The Great Stupid obviously know no bounds.
PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay has announced that “Cracker Jills” is now an official product, because popcorn and peanuts are obviously the way to celebrate women in sports. The snack will be available in ballparks, and as part of the pandering exercise, PepsiCo will donate $200,000 Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF).
Cracker Jills are no different in substance than the 125-year old classic Cracker Jack snacks, but the packages features five different representations of women on the special-edition bags. They represent the most populous ethnicities in the U.S. according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, because just representing just one woman to stand for all would be racist, or “exclusive” or something.I don’t care. I really don’t: Cracker Jacks were dead to me once they stopped putting real prizes in the box and started economizing on popcorn. It’s a crummy product now. Still, the degree of pandering and desperate virtue-signalling is so insincere, it’s nauseating. Consider:
- Crackerjack is a slang word meaning “of excellent quality” going back more than a century. It has nothing to do with gender, except that “jack” was a colloquialism for “sailor” around the same time. But “jack” means a lot of things, and has for a very long time.
- The logo for Crackerjacks has always been, in fact, a sailor, “Sailor Jack,” and his dog “Bingo,” who looks like a Jack Russell to me.
Note: “Sailor Jack,” not “Athlete Jack.” Pepsi could have decided to honor female members of the Navy, but that wouldn’t pander enough, I guess. Is it discriminatory to have a white, male cartoon character as a logo? That is clearly the theory, and based on the five “Jills” all human logos must include all genders, ethnicities and races, or they won’t be diverse and inclusive enough. - The timing of this is intended to coincide with the baseball season, because “Take Me out To The Ball Game” is played and often sung in most ballparks, and there is a famous reference to Crackerjacks:
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don’t care if I never get back.
It’s the worst lyric in the song: the stuff is “Cracker Jacks,” not “Jack” It’s a lazy rhyme, and drives me crazy. Jerry Herman was infamous for rhymes like that, as when he rhymes “laughter” with “ringing through the rafter” in “Mame’s” “We Need a Little Christmas.”
Brooke DiPalma on Yahoo writes, “‘Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jills'” may be the new tune in stadiums this upcoming baseball season.” Really, Brooke? How will that work? “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jills; I don’t care if they cost 20 bills…” But I guess all the lyrics have to be changed too, or the song will be sexist. After what they did to “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” don’t bet against it.
- I’m shocked that one of the “Jills” isn’t transgender. You wait: someone is lobbying Pepsi as I write this.
I wonder if and when the hysterical “diversity, equity and inclusion” mania will collapse from its own silliness, how much damage it will do to our culture and sanity before it does. Cracker Jacks definitely is one of the minor casualties.
I’ll tell you this, though. I’m not changing my name to Jill.
Ethics Alarms 
If they aren’t 79 cents on the dollar compared to the price of Cracker Jacks then I ain’t buying them.
They’re posing with their biceps flexed? If the figures were guys, that would be toxic masculinity, wouldn’t it? Is that toxic femininity? I thought women were the more enlightened sex? Are they appropriating masculine behavior? Is that permitted? I thought masculinity was to be stamped out.
I think I heard speculation once that a woman might have been behind the Jack the Ripper murders and rhetoric about maybe Jack was a Jill (speculation only), but that’s about the only time I heard the substitution used in media. I think I might have jokingly asked a female colleague who had many aspects to her practice whether she was a “jill-of-all-trades” in an attempt to be humorous. I never really seriously considered that Jill would become an official substitute for Jack to push gender-inclusive language past the limits of silliness. What’s next? Will playing cards go 1-10, Jill, Queen King? Will we have to rename the plant Jack-in-the-pulpit? What else?
I’ll be happy to give up “jack-shit,” “jack-off,” jackass, and hijack.
Jill-in-the-box.
Get the jill out of the trunk so I can change the flat tire.
You don’t know jill shit.
Jill and the Beanstalk
Jill Russell Terrier
Don’t blame me, Steve started it with the playing cards.
“Hit the road, Jill.
Don’t climb that hill
No more, on more, no more.”
Nope. Doesn’t really work.
jvb
It’s stupid and its obvious pandering, but from a business prospective I wonder if this is a smart move. It must cost them nothing to change the logo (minus what they paid some guy/girl to design it) from the original one. I bet it gets them a lot of attention and shows an increase in sales. Still, I doubt it will make those who were complaining about the name “Jack” happy.
I think we can add “Then they came for our Aunt Jemima, Land O’Lakes Butter Maiden and Cracker Jacks, and I did not speak because I thought it was all just a silly anti-culture fad.” to the list below…
It’s clear now that it’s not an anti-culture fad, these social justice activists have lost their collective minds.
Well, there were those in Germany who thought Hitler was a buffoon and wouldn’t last…
“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jill’s. I don’t care if it costs twenty bills.”
I don’t know, this sounds reasonable considering current inflation.
Ouch.
jvb
Based on the prices of food and drink at baseball games, absolutely. I was headed there, but it seemed like a diversion.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/202666/beer-prices-in-major-league-baseball-by-team/
Eleven dollars at Yankee stadium. Start spreadin’ the news. Whew! New York, New York, what a wonderful town.
“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jills; I don’t care if they cost 20 bills…” will be overtaken by inflation soon enough.
There was a Cracker Jill in the 1980s. I can’t insert an image but Google can find it for you.
Actual lyrics:
“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jill. No one can stop you if you have the will.”
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D8HgW9S0DzU0&ved=2ahUKEwiRjLOru4D3AhVxOX0KHYx7Ch0QwqsBegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw116-Qk3soQVjK_aHLOK-fT
Oh, my.
jvb
Bad lyric.
Take the cynical approach: they are just trying to bilk people out of more money for the same product—5 times. Enjoy the irony of the capitalists pandering for the discretionary spending of socialists.
Two of the Jill’s look black and one is an obvious Asian caricature. What ethnicities are they representing?
For trans-Jill, they can just re-label the regular Cracker Jack design.
-Jut
Good point. That Jack does look more than a little non-binary.
And Jack, I suspect you see Jack Russell in every dog.
Hey, they put prizes in the Cracker Jills! Isn’t this discrimination? (What are they likely to be?)
Okay, I see the black girl, the white girl, the latina girl, and the asian girl… But what ethnicity has blue hair? Is “woke women’s study major” its own ethnicity now?
(I can’t resist mentioning a male friend of mine who told me that unnatural, brightly-colored hair on women is like the bright colors on tree frogs; it’s there to let you know they’re poison.)
The PepsiCo press release says “the five Jills were inspired by the most represented ethnicities in the U.S., per data from the U.S. Census Bureau.” Those would be white non-hispanic, Hispanic and Latino of any race, black, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and two or more races.
And, the best retort I heard from that is that women will color their hair in that way in order to scare away the likes of your male friend.
-Jut
The Smurf girl.
Enquiring minds must ask why there aren’t any plus size Cracker Jacks or Jills. That will be the next phase.
Good catch. They all look like they started out as Barbie dolls before they got their hair done and costumes assigned.
Gee, Isn’t “Cracker” a racist slur against whites, like what can Brown do for you?
Yes, but when it is exposed to the magical beneficence and healing power of “Jack,” all is well.