rsc and I were finishing a box of Roasted Vegetable Monterey ® crackers and noticed that there was a new box of Carr's ® Roasted Vegetable crackers on the shelf. A little closer examination showed that the Monterey crackers were made by Carr's. And then I noticed that the UPC's were identical. Looking some more we saw that the Carr's box had an "By Appointment to H.M. the Queen" notation and the other didn't. Then we compared the ingredient lists and they were almost, but not exactly the same - a few different ingredients and a different order! For example the Carr's had dehydrated red and green bell peppers and also had red and green bell pepper powder whereas the Monterey had the dehydrated peppers, but not the powder. The Monterey's has natural smoke flavor whereas the Carr's doesn't. So lots of laughter about this completely unimportant dilemma and that fact that we spent even more than 1 nanosecond on the problem.
I was tempted to call the toll free number (that was the same on both packages) and ask them whether these two products the same or different and why.....Ok, just called. The person there knew nothing (big surprise) saying that they only dealt with quality problems, and not with the printing on the package. She gave me another number to call, but I am definitely not going to devote any more time to this - especially since while writing this the FedEx guy showed up with tomorrow's delivery of a disk drive and Zoo Tycoon - so now I will be able to waste much more time.
