I was doing something unusual earlier and washing up, when I spotted a terrible attempt at looking all ethical and green and stuff. At least, I assume that is what they were attempting when they wrote this on their bottle…

I’ve noticed these pretty meanlingless words popping up a lot on packaging in New Zealand. It is, of course, quite conceivable that they mean to tell us something else. For instance, it is perfectly possible that those words are meant to be read as “We jollied down the road in the (company) car and picked up a few bits and bobs, some of them not even needed in the production of dish soap, but hey, expenses! Unfortunately nobody local stocked everything we needed, so we ‘borrowed’ somebody’s wireless and went online. We found that the Taiwanese make some damn good replicas, so rather than check if anyone else in the country, say, like, the next town along, could help us, we went straight to them. Literally. And imported it ourselves.”

Or perhaps, a basic economics lesson is implied in the text: “In a free market, a country is just as dependant on imports as it is on exports to stimulate the economy.”

Either way, I’m still in shock that this apple flavoured dish soap contains anything more than ’soap’ and ‘a barrel of apples’, both of which are available locally and from afar, in New Zealand.

There may actually be a proper meaning here, aside from the obvious plain English one. I don’t know what it is, though, so I’m opening this phrase up to you for more potential meanings. Like a caption contest, but different. Type away!