Pream - Straaaange brew.

When you're having an idea, the whole idea of the idea should be to solve a problem or improve something, right? Coffee creamer is intended to do what cream does, but without the lactose of which there are those who are intolerant. The makers of Pream (a devastatingly clever combination of the words "powder" and "cream") developed this recipe for unlactosey strawberry bavarian cream to solve their problem of not selling enough Pream. Advertisers have always tried to do this: get you to integrate their product info every corner of your life whether or not it makes any sense at all.

* The Images And Scanning Them Dept apologizes AGAIN for the wonky scan. Some words were cut off, but they insist that if they mashed it flat in the Okidata AdequateScan 620, the whole page crinkled up. Those clowns are on thin ice. They're lucky no one else knows how to work the thing.

Anyway, so yeah, powdered coffee creamer in your dessert. Not officially inedible but pretty damn weird, right? The other ingredients are things like sugar, salt, lemon juice and egg yolks. I'm not a chef, but it sounds like a decent dessert well before the Pream is forced in.

Part of this complete breakfast. So is the chair.

This is kind of like the product shot at the end of every cereal commercial where the V.O. says "part of this complete breakfast!" and you see a bowl of vaccuformed sugar foam pellets surrounded by eggs, bacon, orange juice, an orange, six pancakes, three vials of interferon, more oranges, a roast turkey, a pile of toast, a cubic foot of wheat germ, a syringe of insulin, and a grape. You could replace the cereal with a catcher's mitt and still have several "complete" breakfasts on the table.

I found another recipe for a similar lactose-free dessert, and it says to use Cool Whip as a cream substitute, which looks like food, tastes good and has existed since 1966 - five years before this ad was run in the July 1971 issue of Better Homes. So, Pream's recipe idea only tried to solve the problem of their bottom line. There already existed a superior solution to the crushing dilemma of a non-dairy bavarian cream dessert.

I could find no evidence of Pream's continued existence on the web. Interestingly, the word "pream" does have a presence in the urban vernacular, but the makers of Pream would probably not approve.

Other off-label product recipes:

-Colgate no-bake after dinner mints. Step 1: Chisel them out of the sink.

-Cap'n Crunch casserole.

-Sanka get up and gravy!

-I can't believe it's not Brylcream!