A Shill for Big Bacon

From such humble roots can a campaign be born.

When I heard about the Burger King Bacon Sundae a couple weeks ago, I sent a single tweet saying I'd hoped it would come to New Zealand. 

Bacon Sundae? Please tell me that this will come to NZ Burger Kings. I promise to buy one. Maybe more than one. j.mp/M4FbbP
— Eric Crampton (@EricCrampton) June 13, 2012

A week later, a reporter for the Herald on Sunday hit me on Twitter asking why I wanted to try the bacon sundae. I sent the reporter an email saying that maple syrup goes well with both bacon and ice cream, so it's not crazy to think bacon and ice cream could go well together. And, the bacon sundae had the added advantage of annoying the sorts of people who it's useful to annoy now.

So the Herald wrote:

Here, Eric Crampton from Christchurch has been campaigning on Twitter for its sale in New Zealand.

"I'd never thought of putting bacon and ice cream together but it makes sense - maple syrup makes bacon taste better and it goes really well with ice cream too," he told the Herald on Sunday.

"And a bacon ice cream sundae annoys all the sorts of people who really need to be annoyed from time to time."

I hadn't really thought I was campaigning. I hadn't sent pleading letters to BK, or stood outside BK with placards, or put out press releases, or put up a whole pile of blog posts with regression analyses purporting to demonstrate that the interaction effect of bacon and ice cream yields hedons* the likes of which would make all of Doug Sellman's nightmares of food addictions seem a pleasant daydream. But, the article was fun.

Then I saw Michele A'Court's piece in this weekend's Christchurch Press (not online).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the States, you can still get a fast-food chain bacon sundae – ice cream with bacon bits smeared with chocolate and caramel sauce, garnished with a strip of deep fried bacon. It’s been described by one appalled nutritionist as ‘‘15 teaspoons of sugar with some pig in it’’.

There’s a guy in Christchurch campaigning to bring it here. I admire his chutzpah – if that’s not an indelicate word to use when discussing bacon. He is quoted as saying not only does it sound like a great flavour combo, but its very existence will annoy ‘‘the sorts of people who really need to be annoyed from time to time’’. See comment from nutritionist above.

I may well try one. Or a small portion of one. And bring the rest home for this dude in my lunch box.

Hmm. While I want to try one, I think I'd prefer making my own to eating somebody else's leftovers. I don't even like eating stuff my kids have pecked at.

Then Colin Peacock at MediaWatch wondered how much of a campaign there really can be if it's just one guy from Christchurch and a student in Auckland. Indeed. Especially when the guy from Christchurch isn't even really campaigning.

But I still want a bacon sundae. If Burger King brings it to New Zealand, I'll even try one. But I fiercely defend my independence: if it doesn't taste as mindblowingly awesome as I expect, I'll tweet the appropriate meh.

* You can't actually count hedons. If I tried putting a t-statistic on that kind of thing, McCloskey should have me shot. Utility is ordinal!