Burton's Jammie Dodgers Outrageous Orange

The advanced nature of modern branding is evident in the transient occurence of extra-normal, or seasonal, product flavours. The first I can recall is the mint Kit Kat', which has now become a year-round staple. Whilst these novelty flavours of standard products are welcome, they rarely seem to out do the original. In America these seasonal delights don't seem to exist because they eat every flavour of everything all the time - so everything is always available - no doubt they have alfalfa and aligator Jammie Dodgers available in WalMart.

Jammie Dodgers Outrageous Orange conforms to the seasonal/occasional pattern but underperforms the sector. The packaging looks nice, a pleasant shade of orange, but the filling itself is a disappointment. The orange flavour is too subtle to overcome the dominant biscuity biscuit flavour. The normal dodger jam flavour is powerful enough to hold its own against the tyranny of the biscuit, indeed the genius of the Jammie Dodger is in the tension between these two strong, almost elemental, parts. Like matter and anti-matter they strive in eternal struggle, until destroyed by being eaten, or dropped in a cup of tea.

Sadly, the orange filling of the Outrageous Orange is just gravity to the biscuits nuclear force. Dull, insipid, lacklustre. Indeed this biscuit puts me in mind of everything Paul McCartney has done musically since the Beatles split. When I saw him at a concert in Rome in 2003, at one point he said something like 'Now I'm going to play something from my new album'; 200,000 Italians groaned and a look crossed his face that I imagined betrayed a feeling of resentment that noone for the last 30 years has wanted to hear anything he has done since 1970. Like Mcartney the marketing and research divisions of Burtons must be seething at the poor reaction to these disappointing biscuits, shallow heirs to a greater forerunner.

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