Empty Del Monte bottle number 2 and Banana Catsup on the right.
But one day the grocery store was all out of the Del Monte Hot and Spicy. So we had to look at alternatives. What we found was UFC Hot and Spicy Banana Catsup. It is made in Philippines by a Philippine company. It would not be red if they didn't put food coloring in it. The "banana" is not a sweet banana. It's more like a plantain. There are typical catsup spices in it and vinegar. It is also WAY hotter than the Del Monte catsup. It can't be hot enough for me so I love it. I think it has those common small red chilis that grow on bushes in the Philippines -- the same ones I took a picture of at the Market.
There are a lot of curious products here that do not exist in USA. For example, Vaseline shampoo! Yup...it's got the Vaseline name so you know it's good stuff. And...it comes as a powder you pour in whatever bottle your last shampoo came in and you just add water.
That's something else I noticed here. LOTS of familiar products that come in bottles in the USA, are equally present here in thick plastic bag/bottles with flat bottoms. They are are just stiff enough to stand up. And many products I've never seen in a powdered concentrated form are common here. Shampoos and dish soap are as common as there liquid in-a-bottle equivalents. They are like "powdered milk" -- and less expensive. These products make a lot of sense here for two BIG reasons:
1. Most of these products in liquid form are mostly water, making them heavy to ship and take up more shipping space. This weight and volume is then transferred to a Filipino customer who will most likely hand carry them on to a tricycle for a ride home. Several overloaded grocery bags filled with liquid products can be reduced to a single easy to carry bag filled with packets of the powdered product.
2. Lower cost... Shipping higher quantities of light weight and compact packets of powdered product reduces costs for the manufacturers and stores. These savings are passed on to the customers. Almost everyone I observed was buying the packets, not the bottles.
I assume the reason we don't see this trend in USA is market analyses reveal Americans prefer their traditional bottles and perhaps even subjectively view the same product as a dry powder in a packet (just add water) as "inferior". As we head into the double-dip "recession" I would not be surprised if we see these attitudes change. Already the manufacturers of liquid laundry detergent have reduced the size of the bottles by concentrating the liquid. Prices are rising as energy costs and thus transportation costs rise (even the plastic bottles are more expensive because they are a petroleum product). I expect to see the packets in the USA in the not distant future. I'd buy the powdered products to save money...AND to not have to worry about my plastic grocery bags breaking on the way to the car.
However.... Don't hold your breath waiting for Vaseline shampoo.
And finally... my favorite product -- toothpaste. If you ask a Filipino (particularly over 40) how do you say "toothpaste" in Filipino languages, the answer is "Colgate". It's kind of a joke now. It's like calling any brand of facial tissue "Kleenex". The brand is so deeply linked to the thing...it has become the thing. Companies wish for this status and spend a fortune to achieve it. Kleenex achieved it, so did Coke, and in the Philippines so did Colgate. But unlike Kleenex or Coke, Colgate got a HUGE amount of help from the US Military at the end of World War 2. When the USA provided aid to the Philippines for post-war reconstruction (including schools and teachers, a curriculum in English and based on the US educational system) the military aid effort distributed a LOT of Colgate. In many places it was the only toothpaste many Filipinos had ever seen or used.
So when Eme's mom (age 61) asked me to buy some "colgate" she didn't really mean "Colgate". She needed toothpaste. However, if she were asked to choose from all the brands, she would pick Colgate. Colgate probably enjoys a huge market advantage over other brands of toothpaste because of the boost the brand received after the war.
Another interesting WW2 connection is the very widespread use of a single large spoon for eating everything (unless using fingers, which is very common). The spoons are the roughly the same size as the US Army mess kit spoons...which were ubiquitous here after the war. Today a large spoon (no fork or knife) is the common eating utensil. We have about 8 of the large spoons...and not a single table knife or fork.
It's easy to think the Philippines is highly Americanized because so many speak English, all the signs are in English, official documents (like school transcripts and passport applications, court documents, etc.) are in English. So much is familiar it's easy to assume that cultural conflicts will not be an issue (they don't have to be an issue...unless one forgets they are in Rome, or doesn't realize they are in Rome). A stay of no less than a month is needed to start to get a feel for the subtleties of Filipino culture. This is a topic that needs it's own post -- but describing even some of the more classic charateristics of the culture is extremely hard to put in words and there are pitfalls in attempting to do so! So I won't :-)
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