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.
They could add “Fetch” as a British slang word, as defined in Mean Girls:
Gretchen: So Fetch!
Regina: What is fetch?
Gretchen: Oh, it’s like slang, from… England.
Amazing. But I agree: “IN IT!” with one N and an exclamation mark?? That’s really embarrassing. That’s like the way my parents used to say “Rupert’s favourite film is The Star Wars”
I just couldn’t find these at all in our local ASDA, I was most disappointed. I would have thought Farnborough was a largely captive market. Oh well. Were they just for Valentine’s Day or something?
I don’t think they were a valentines day one-off (they were announced nearly a year ago) but I might be wrong. I imagine Alice found these in Chandlers Ford, but I’ll check.
Solid!
Agree that these sound like someone’s dad came up with them.
I would suggest a more realistic alternative could be something like “What the *** are you looking at?” but I don’t think it’d fit.
These Are Ratttttttttttte Good But Ive Never Seen Them Before In My Life!!! Find Them Me!!!