So close, and yet so far.

I'm sure if your budget is anything like mine that you have purchased the "Off Brand" of some product at the store. If your budget isn't like mine, then an "Off Brand" is the product that tries to be the "Name Brand" product, usually made by the store you are shopping at. Target, Wal-Mart, and your local Asian market have perfect examples of what I am talking about.

Recently I got some Off Brand floss from Target. It looked like all the other flosses, (must not be too tough to match since all floss is is pieces of string). The package looked like all the other ones, with "Mint Flavor" written on it. The only difference was that it was cheaper. Score right? Wrong. Some wise guy at the Off Brand factory dipped the floss in latex balloon flavor instead mint. ...And of course you don't know that until it is your mouth. Couldn't he at least have made it taste like the string attached to the balloon?

Having the budget I have, I didn't want to get a new one until this one ran out. Thankfully once that one ran out, my mom had some extras... Unfortunately her's was packaged by the same wise guy.

Not my first, but probably my worst experience with Off Brands was back when I wouldn't eat anything else but cereal (which was pretty much up until last week), during my rebellious 6-11 year old days. Since cereal is so expensive, especially the ones with the great cartoons and sugar on them, aka the only ones I would eat, my mom decided to pull a fast one. I don't really remember why I didn't go with her to the store, maybe this whole thing wouldn't have happened if I would have, but the next day I was pulling out the cereal for breakfast and my mom said we had Lucky Charms. Very enticing gimmick. So I reached up for the cereal and grabbed the most colorful one. As a kid of 6-11 years old, I could tell right away that this wasn't Lucky Charms, there was no Irish guy. Everything else was pretty close, the bits and marshmallows looked about the same on the box, but it was under water themed with a scuba guy. And scuba guy was crazy looking. Besides, the box said something along the lines of "Buried Treasure."

"This isn't Lucky Charms," I said to my mom.

"Well, it's pretty close."

No it wasn't. After pouring a huge bowl of it, the stuff didn't look or smell like the Irishman's. Let me tell you, it was the worst cereal my 6-11 year old taste buds had ever tasted. That was one treasure that should have stayed buried! And the dirt that covered probably would have tasted better. It was disgusting.

My mom made me eat the whole thing because of how much I would have "wasted" for pouring so much in. What a trick! I should've known she was planning for it to be terrible.

Now I know it may sound like I am exaggerating how bad it was, but a couple years later my mom tried the same ploy on my youngest brother, he couldn't eat anymore after awhile. I asked mom, and decided I would finish it for him. I remembered just how bad it was after about two or three bites. Yeah, I couldn't finish it either, and chucked it. I think that second time was when I was 13.

Product labels always have hilarious mistakes or just terrible writing on them, the Asian market is good example of both. One time our family received food from a Chinese friend and the name of the product translated was something like, "Black Ear Tree Fungus." Mmm, delicious. A couple weeks later I was going threw the cupboard looking for something to eat, "Hmm, no one has eaten of these yet?" Gee, I should've asked why we didn't thank them and then chuck it the second the left.

As people are trying to become healthy, haha ok that's funny, they check the labels before they buy the food to see exactly what is in the food their buying. Once again Off Brand companies were ahead of the game and decided to skip a step; instead of having a clever name like "Lucky Charms" for example, the name would be "Sweet Sugar High Fructose Corn-syrup Artificial Flavor (for additional ingredients see side of the box) Crunch Cereal." Another example of this might be a chocolate bar with the name of "Coco butter-Butter-Walnut-Peanut butter-Milk-Milk Chocolate Syrup-Added Fructose-...Did I mention butter?" and the name goes on. Pretty soon we're going to have to have bigger chocolate bars just so that the name can fit on the plastic wrapping. But hey I don't mind bigger chocolate bars.

Speaking of which, then there are just weird things written on the packaging like "Fun Size" candy bars. That's ironic...the bar is smaller! Keep trying to be healthy, haha healthy isn't fun. Haha. I saw a bottle of Windex that said, "Economy Size." Wait, does that mean the bottle is bigger or smaller than before?

But to go back to what I was saying a little earlier, my family once got some chocolate chips cookies from Stater Bros. On the top it said Made with Real Chocolate Chips. Gee, I hope so. Can you have chocolate chip cookies without real chocolate chips? It's pretty sad that they had to advertise their cookies by informing people that they had real chocolate chips. I can't imagine what the products without real chocolate chips' names must have looked like if they were like the other Off Brands. How did they cover up not having real chocolate chips in chocolate chip cookies?

Well, aren't you glad that I posted a drawing? I even had a book long post to go with it!!! I am on fire!! Hold on let me get the fire extinguisher, wait I can't tell if that thing on the wall is it...the name is too long.