No more 'Uncle Ben’s,' now the rice brand is 'Ben's Original'

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/23/no-more-uncle-bens-now-the-rice-brand-is-bens-original.html

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Betty Crocker cackles with glee! Soon she will rule unapposed.

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Bout feckin time.

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Fortunately it’s just the name that’s changing. My fellow amateur magic mushroom growers have no cause for alarm.

Didnt they get rid of the Uncle Tom, I mean Ben, image too?

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The loyal adherents of Duncan Hines will stand in opposition, backed by the great house of Maxwell.

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What of House Toll?

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A mere shell of themselves after the loss of RJ Reynolds. Fear Proctor and her familiar Gamble, however.

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I suggest we send in General Mills, then!

[this is way sillier than the thread started, but it is fun.]

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The farmers of Pepperidge still remember the old ways.

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But what if Fanny of the Farmers objects?

[I feel so old having visited mall stores that used to be Fanny Farmer that were *replaced* with Pepperidge Farm stores.]

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… a new, slightly less racist brand name

I’ll bite. What is racist in “Ben’s Original”?

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Someone months back said somewhere that without Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima, all the spokes cartoon characters would be white.

There’s still Sara Lee, though the brand is not named after Arlo Guthrie’s daughter.

i don’t know what Xeni meant, but i guess keeping the Ben name and the color scheme still evokes the old image.

Yay for “empowerment.” :roll_eyes:

(Yes, that mask was a promotional item designed to let children play blackface.)

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In Taiwan and other parts of Asia, they used to have “Darkie Toothpaste,” featuring a picture of a black man in a top hat. Then, after years of backlash, they changed the name to “Darlie Toothpaste,” but kept the picture of the black (though more ambiguously black) man in top hat. They only changed the name a few years ago, too.

image

(Photo Credit: mothership.sg)

They could have tried to get Uncle Roger, who has definite opinions on rice.

Sara Lee Schupf is an actual person though, the daughter of the bakery’s founder Charles Lubin but now a person of significance in her own right.

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How original.

Wherever House Toll goes, so to go the Elves of Keebler.

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This has numerous audio recordings of (what are apparently) radio ads— frustratingly, there’s no date, but I’d guess late 1930s to 1940s. They are ridiculously racist.