Growing up, you probably felt a little “fancy” when you wore a specific designer label. Polo pony or alligator, anyone? You likely got the same sense of fancy from certain foods you ate, whether they were special treats at home, or something you saw in another family’s house, or just spotted on TV and dreamed of eating.
Marketing “Fancy”: “Pardon Me, Do You Have Any Grey Poupon?”
Grey Poupon Commercial
Food companies did a great job at positioning food that was not fancy, to say the least, but the labels made them look fancy. Maybe the commercial showed “high-class” folks enjoying the food, or in the case of Grey Poupon mustard, enjoying in the back of your limousine, which is kind of weird.
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Perhaps the food took you to a different place where people were naturally more elegant, which was almost always somewhere in Europe. As a kid you thought that even fancy kids drank International Coffees after school while enjoying a nice baguette with Nutella. This all just made sense.
General Mills International Coffee
But let’s not forget: the one thing that made you feel most fancy had nothing to do with adventuring in Europe or enjoying forbidden foods in the back of your limo. It was more about being an adult. Whether that meant enjoying a nice grape juice in a wine glass or washing it all down with an after-dinner mint (they were always gross), prancing around like Mom, Dad, and your very well-traveled Uncle Pete at one of their parties was as fancy as one could get.
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From Babybels to Toblerone chocolate, take a nostalgic bite out of these ‘fancy’ childhood foods that made us feel way more elegant than we really were.
Gallery Credit: Stephen Lenz
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Gallery Credit: Meg Dowdy