Roo Reynolds - What’s Next?

Whatevers

Posted by Roo - 16/02/08 at 12:02:51 am

Alice was kind enough to pick up a packet of ‘Whatevers’ for me from her local ASDA. Now I can be hip. Or groovy. Or whatever it is the kids say these days.

According to the ASDA press release from last year

With words like bothered, mint and minger becoming part of British culture ASDA today (27 April 2006) announced it would be selling its own variety of old favourites ‘Lovehearts’ albeit with a more contemporary slant.

While the phrases are certainly more up-to-date than Lovehearts (which I’m pretty sure got an update to include “fax me” and other nonsense), they’re not exactly appetising.

If we’re celebrating contemporary British culture, it’s rather a shame that it can be summed up with “as if”, “bothered”, “chav”, “in it!”, “minger”, “mint”, “proper”, “respect”, “whatever” and “you what?”. There must be better phrases, surely? On the plus side,

ASDA will be updating the sweets on a regular basis so any customer with suggestions to modern day expressions that are missing should contact their local store or ASDA’s customer services department on tel: 0500 100 055.

My first impression is that I’m not sure why “chav sweets” (visible in both of the above photographs) made the cut; it’s a bit self-referential for my liking, and breaks the patterns of the phrase being something you can say to someone as you hand over a powdery fizzy bit of candy to someone. And why does “in it!” contain a space? Shouldn’t it be “i’nit!” or even just “innit!”? In fact, while we’re complaining over the finer details, shouldn’t it be a question rather than an exclamation? Innit?

In any case, thanks for the sweets Alice. Proper mint, innit?

Or something.