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Was it worth it?
By Kelly
Mayfair • Bankrate.com
That huge display of bagged generic cereal was tempting.
Would he notice they weren't real CocoPuffs?
It's a constant struggle for any parent to balance
the desire to buy your child anything that makes him smile with
the desire to continue to have money for food. That said, it can
be a tad more difficult to strike that balance when you're a single
parent who has no one to "good cop/bad cop" the little bugger.
I come from one of those whole-grain households and
vowed I would never feed my child "junk" food. I can hear the derisive
laughter from all mothers who had similarly lofty ideals shattered
by the hard cold reality of a 3-year-old who refuses all sustenance
but bologna.
I opened the gates of Hell
That said, I had been worn down by the relentless
requests, uttered replete with tears, folded hands, and chants of
"prettypleaseprettyplease!" I allowed my son to have CocoPuffs as
dessert (never as a meal! Oh no.) And I opened the gates of Hell.
The idea of store brands has always appealed to the
repressed tightwad in me, a facet of my personality I hadn't needed
to explore in my solo, semi-bohemian life before parenthood. As
I began paying for day care and tiny Levis and rising with the sun
to prepare nutritious lunches, I began examining with great interest
the ingredients of the name-brand and store-brand foods vying for
my attention.
I found myself especially appreciating that my local
grocery megaplex, Publix, had packaging that wasn't, dare I admit
it, embarrassingly ugly on the pantry shelf. It was a cinch to substitute
their "nutty nuggets" for Grape Nuts; the boxes are practically
identical, and no one snooping through my cabinets was likely to
notice. And my son prefers the store-brand snacks. Publix potato
chips have the product pictured right on the bag so even the pre-literati
know there's lip-smacking goodness lurking inside.
I sat one day and calculated how much I saved in a
single trip to the store by buying store-brand butter, milk, cereal,
snacks, frozen vegetables and bread (no one, but no one, will ever
convince me to try the generic equivalent of my beloved Dr. Pepper).
Now this may not seem like much to you, but when I realized I'd
saved close to $10 on one trip and realized the implications on
an annual basis, I was excited. In the course of a year, I could
save two car payments!
A fly in the generic ointment
But there was a fly in the generic ointment.
While I didn't think the food tastes any different, my son was adamant
that the cereal in the bag on the bottom shelf of the grocery store
was in no way a palatable substitute for CocoPuffs.
All of which leads up to the moment that found me,
at the stroke of midnight, staring at a huge display of that less-expensive
bagged cereal. Was saving a few bucks worth my son's possible refusal
to eat those creepy brown spheres that didn't come out of the box
he saw 60,000 times on Nickelodeon? I mean, I used to write advertising
copy, and I still find myself at the department store cosmetic counter
buying a face cream that promises to "energize" my skin. Huh?
How did I resolve this crisis? I bought one box of
the "fancy" stuff and have ever since refilled it from the generic
bags. Devious? You bet. This is my sanity we're talking about.
It is so easy to succumb to marketing in this media-saturated
society. This is my opportunity to strike back at the corporate
giants who think I'll buy anything if it's packaged prettily.
And so, in my humble opinion, it is worth it.
-- Updated: March 23, 2004
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