Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Souper Meal Review



This is the Nissin Souper Meal. Here are my thoughts on it in bullet point form in attempt to minimize risk of conveyance of my thoughts being influenced by language use and to prevent any humor as a result of a clever language use, because I feel writing an analysis in paragraph form distracts a reader from the actual information and ideas present and restricts everything to rules held by language and expectations about how language should be written. I have no intention of misleading a reader through use of a flowing writing style.

- The cup is shaped so that it is larger at the top and smaller at the bottom. Clearly, this is because of how when people eat food, they tend to be hungry for about 90% of what they see in front of them. While eating this, the person will then initially be deceived into thinking there is slightly more food than there actually is and therefore be hungry for the amount of food that the cup actually contains.

- The name of the product, "Souper Meal" at first appears to be misspelled, but the reason for it being written this way is actually the word "Souper" is a french word, meaning "to have supper", so by reading the title of the product, you are being commanded by its designer to eat this meal for supper.

- By putting "Meal" as the latter word, the designer is trying to make a point about man's need and desire for food as an end.

- The picture of the cup of instant noodles on the front of the label shows it in a way that I am not used to seeing it - ready to eat and with large floating words on top.

- The general layout of the design elements shows an artistic liveliness and conveys a message about food that no other food item package design to date has yet done.

- The Souper Meal tastes all right.

2 comments:

Scott Bay said...

How dare you attribute the product's name to the French! Clearly, "souper" is a portmanteau of "soup" and "super" - a very American thing to do! (Even if portmanteau itself is a French word...)

Unknown said...

Supper Meal? A French play on words you say? Way to over analyze...and miss the mark. Jackass.