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Valentine's Day. Once a commemoration of a cranky Turkish bishop, it is now a bonanza for the candy, greeting card and flower industries and an occasion for dark, cynical, pessimistic and moody people to feel even more dark, cynical, etcetera etcetera because of their exclusion from the mainstream celebration
of this day.
This is a tragedy. Dark, cynical, etcetera etcetera people do not buy Valentine's Day products in anything approaching the volume that their non-dark, non-cynical, non-etcetera non-etcetera counterparts do, and buying stuff, we are daily reminded, is the key to happiness and a sound economy.
Rather than change human nature- which is difficult- the candy, card and flower industries should engage in niche marketing, which is well-studied and fairly easy. In areas associated with high concentrations of the dark, cynical, etcetera etcetera consumer, the companies should market Anti-Valentine's Day products, such as the following:
* Artistically pre-withered black-dyed roses.
* Greeting cards with messages like "I don't have anyone, you don't have anyone, let's go get plastered." (For cuteness, this example could feature talking walls.)
* Black-frosted cookies in the shape of broken hearts, complete with jagged edges down the middle.
* Black candy hearts with messages like "No way," "Are you kidding?", "Don't even think about it" and "You're doomed to die alone".
* Special Anti-Valentine's versions of mainstream candies, such as Russell Stover's Bitter Chocolate LonelyHearts, Peeps Marshmellow Vultures, Cruel Snickers and Hershey's Kisses of Death.
(Yes, some of these things could be easily Baked at home- heck, your Uncle Nutsy quite literally Baked black broken-heart cookies a few years back- but the real opportunity is to put the amazing powers of the marketing industry behind it.)
[Admin: I notice this has been moved from Business:General to Culture:Celebration. I thought it went better in Business:General, since the idea is not Anti-Valentine's Day- which is well and truly Baked, if not in an organized manner- but selling products for it. However, in this as in all things I bow to the wisdom of our harsh webmistress.]
Google search: anti-valentine
http://www.google.c...ch?q=anti-valentine
There's clearly a market. [Uncle Nutsy, Aug 06 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Dead flowers
http://www.hugkiss....um/deadflower.shtml
[egnor, Aug 06 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]
the sweeties you are looking for
http://www.despair.com/bittersweets.html
one Valentine's day, someone who (temporarily) hated me left dead roses wrapped in newspaper outside my room in college. I thought they were just out of a bin but it turned out he had spent quite some time and effort with weird chemicals to make them die. [sappho, Feb 08 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Stinky and bitter V-day gifts
http://www.senddeadfish.com
[dana_renay, Feb 08 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004]
(?) Killer peeps
http://classproject...urai_peeps_v1_5.mov
Death threats will ruin the mood [HalfwayHebrew, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
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Annotation:
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Perfect. Croissant for you Uncle Nutsy....BTW, I don't have anyone, you don't have anyone....let's go get plastered... :-) |
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Butchers could clean up on Valentines Day, just sell cows hearts to the "Dark, cynical, etcetera etcetera people"
This also reminds me of a poster from an old edition of ZZAPP! 64, (anyone remember that?) with a zombie guy holding his heart in his hand with "Have a heart, be my valentine" |
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Little Crow, I would hope that my butcher cleans up every day. |
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How about a card with the usual hearts and stuff on the outside, but when you open in there is a pop-up of a line of gangsters with machine guns pointing at you. A small electronic device makes the required DAGGADAGGADAGGA noise. |
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Susen busted an arm, I seem to recall reading. |
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Sparki was probably scared away by everyone's ridicule. Sparky was thrown off, you remember. futurebird appears to have gotten a life. I'm sure daruma pops in from time to time (Jan 8, 2002, Amorographic films anno seems to be the latest). 1percent is still around (Jan 16, 2002, Hanging bib anno is the last I can find). Susen, we covered. Uncle Nutsy was abducted by a squirrel and is currently buried under a beech tree in some isolated spot, after the squirrel forgot which tree it was. |
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Mephista - I'm with you on this one, I think we should have "I hate you, you witch" type cards and pepper flavoured chocolates. Although the dead roses would look quite good. |
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I had a great Anti-Valentines day party one year, after being dumped on Feb 1st. The flyers had a picture of a scowling Shakespeare, with the headlines: Is Love's Labor Lost on you? are Romeo and Juliet your idea of a dyfunctional couplet? |
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It was the most successful party I ever threw. There is a real market for bitterness around this holiday... |
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My big thing is that i strongly feel Valentine's Day is legitimised stalking and it totally freaks me out. |
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Oh God yes. Then again, i always buy [grayure] a card. |
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I think the idea of a day for love was good and then went amok... |
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