Antipodean Pride...

Mrs TFP is a proud Australian. Now I don't know how univeral or otherwise this might be but whenever the subject of certain thick brown savoury spreads come up, there is a really strong sense of Australian national pride displayed.

I've tasted both Marmite and Vegemite, the latter being a constant in our house, and although they don't taste exactly the same, they're not a million miles away. Mrs TFP always loudly professes the virtues of her native 'Mite over it's British cousin.

What you see here is a new variant of the Vegemite brand. Our Antipodean house guest of the moment sent and brought some of this stuff across. It is a mixture of Vegemite and cream cheese and makes the Vegemite smoother to spread and gives it a more subtle less salty taste. What is special about this particular jar is that it is no longer commercially available. In fact iSnack 2.0 was pulled from the Vegemite range about 4 days after it was released. Apparently there was such a outrage in it's home country regarding the naming that they had to pull it from the shelves and was re-branded as Vegemite CheesyBite.

It's actually not too bad but it does look remarkably like chocolate spread when put on toast which I'm sure could provide a humourous switcheroo sometime in the near future.

[Edit]
Forgot to mention. There is also this wee paragraph not on the side of the jar that I I found odd. It says:

[c]Go to vegemite.com.au
to find out about the
inspiration behind the
great new name![/c]

Now you'd have to be a "Flamin' Gallah!" (Pardon the Alf Stewartism but is is one of my favourite Aussie characters) not to be able to work out the inspirational master stroke behind this marketing came from.