I vaguely remember being vaguely shocked when I arrived in Buenos Aires and didn´t see quite the variety of certain items in supermarkets, etc. (There´s a lot more now than there used to be.)
But I almost immediately chuckled to myself... remembering my Argentine wife´s reaction to a mega-Dominicks when we first moved to Chicago.
She was confronted with about 40 different brands of toilet paper, each with their own product line (one-ply, two-ply, moist, embossed, colors, patterns, perfumes, prints.) She was struck speechless. Eventually, she asked me, "How do you do it?"
"How do we do what?"
"How do you choose? Have you tried ALL of these?"
Of course, I hadn´t. Some brands I´d never heard of, some I´d seen all my life. I started to wonder... how does a guy walk into a supermarket and grab a package of toilet paper? I don´t have a favorite brand. If you'd put a gun to my head, I probably wouldn´t have been able to tell you what kind of toilet paper was in my bathroom at that moment! I had no idea how, in a split second, I could just simply ...choose.
It reminded me of a story I´d heard during the cold war when thousands of Soviet Jews were finally allowed emmigrate. A great many came to the US ...but many returned to the Soviet Union.
They couldn´t handle it. One returning woman remarked to a reporter that when she saw an aisle of 100 different bars of soap ...she thought she was losing her mind.
5 comments:
I always choose the cheapest, yet at the same time something that doesn't resemble tree bark. I usually take a look at the 5 cheapest and see which one is the softest. Usually it's the one with the dog on the package (not sure what's up with that by the way!). This is a great post, and trust me I was feeling overwhelemed the first time I walked into coto and saw the cracker aisle, my God there's like a million type of saltines
Those are Moscow on the Hudson moments, taken from Robin William's character in the eponymous movie when he exclaims something like "So much stuff and all so cheap" at his first venture into a Target store. Living in Mexico for the past decade and a half, I get the same feeling whenever I go to the Otro Lado. It's much easier just to shop at Costco in Mexico, where there may be all of two brands of toilet paper: on sale and cheap.
Well, this certainly is not the problem here in town. Disco/Coto/the Chinese markets/Carrefours.. they all carry the same brand.
As the appliance stores all carry the same brands and so on and so on ....
Everyone of those saltines in Coto tastes exactly the same, all the soap products smell and work exactly the same.
I am convinced everything is made of the same ingredients, mixed in the same vat then put in various bags and bottles and given different labels.
But nothing is different.
Except L'epi bread. That is good.
My answer to your question ... I only shopped by brand in the US.
I had my favorites for various reasons, scent, do/don't make me itch, tastes good/authentic/fresh etc.
Here, it really doesn't matter. They are all the same.
For me its the softest, cheapest, 2 ply; nothing worse than putting your finger through that paper!! Especially if you're in a cubicle without a wash basin!!
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