Just before returning to live in Romania again for a spell, I engaged in a rare activity: watching television.

It’s an uncommon pastime for me, as I tend to relegate habitual TV to the mindless. I don’t even own one of those infernal contraptions. Nonetheless, on this particular occasion, I managed to find myself in front of the idiot box when something very creative grabbed my full attention.

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What a clever advertisement.

The rich visual treatment was in National Geographic documentary style: exotic locations, ethnic garb, facial diversity. The audio track using a live orchestra to set a mysterious mood, introduce excitement by drum beat, and build a miniature epic crescendo. Well-cast voice over with a compelling script presenting the intriguing proposition.

If a person had never heard of Brand X or Brand Y, both of whom competed in manufacturing Product Z, nor had that person ever heard of seen that product before in their lives was asked to compare the primary products of the two brands, which product would they prefer?

This new Whopper Virgins campaign is an innovative evolution on a long tradition of direct comparative advertisements.

Last century, the boob tube brought The Pepsi Challenge to the world. The golden age of radio brought hilarious shows like The Bickersons, sponsored by the Philip Morris Nose Test. In 1930, Sears ran one of the earliest known comparative ads in print, touting their tires over specific competitors.

Burger King is adding their name to the history of advertising with Whopper Virgins by doing what’s not been seen before. Instead of trying to convince people to make a choice between products they know, the company makes a greater effort to actually seek out people who have never experienced, seen, heard of the brand, the product, or category. Total virgins.

The carefully-crafted aura of scientific explorers at the remote edges of rural humanity seeks to frame the advertised results as being untouched by influences, natural and pure. Hence, we’re to believe that all things being equal, people love the taste of the Whopper over McDonald’s Big Mac.

It’s not hard to believe. Mickey D’s slaps a minuscule disc of meat into a fryer. Yech! If nothing else, Burger King grills their bigger portion of ground beef over an actual flame to impart a little smokey char flavor while allow the fat to drip out. Whether you’re a burger fan or not, the difference should be clear.

But what Burger King attempts to say is that product knowledge and brand attachment are meaningless for taste. It’s an interesting pitch.

While it’s likely that the full, actual results probably do show most tested persons did indicate a preference for the Whopper, it’s also probable that we’ll never the finite details tabulating exactly how much of a difference there was. For example, it’s entirely possible that 40% chose Burger King, 35% chose McDonald’s, and 25% did not register any distinction.

One might go so far as to speculate the country folks were being polite in selecting the least worst food.

The masterful stroke of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the creative agency behind the campaign, was to go the extra mile in filming a pseudo-documentary with “behind the scenes” action showing some character development, tactical planning, and a non-scientific cultural exchange of gastronomical diplomacy.

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What’s the impact?

You feel like you’re watching trustworthy people conduct a fair test. You see rural farmers dressed in traditional clothing mystified by first sight of a product we’ve been conditioned to believe common.

You come to agree the unbiased results heavily indicate the Whopper is the decisive favorite. You feel good watching the epicurean ambassadors of America go off the beaten path to share one of our treasures with folks who’ve never had the opportunity.

And so you don’t feel they’re elitist, the film closes with the American team enamored with eating delicious food they‘ve never seen before made by the villagers.

A superbly executed comparative advertising campaign.

But that never stops hack writers from click whoring with made-up instacontroversies to stir up a bees nest over whether the ads are “exploiting indigenous people” as though the very phrasing had any relevant meaning whatsoever in this context.

These types of cranky nutjobs actually compare this to putting a gun to the head of starving people, a notion which would indicate the pundits are completely and utterly batshit insane. The drivel and nonsense spewing forth from their acidic reactionary tongues shows they’ve never been to the places shown or talked with the rural people shown.

All the people in the video work hard, love their lives, have plenty of food, and enjoyed the experience unlikely to come again in many of their lives. It seems clear to me some of the bizarre commentators haven’t ever visited the Hmong or been around farmers in Maramureş.

The thing is, my friends, is I generally expect overreaction by fringe elements out-of-touch with reality, usually because they care too much about rescuing others to bother getting their information right about the situation they cavalierly thrust themselves in the midst of.

What I’m not quite accustomed to yet is Romanian reaction.

It’s not that I’ve never seen chest-thumping national pride cause uneducated Romanian youths to lose all perspective over a joke before. Just you try approaching a sports bar in cartierul Astra la Braşov while wearing a Hungarian football jersey, waving a Turkish flag, proclaiming sarmale sucks, and gesturing provocatively in the crotchular vicinity, while urinating on a Dacia 1310.

But the supposedly educated marketing and advertising bloggers? Lemme tell ya, these guys are out to lunch.

Take, for example, the hysterical insecure bleating of the hoi polloi with an inferiority complex pretending to be business professionals over at Marketeer.ro — which I noticed happens to use a nationalist green as its dominant color much like Noua Dreapta, Partidul Pentru Patrie, and Partidul Noua Generaţie (PNG-CD), though I’m sure it’s merely ill-advised coincidence.

These kids are totally out of sorts, jumping up and down like someone just called their favorite dollie ugly.

The original poster, Doru Panaitescu, starts off by stepping firmly in a big, steaming pile of cacat with a seething claim the video was shot in a Calaraşi village with a disproportionately high percentage of Roma inhabitants. Grabbing factoids from thin air, the racist implication clearly being that the hated ţigani are in some way to blame for inferred degradation of the mighty and honorable Romanian pride.

Hogwash!

Of course, he’s later corrected by the simple fact that the Whopper Virgins video featured “Transylvanian farmers” from Maramureş, just as Burger King truthfully stated all along. Sorry, Vadim Tudor, there was no grand conspiracy to inflect harm on overly nationalistic Romanian youth. No secret filming locations to undermine national confidence. No need to get one’s patriotic BVDs all in a twisted bunch.

The piece at Marketeer continues with efforts to bolster the self-importance of Romania, while dismissing Thailand as nothing more than a jungle and Greenland as some kind of ice cube. The author goes out of his way to belittle the other countries by somehow insulting their natural terrain, although CP+B and BK never made any such innuendo.

I love Romania but let’s get real, people.

In the commercial, the specific countries were essentially irrelevant to the point they tried to make, so much so that Romania is not even verbally mentioned, whereas the insecure writer at Marketeer somehow feels the need to awkwardly claim Romania is superior because it has… history. Does he mean to say Thailand and Greenland do not have history?

The blog spouts more drivel about the village with apparently too many ethnic minorities, even though it’s irrelevant. Then, there’s brief, non-academic generalities about fast food. And then half-hearted, mealy-mouthed, suggested about a possible protest demonstration, as if that will do anything other than point out the absurdity of participants.

It’s nearly laughable, really, except there’s a small bundle of like-minded folks egging each other on in the comments with inflamed reactions such as labeling this advertising as “cultural rape” and a few raised fists shouting for some kind of boycott initiative.

If these people represented the future of business professionalism, then Romania would be a joke.

One typical comment, from Misha, expressed disdain that mighty and glorious Romania be included in an American television commercial that also showed Thailand and Greenland. She’s upset about jungles and glaciers, you see. Her only conclusion is that since she is from Transylvania and does not recognize a Transylvanian accent in the video, therefore Americans suck.

That’s teachin’ em, Einstein.

Someone else thinks “we” should buy Burger King an atlas. It’s a little hard to grasp the deep intellectualism of this proposal, but I gather the idea is to show BK a map so they can learn where Romania is… even though they were obviously already here.

And then you have silly ideas like threatening to send emails to Burger King with a link to the “World Without Romania” beer commercial on YouTube, as if the corporate executives watching video on their iPhones will be driven to tears and buy lots of Ursus afterward.

No matter that the video was clearly produced only to create brand loyalty among Romanian nationalists in the first place, by appealing to insecure desires for recognition and exploiting a sense of lacking self-identity. The rest of world outside of Romania basically never saw it.

Why do these people decide to feel insulted? You’d have to make a very strong effort to feel slighted by the commercial.

Don’t worry, children, you can always get together with your angsty teen friends to make a video response. But it’s your own fault if you ultimately end up taking a really funny concept and creating it in a way that pretty much sucks.

Since that didn’t work out too well, if you promise to stop crying and sniffling then I’ll let you make fun of rural cowboys in Texas. That’s sure to perk you right up and make you feel you “got even” with someone. Although I do hope won’t mind when I laugh right along with you. Afterall, there’s nothing for a mature person to feel insulted over.

Quit your hypersensitive bitching and bellyaching. If you’d shut your pie hole long enough to catch your breath and stop hyperventilating, you might remember that none of this is about you. Or about Romania. It’s only a televsion ad. Aimed at American audiences. About selecting a hamburger. And making that choice because some people living in far away rural places who have no idea what a burger is might choose the same burger the advertiser wants you to buy.

I suppose there will come a time when perhaps a few of those people will realize how silly their reaction was. Hopefully those poor fools will change their perspective and come around to a more nuanced understanding of life around them and their place in the universe.

Anyone can say something stupid when they don’t think about issues before speaking. A great many people have done so.  Just not me.

In the broader picture, I tend to see wisdom in some of the comments posted to an advertising blog I read, where the more enlightened thoughts were about how overly defensive reactions of the few can mar what is ultimately a creative way of showing those differences that makes us all the same.

It’s probably simple nostalgia, but I recall Christmas being quite distinct and separate from other holidays.

There was a Halloween sugar overdose in late October.  A full month later came the unending amounts of turkey during Thanksgiving.  Then was a 30-day mad dash to put lights on the house and presents under the tree for Christmas.

Somewhere along the line, my perceptions improved.  Or the adeptness of soulless marketing shills.  Either way, I noticed that increasingly Christmas would “begin” immediately after Thanksgiving, as every shop in town immediately through up their decorations the very day after Thanksgiving as if to psychologically induce passers-by to empty their wallets for Christmas beginning immediately.

Later in life, I witnessed a change that was definitely new.  Some brazen store marketers would cross the line and beging putting up Christmas decorations a week or so before Thanksgiving, as a way of planting the seeds for the big After-Thanksgiving-Day Sale… which later became known as Black Friday (while a financial etymology, it nonetheless suggests the death of Xmas joy at the hands of blindingly overcommercialized saleshouting).

Last October, in Houston, Texas, I shook my head in disbelief as store after store rolled out the Christmas lights and other Santa-oriented decorations.  Before Thanksgiving.  Before Halloween. Yes, apparently, folks should be buying crap made in China for a full 3 months these days, just to keep up with the nonexistant Joneses of our TV-driven imagination.

But here in Romania, it’s the opposite situation.

Christmas is unable to be disturbed by Halloween or Thanksgiving, since they do not exist here.  And the merchants are only still at the beginning stages of overhyping the buying public into a comatose state of consumerism.

And yet, change creeps in.  Only, it is from the other direction, my friends.  Witness the encroachment found at a local grocery store in cartierul meu.

Uite.

It seems some Romanians cannot help but continue to embarrass themselves when marketing on the international stage.

They cling to the preposterous notion that Americans and other anglos are somehow captivated by a fictious character from 19th century Irish literature, namely Dracula.

While it may be fascinating for depressed 13 year old teenie boppers, I can assure you the rest of us don’t care at all.  Attempts to solicit commerce from adults by associating Romania with vampirism will be a sad failure netting a handful of bozos.

And yet it continues.

In the United States, the typical wine buyer has never heard of Romanian wine.   The few who have encountered it generally did so during the Halloween season at retailers promoting thematic oddities, such as a cheap Dracula wine and a subpar line of Vampire wines (whose ridiculously shallow owner eventually abandoned Romanian grapes altogether, to further fatten his purse).

Extending the farce, one can purchase from wine distributor Dracula Wines (a company so successful they apparently feel the need to run Google text ads on their website to make an extra nickel).

Romanian wine is, in effect, a joke to Americans.  Nice job, people.

Amazingly, it gets worse.

In Houston, I made a nuisance of myself by asking every grocer or liquor store I strolled into whether they carried Romanian wine or could special order some Palinca.  Nearly all were dumbfounded.  Romania makes wine?  What is pah-lean-kah?

However, at a Spec’s store in November, a chipper employee promptly responded in the affirmative and directed me to this tragic deposit of unsold “Halloween wine” gimmickery.

It’d be easy to justify paying more for a decade old bottle of wine, if it were given a rather rustic look compared to a standard bottle of wine.  Like treasure unearthed from a long-forgotten cavern below some WWII wreckage.  Everyone seems to admire its charm, wondering what you paid for it, and how it tastes.

Neither of which I’ll tell you. Buy your own.

The other week I moseyed on down to the local Supermarket Primavara on Calea 13 Septembrie in Sectorul 5 to pick up some essential supplies from my alma mater, Rahova.

While strolling down the back aisle, I was bitten by infatuation in the frozen food section at the sight of a sadly crushed box referencing Tex-Mex (a cuisine which I consider native to my person, but which is perceived as an exotic foreign specialty when in Romania).

Nail in the coffin? It was on sale. Cha-ching!

Now, one might surmise the crushed state of the box might be related to the offer. Or one could hypothesize the discount as a consequence of the nearing expiration date.

Then again, one should also factor in the possibility of lackluster sales influencing the algorithm driving decisions in the product marketing department at Maheso.

Did I mention promoţie? Yeah, so you already know I picked one up.

Revel in the sophisticated brand positioning: Recetas del Mundo. Gander at the fonts, the feathering, the shadows, and the vibrant color palette. Witness the dinnerware better than yours. Experience the exotic background imagery taking you on a thrilling mental excursion to old Mexico. Marvel at the product photography which surely must accurately depict the food within.

Bet you’re getting hungry now.

Menu Mexicano Para 2 sounds like an imported treat for the romantic couple on a budget. I have little doubt this is the probable intention of the marketing folks. To invoke that light-hearted sense of adventure for the home diner.

While Americans may be puzzled at the usage of the word menu, which in English refers to a list of options usually presented in softcover book format at restaurants (and has been adopted by computer science), Romanians recognize the meaning of menu in Europe as being essentially a pre-selected combination of food (such as “combo meal” is used in US fast food).

Before opening the package, I surveyed the packing list and directions.

Let’s see. Two… tacos? Mmm, don’t exactly look like tacos on the cover. Six golden brown chicken nuggets. The intrigue began to build as I had no idea how these chicken nuggets could be considered “Tex-Mex,” since nuggets aren’t Texan fare (though you could, perhaps, extrapolate a distant relation to southern fried chicken… maybe).

In any event, chicken nuggets have absolutely no connection to Mexican cuisine. Sure, the socratic method could lead to musings about how the photography shows a nugget being dipped into salsa picante, which is a Mexican food. And therefore…

No. I’ll cut you off there. Not Mexican, not Texan, not Tex-Mex. Let us now move forward, having resolved any doubts as to the facts.

Ah, a notification about the heat of the spices used: medium hot. I suppose in Hollywood such a designation might indicate a relatively pleasing level of heat, but not so much as to detract from subtle flavors. Yet, this product was being marketed in Romania, where “medium hot” generally means it’s terribly bland but they’ve removed most of the ice cubes.

Having dialed down my expectations in the picante department, I hovered my pupils over the brief instructional highlights. Easy and Fast: 8 minutes in the microwave.

Bine, hai. I opened it up.

Perhaps past experience shouldn’t dictate expectations, but I had been anticipating the food to be neatly arranged in one of those seemingly ubiquitous microwavable trays.

Unorthodox presentation? Hey, we’re talking frozen, folks. Still, I did not imagine the individual components would all be individually wrapped as though mass-manufactured in various far flung plants. Oh…

Well, well, now… what’s all this, then? Bonusuri sau ceva de genu asta? It looks like the package contains 7 nugget pieces. That’s one more over the stated quota of six, on the front of the box. Yeehaw, Skippy. Should make up for some sins.

I’m not exactly blind, so let’s just get this out of the way. Those “tacos” don’t look like tacos. Nossir. Very much in the burrito vicinity, methinks.

Lest you call me on it, I must now turn to address my silence hereinsofar regarding the “salsa enchilada” advertised on the front of the box. What a big joke by the folks at Gedesco S.A. (manufacturers and marketers of the Maheso brand). I know what enchilada sauce is for, what it looks like, and what it tastes like.

How about the picture on the box cover? That packaging does not show enchilada sauce. Nor anything even remotely close to enchilada sauce. Instead the photos captures una cosa de salsa picante. False advertising or unfortunate mistake?

Whichever the case is, the box has been mislabeled and prospective Romanian consumers are left to rely on their own knowledge or experience to recognize the photo shows salsa picante, not enchilada sauce. Well, fortunately, I’ve been able to clear up the confusion for you.

Except, um… there appears to be yet another layer of disconnect. The wrapper around the salsa container declares itself not as enchilada sauce nor as salsa picante, but rather as something else entirely.

While I’m not a native speaker of Español, I have had the occasion or two to exercise mi lengua un poco. It is without hesitation that I can lay the truth down for you. There is no such thing as “Salsa Loca Para Nachos” in either Mexican cuisine nor Tex-Mex.

If your gut instinct senses cultural humor here, you’d be spot on. Ignoring the trees for the forest, the basic concept here is something like “Sos Nebun Pentru Straini.” Don’t laugh hard enough for your drink to come out of your nose — you’re the butt of the joke, fraţii.

On details, Americans will have to understand that only a minority of Europeans actually know what nachos are. For example, of those Romanians who have heard of nachos, most of them think it refers just to the tortilla chips because of the various erroneous misinformation around.

Let’s just say that when people who should know better, such as JW Marriot in București, help spread the inaccuracy, then it should be of little surprise to find the definition corrupted across the region.

On a recent trip to Praha, I was amused to find Nachos on the menu at Popo Cafe Petl and flabbergasted to receive an order of Doritos with parmesean cheese sprinkled on top and subsequently microwaved.

As you see, ignorance only drives things downhill.

In this case, the Maheso brand is simply preying on the lack of knowledge by propagating lowered expectations. Apparently this “crazy sauce” is intended for use with “nachos” tortilla chips. Which, as you no doubt guessed, are not included in the box.

Enchilada sauce turned to salsa picante turned to some kind of mystery sauce with a bogus name for chips not even included in the box. Switcheroo!

Okay. Microwave time.

I’d agree that around 8 minutes in the microunde was roughly correct. Except the mystery sauce stayed partially frozen and needed a little additional kick in the pants. The chicken nuggets came out alright, including the extra one. And our burritos… er, uh… “tacos” …survived the radiation.

Gata. Asculta. The charade cannot continue. It’s simply flat out impossible to pretend these are tacos. The contents are burrito and the tortilla folding hackjob is burrito-related.

Uite. A bean paste filling of dubious origin.

That, my friends, is a burrito. Which we’ve known from the start, but the verdict is beyond doubt. What’s even worse than renaming these burritos as “tacos” for marketing purposes is the huge difference between what they look like versus the box cover photo. Scroll up!

Where are the vegetables? The whole beans? The tender chunks of white meat chicken breast? Looks as though all the ingredients were ground into pate.

Yep. Taco, thy name is mass-manufactured frozen burrito. End of saga.

I trust my readers are able to negotiate the labyrinth, but I feel bad for the typical shopper in București who bumps into this product quite accidentally and ends up buying food which is, in fact, completely different from what they were sold.

At the risk of coming across as some high and mighty holyroller in regard to a frozen food product, it must be said one might easily argue this is a reasonable example of the lies which Autoritatea Naţională pentru Protecţia Consumatorilor should be aiming to prevent.

Frankly, Gedesco should be ashamed. They own the Maheso brand and make this Menu Mexicano product. They’re the source of all the errors and falsehoods. They’re effectively hoodwinking Romanian consumers. And it’s not from a lack of knowledge. The company should know better: they’re not from China or Georgia sau oriunde.

Damn it, they’re from Spain!

They should absolutely know how make proper Mexican food. And be able to readily adapt to Tex-Mex. Spanish cuisine is the culinary parent from which these derive. Where’s the pride? Where’s the effort? Where’s the employee sober enough to know a taco isn’t a burrito?

Scandalos.

Interesting. But, Romer!can, you haven’t told us how it tastes.

Gluttons for punishment, I see. Very well, buckle in and strap on a pair for the remainder of the story. If you read further, you’re asking for it.

The burritos were unappetizing. The tortilla came out a little on the stale side. And the way in which they wrapped the burrito provided a very substandard fill ratio. Much of the flavor was stale tortilla with occasional bursts of pasty weirdness. I cannot even name the spices used, as none were particularly recognizable.

But how about that salsa? I won’t claim it tasted like regurgitation as it clearly has far too much sugar to have been processed by an acidic human stomach. It was something like Romanian ketchup, only watered down and then re-fortified with additional sugar. Toss in the rare chunk of partially digested vegetable-based texture chunklet and I think you get the idea.

I couldn’t eat it.

Shall we end with the so-called Nuggets Tex-Mex? You probably wondered why the actual product had so many dark spots in the breadcrumbs, where as the packaing’s product photo shows a far more gentle portion. I think it was to disguise the taste of the dry meat, myself.

Yessireebob. Dry meat with a funky flavor covered in a too-thick breadcrumb coating made with a too-rich spice mix. The more I ate, the more my stomach was sending signals of displeasure back to the brain.

I tried to scrape off some the coating and isolate the meat. Such a distinct taste. Strange. Causing some kind of rejection by my stomach. Odd.

Once I’d cleaned my plate, dumped the uneaten muck in the lada de gunoi, and put my camera away, that’s when I sought to dispose of the box. Like you few who have read this far into the bowels of the tale, I must admit that curiosity got the best of me. Just as I was about to toss the package, I suddenly decided to look at the ingredients.

Mistake.

According to the nutritional disclosure, the chicken was listed as carne de ave. As the rumbling in my stomach began to churn, I thought that “bird meat” seemed somehow appropriate, given that chicken is fowl. Still, it plagued my mind.

I know the old wisdom of yesteryear’s travelers to Mexico used to include warnings such as don’t eat food marked as containing “carne” because that wasn’t specific enough to tell you what kind of meat. Only a fool would assume beef by default, when it doesn’t say beef.

The churn in my gut began to roll into a gurgling.

I was about to let the issue drop and just throw the garbage out, but I dared to glance once more even as three of five fingers had loosened their grip, leaving the box dangling precariously above the trash can. And then I saw it.

Carne de ave (carne de pollo,

Aha! There, you see, it must be a colloquialism of Barcelona to nonchalantly refer to chickens as fowl or birds. No big deal, except… there was a comma. A grammatical demarcation of additional information about the ingredients I had ingested and which were now roiling to full boil in my highly-displeased and near revolt digestive system.

Carne de ave (carne de pollo, carne de pavo).