Adult Food Review: Heller's Christmas Chipolata

Behold, the bringer of controversy

It sometimes seems these days corporations are more interested in pissing people off with ill conceived novelty products than actually making money. And, by and large, judging by popular millennial echo chamber 'Twitter', many companies are doing a pretty good job. This became most apparent to me this evening on my purchase of Heller's new Christmas Chipolata, a 'delicious, fruity sausage' promising hints of Apple, sultana, currant and mixed citrus peel.

On my way home from work tonight, I popped in to New World for a quick sausage purchase. Seeing a new Heller's festive product, with the 'Free Farmed Pork' sticker emblazoned across the front, I decided I'd be game to try anything once and grabbed them. When I got home, I realised the reason the pork had been free farmed was to give the pigs at least a shred of dignity before being made into such an abomination of a meat product. For these Christmas Chipolata contained fruit mince, one of the most polarising food products of Twitter. Seriously, look at the ingredients!

Also: Festive gold meat tray!

Still, I'd bought the things, so, at least purely for science, I may as well try the things so others may avoid my mistake.

The sausages certainly looked the part, slim, pork coloured fingers, with small little nodules of fruit protruding through the thin skin. Into the oven on bake for thirty minutes, possibly slowly too long, and they still looked not too different from your standard pork sausage. Scent wise, the pork strongly came through as well, but with weird undertones of orange rind and currants. Cutting the Chipolata in half, I was greeted by little nuggets of fruit peering back at me.

Taste wise, it was almost a disappointment how much these tasted just like your average pork sausage. Sure, occasionally you might catch a shrivelled currant or a hint of citrus between your teeth, but I found the maligned fruit mince to be almost disconcertingly absent in taste. The texture was there occasionally, which added a strange sensation of eating a meat product with little squishy bits in the middle. That said, it wasn't really true fruit mince present, but singular pieces of diced up fruit. That said, I'd say If you wanted a true taste of what was promised on the packaging, I'd probably advise buying a bag of homebrand pre-cooked pork bangers, and chucking in a pack of raisins.

So do these sausages really deserve to be so hated? Probably not. But do they really warrant a special packaging and a hefty price tag of $1.33 a sausage? Again, probably not. There's better products on the market with much less gimmicky tastes. But they've got people talking Hellers, and that's probably going to help them bring home the bacon.

4.5/10

Music review: The Wiggles: Carnival of the Animals

As you probably already know, The Wiggles released a new album last week.

Toot toot, chuga chuga, big red pay cheque

And, not content with simply living off the songs written by their predecessors (and some would say betters), Simon, Lachy and Emma have perhaps turned in their laziest work yet. Not that I would use that as a criticism. In fact, as the Wiggles juggernaut rolls on, they may be on to something: getting somebody else to write the songs, somebody else to play the songs, and get away with, at most, just talking over the music. In fact, if the name of the last track is anything to go by, I'm not sure Lachy even does that. But he'll still be there, collecting the royalty cheque no doubt.

What the Wiggles have done here is to take a pre-existing piece of music, the eponymous Carnival of the Animals, by the original Sepia Wiggle, Camille Saint-Saëns, originally composed as a musical joke. An to be fair, it was probably hilarious af coming from this man. He intended it never to be published during his lifetime, lest it detract from his serious image. 

Get Ready, To Wiggle Your Moustache

In this edition, however, the Wiggles have added their own quaint touch. Simon 'Red' Wiggle (the only Wiggle I have had the honour of meeting), has written short rhymes to accompany each of the 14 movements, each ably played by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. I haven't listened in depth to the content of these spoken lyrics, but hearing that each verse ends rhyming 'way' with 'very day', I'm sure they would easily rank up with the songwriting of No Doubt, or any other contemporary act insisting girl and world sound a bit similar. Unfortunately, Simon's delivery lets him down: not quite keeping up with the tempo of the backing track in places, I fear, if he were to try his hand at MCing,

Si would be in danger of Vanilla Ice cooking him like a pound of bacon.

 Hot Potato melts Vanilla Ice

Another personal touch added by the Wiggles consists of renaming several pieces, to make them more acceptable to the modern age. Nowhere is this more noticeable than movement number 10 as 'Tweet Tweet Tweet,' an apparent ode to the 140 character microblog. Presumably all the birds within are small and blue.

They were going to call the verse Angry Birds, but twitter's more or less the same thing 

The chance for a few new musical jokes, however, I feel have been missed. Saint-Saëns had originally composed movement number 12, 'Fossils', as a riotous parody of several French folk songs which were just so old, kinda like if Weird Al Yankovich made a song called 'Yo' Mamma' and it was just slightly altered songs from the 1950s. What better opportunity to subtly take a dig at old Jeff or Murray than by asking if they wanted to do a guest spot? Lol forever. And  The People With Long Ears was originally written as a sly shot at music critics who had savaged Ol' Camille's recent works, not for him the Meat Loaf style of stopping mid concert to tell poor reviewers to GGF. Why would the Wiggles not try and insert the implication that, say, bitter rivals Hi5 aren't donkeys by inserting a few of their songs?  

Dicks

All in all, however, Simon, the other Wiggles, and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra have turned in a strong effort, easily providing a diversion for a half hour car trip. I look forward to their upcoming collaborations with other composers and bands. Hopefully including current family favourite AC/DC.

After all, it's a long way to the cot if you want to rock a doll.

4.5/5