Just Right - Boring (or some shit)

Tuesday Afternoon

 

“Hey Max, how should we market the new Kellogs stuff?” Trevor enquired to his colleague, across their small South London office.

“I dunno man, have you tried that shit?  It’s ok, I guess.”  Max came out of his dreamland, where he thinks about Football Manager tactics, rather than do actual work.

“Yeah, it’s only ok.  Fuck dude, they should just stick some kind of dried fruit in there.”

“Totally.”

(45 seconds pass)

“What kind of fruit did you have in mind, Trev?  Everyone is doing that whole raisin, sultana thing – by the way, what the fuck’s the difference between a raisin and a sultana?”

“No-one knows, dude.”  Trevor replied.

(30 seconds pass)

“Yeah, so that whole raisin thing: it’s pretty whack, I guess.”  Max continued “What other dried fruits are there?”

“You can dry most fruits, I think.  I’ll tell you, I was at this Moroccan place over in Tooting and they had those date things, you know, from Indiana Jones.  Yeah, so they just put that shit in their curries.  What about little bits of dates?”

“Yeah man, whatever.  I don’t fucking care.”

 

Trevor sends an e-mail to the factory, requesting that they “put some dried dates in there, or some shit.”

 

Maybe Nazis are trying to poison us?  Maybe Just Right was Adolf's plan all along. 

 

 

Thursday Morning

 

“Hey Max, we got the prototype of that shit with the bits of dates in it from the HQ.” Trevor was holding the box under his right arm as he arrived at the office.

“Huh, oh yeah.  Shit, I forgot about that shit.  Let’s try some.”

Max pours two bowls of the Kellogs prototype, while Trevor roles a custom biffter. 

Max brings the bowls over to Trevor, as the latter sparks up.  “Let’s do this shit.”

(320 seconds later)

“I dunno, Max.  This whole dried fruit thing doesn’t really work.  It’s just a bit arbitrary, I guess.”

“Yeah man, did your bits of dates just fall to the bottom of the bowl?” enquired Max.

“Yeah, the flakes are too small to support their weight.  The whole thing doesn’t really work.  What do you think, man?”

“We could still sell this shit.  I mean, it’s only alright, but…”

“Yeah bro, it’s just alright.  Hey, we should call it that: Just Alright.  Haha, the suits would love that!”

“Yeah, Trev.  I’m kind of bored, let’s wrap this shit up.  I think they want  something by tomorrow, and I can’t be assed sending it back.  Let’s see.  We could just pretend it’s, like, health food and shit?”

“I’ll tell you what, Max: this shit isn’t good, but it’s not really bad.  I mean, I don’t hate it.”

“Yeah, man.  Like you said, it’s just alright.  What if we called it Just Right?  It makes it sound healthy, or some shit.”

“I’m down with that, man.  To be honest, I’m jonesing for some motherfucking Wotsits.  Let’s draft this shit up later and send it off.  We can put it on a green box, or some shit.”

“Cool.”  Max picked up his jacket.  “Should we leave those date things in?”

“Yeah, man.  Who fucking cares?”

 

…and so Just Right was born.  A boring cereal born from a lazily conceived idea.  It is just random flakes, with an arbitrarily selected dry fruit bunged in alongside it.  The problem is, it is just alright; I don’t hate this cereal, and occasionally I buy it.  Never do I know why.  Let’s see if I can decipher the source of its powers. 

 

"Mum, can you get some Just Right when you go to Tesco?" - said no-one ever.

Taste:

It doesn’t taste bad. It has an assured sweetness, while not being coated in sugar. When you get a nice bit of date, it’s ok. I just don’t know about the dates. They don’t really compliment anything, and they just sink to the bottom of the bowl so you’re left with about 18 bits of date and not much else at the end of the bowl. You rarely get the date pieces on your spoon. It’s like you’ve just enjoyed a bowl of cereal and now you want to enjoy some dates.

6.5/10

Milk Flavour:

Nothing happening here. It just tastes like milk, and milk is alright. My fave is green milk, but I am partial to blue milk in coffee and on Crunchy Nut.

5/10

Texture:

They are somewhere between a 2 and a 4, highlighting a weakness in my coveted DCSI. The flakes reach an agreeable, palatable softness by the end of the bowl – in keeping with a 4, or even a 5 – but the date pieces are guileless in their texture, they don’t change for no animal’s milk. Also, as my kitchen doesn’t have a heater or radiator in it, through winter the date pieces grow very hard with the cold, particularly when you come to them first thing in the morning, after a cold, lonely night in my kitchen. This can be dangerous if not prudently anticipated.

6/10

Packaging:

A fresh green background; with an explosive swirl of the product, escaping a contrasting red bowl. Nice colours. The cereal flake size is not what you expect at first from the hyperbolically depicted flakes on the box, but I quite like the small flakes of Just Right. The boxes, like many other cereals, are just too small for my intake. I’ll generally empty a box in ~3-4 bowls.

7/10

Relevance of Mascot:

N/A. I will mark this category out of the overall and factor the overall score up.

Potential:

Why not make tray bakes from just right? They also go well with generic sweet cereals like Frosties or Ricicles. Not to be had alongside chocolate cereals.

7/10

Overall:

You see, it’s just a type cereal! I still haven’t really uncovered why I occasionally by Just Right. It is a conundrum I will be embalmed or incinerated with (I’ve not decided how I want my corpse to be disposed of). I frequently hurt my teeth on cold bits of date, and am never excited about eating this stuff. It just ends up in my shopping trolley every 4 months or so. Strange.

6.5/10