ROXOFF – The Undressing Dressing

A new condiment, next to ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard.  Came as sort of a joke, a hoax.  Tastes like, textured like, looks like, well, just like jizz.  Packaged in a non-generic, ever so subtly genitalic glass bottle with a little hole in the tip that lets the sauce spurt out when hammered from the base.  Or maybe a plastic squeeze-bottle.  Turns out the stuff actually doesn’t taste that bad – sort of essence of sodden Acacia pollen with a lingering pepper aftertaste that pleasantly accents tomato-cucumber salads.  Looks a little like snot, but, hey, they sell a lot of creamy/cheesy salad dressings that make it look like a breast-feeding baby threw up on your plate.

Some guy thinks all this up in a stoned reverie after a particularly satisfying blow-job.  He has lots of ideas like this, they never get anywhere, dying the merciful deaths of incompletely formed fetuses.  This one captivates him longer than most.  He pictures some small cottage kitchen pumping these things out for some hipper than hip boutiques on the coasts.  Naturally, they don’t sell worth shit til some late night talk show host needing a new novelty pops a shot in his mouth to spice up his monologue.  Once the leading-edge trend setters pick it up, it’s an icky indulgence, like ingesting raw oysters or sashimi, that acquires the hype cachet of adventurousness for the truly timid.  This, moreover, has all the coy possibilities of the nice/naughty racy/raunchy duality that so intrigue the Madison Avenue mavens.

Time for some adroit positioning for major market penetration:  Disingenuously avoid homophilic associations, the gay market will come into its own without extra prodding.  Manufacture a mythology of innocence and discovery – little girls sneaking some, telling their schoolmates, “My big sister told me it tastes just like the real thing,” young boys chugging it as a badge of belonging.  Deftly extend this imagery to those whose youth has been replaced by purchasing power.  Picture professional women asking for it offhandedly at power lunches.

Keep consumer awareness constant by continually leaking quasi-controversy to sensationalist supermarket checkout rags.  Headlines like “ROXOFF – The Undressing Dressing,” and, “Gullible Public Swallows Anything,” are good for business.

– Ned B. 11/88