Making Fun of Aldi Brands (Filler)

(Click here to jump to the recommended song, Floral Shoppe by Macintosh Plus! No, seriously!)

I am openly admitting that this is a filler article.

Picture a Benjamin Button-type scenario except instead of aging you have running out of ideas. That's basically me. Instead of running out of ideas over time, I'm starting out with filler material and waiting until I can finally get to the good stuff.

If you're familiar with Aldi, you'll know it as a very cheap grocery store chain with a LOT of store brands- which I'm pretty sure is how they're so cheap.

I find many of the names of these brands pretty stupid, and since they're technically food related I thought making fun of them would be acceptable blog material.

DISCLAIMER: This is a joke article. Don't take it too seriously.

 MOSER ROTH/CHOCEUR

Why does Aldi have two brands of chocolate? My guess is the company wanted to distinguish between their crappy chocolate and their good one. These are Choceur and Moser Roth respectively.

 

Choceur sounds vaguely French but isn't even a real French word. The closest word to Choceur in French, at least according to Reverso Context, is Choeur, meaning choir or chorus. Google Translate says it means "shocker", which would make the brand name a weird pun at best.

The name Moser-Roth came from two people's surnames, like many other companies. It's a German company that actually goes as far back as the 1800s. The short story is that Roth merged with Moser to create Moser-Roth. I got that information from Wikipedia, but the sources for that article are in German, so I'll just take their word for it for now. Based on the history (and taste) of the chocolate, it seems like a legit company.

 

I can personally recommend Moser-Roth. It's got a nice bitterness and has some amount of complexity and snap. I usually get the regular 70%, so that's where my opinion comes from.

But Choceur? It's a fake name that I'm pretty sure was chosen to "sound French", and the chocolate is crap. If I want something gooey and overly sweet, I'm just gonna get some caramel. Or raisins, for that matter.

MAMA COZZI

My mom has been buying these frozen pizzas for years just to have cheap dinners in a pinch. But one time my critical-brain started thinking "hey... so what does Cozzi actually mean?"

 

I looked to my good friend Reverso Context again, and it didn't have a real translation. Instead it implied Cozzi was simply an Italian surname. Other websites confirm this.

At least it's an actual thing, I guess, but it still sounds like one of those attempts to sound foreign. It's entirely possible the branding team wanted to name the frozen pizzas after someone named Cozzi. I'm just making it up, though.

On a semi-related note, there's a Southern pizza chain called Gatti's. Gatti means "cats" in Italian, but it was also the maiden name of the founder's wife.

SPECIALLY SELECTED

I really hate it when companies blatantly try to design names to make the product sound all fancy. I get that you want to separate your "fancy" bread from your "regular" bread, but dude. It's bread.

 

Specially Selected implies some kind of exclusivity. Like, "Aren't you glad something this unique and fancy is that much more affordable than those other stores? But don't tell anyone else. It's just for you."

There's boujee, and then there's fake boujee. Gag.

 

FRIENDLY FARMS/HAPPY FARMS

 Now I really don't understand why there are two of them. They're both brands of dairy products, so what's the point in giving them slightly different names?

 

The overly "nice" names bring up thoughts of a Crapsaccharine farm where the cows stand in a cramped space, being force-fed corn while constantly hooked up to a milking machine and collectively pooping into a vat below. Look, everyone! We're friendly! We're happy! Pay no attention to the depressed bovines behind the curtain!

 

Other than that, these have some of the least impressive branding out of all Aldi products. Happy Farms sometimes uses cow imagery, which is a nice touch I guess, but Friendly Farms went with a generic "red ribbon" design.

 

Photo Credit: aldi.us

Photo Credit: aldi.us

 

WINKING OWL

What do you think of when you hear this name? Because I'm drawing a blank. Maybe it's the name of a cozy, small-town bar.

 

No, it's actually Aldi's brand of wines. If you ask me, "Winking Owl" doesn't exactly scream wine. Playful and family-friendly, maybe.

If I were Aldi, I would've chosen something along the lines of "Royal Vine". It still sounds like a name they'd come up with, and at least when you hear it you go, "Ah. Wine." Not, "What is this, a brand of nightlights?"

Not to mention the wine itself doesn't have a great reputation. They're not all bad, but there are most certainly better wines you can get at Aldi.

To be fair, the bottles have pretty cute art. I like the watercolor/paper-cutout style, and I even like how the owls have different designs so they can feign personality. Though the one green, non-horned owl is out of place. Were they afraid to copy Duolingo?

Photo credit: mashed.com

CONCLUSION

Most stores have just one store brand that covers all their generic products. Walmart has Great Value, CVS has Gold Seal, et cetera.  

The fact that Aldi has so many brands they try to make "different" and "recognizable" makes it feel like they're trying to trick their customers into thinking they're buying from different companies. It gives me the same vibe as Unilever when I walk into a store, look at all the labels and find that nearly ALL the products are owned by the same company.

 

At the same time, I admire that Aldi does something different from other stores in trying to create different designs for each brand, instead of simply using a white box with one or two other colors and some text. 

 

My favorite examples of this are the art for their cereal boxes and Clancy's Stackerz, as well as the aforementioned wine. Their cereal mascots are ugly and bland, but they at least make it look like they're trying. And the Stackerz designs are actually pretty cute, with their little doodle faces.

 

Photo credit: instacart.com

 

 

Photo credit: aldi.us

 

 

 Due to the almost anti-corporate nature of this post, I'll leave you off with an iconic vaporwave song... which is also infamous for being some older song but slowed down. Oh well.