting.

Thanks to Davidc for hosting MonoMonday this week.