Campbell's Frisky Sour - How can you have enneh poodding if you doon't drink yer meat?

Mouths are weird. Mine, for example, can tolerate water at a temperature slightly above what the skin on my hands can bear. I don't know why this is. Maybe it's because, every morning, I punish my intra-mounthular surfaces with tea that, only moments before, was threatening to melt its way through the mug. My hands have been subjected to no such conditioning.

My mouth will happily accommodate meat-flavored fluids like soup or gravy without complaint, so long as they are hot. Change the temperature of either of these fluids to, say, "nicely chilled", and the scene changes to that of my mouth spraying the food of meals gone by into the local plumbing while I try to mumble apologies to my mouth, inbetween torrents of post-consumer food.

So, my reaction to this ad for the Frisky Sour, from Campbell's Soup, brought my old friend Mr. Gorge to the top of my throat just to say hello. It's well that the recipe doesn't call for any alcohol, because in order to bring this swill near my mouth, I would have to have a few pints of something strong in my belly already, and maybe a little Toluene. Of course, in that state, I'd have a sip from a glass of ants, not that I'm a fan. Such is the grossness of The Frisky Sour to me.

A recent (in America, at least) episode of Top Gear had the lads trying to make a snow plow out of a combine harvester. James May mentioned his need to have a mug of "Bovril" because of the cold weather they were working in, plowing streets in Norway with their "Snowbine", as they called it. Bovril has been mentioned on Top Gear before, in connection with bystanders at European rally events, sipping the thick beefy drink while compact cars tumble through the air a few feet away.
Bovril is a British thing, although the context in which it's been mentioned on TG implies that it's more of a grandpa drink. Jeremy Clarkson made some kind of joke about "this isn't the fifties" or something. So, what's it? Why retype, when quoting Wikipedia is just as lazy?

"Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick, salty meat extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston and sold in a distinctive, bulbous jar. Bovril can be made into a drink by diluting with hot water, or less commonly with milk.^[1] It can also be used as a flavouring for soups, stews orporridge, or spread on bread, especially toast, rather like Marmite."


Bluh. The impression I get is that Bovril is generally drunk hot. So why does the thought of it still make my glottis spasm shut? Well, I can't imagine drinking a hot glass of gravy. So, small doses maybe? Well, Beef soup is fine when sipped, less fine when swigged at room temperature. Jeez. So, meat drinks are okay with me only when they're hot and drunk slowly? Makes me sound like a pansy. So many rules. I have no excuse. But, my shame is enough to make me try a sip of Bovril, if offered. A frisky sour? Go stick your head in a pig.


NOTE: The Bovril poster up there is one of my favorite types of monstrous advertising: the animal dreaming of being ground up into a particular brand of food. Also see Charlie the Tuna and Dormeyer coffee pot. Zaphod Beeblebrox would insist that it's better than eating a cow that doesn't want to be eaten. Is it? I'm happier if A) the animal isn't sentient and B) never knew what was coming, rather than excitedly riding a train to meet his fate.


OTHER NOTE: Nice rendering on the glass in the Campbell's ad. Too bad it's a photograph. Note withdrawn!