BORING TALES FROM MY HOLIDAY 1 :- RED CUPS

I went to Galway for a bit yesterday. For those of you unaware Galway is in the Republic of Ireland. I live in Northern Ireland. For those of you who don't understand the difference in the countries it's a bit like North and South Korea, only in reverse. Before anyone gets too upset about that I would like to point out that a lot of shops down south didn't seem to have Dr.Pepper. So I think it's a fair point.

I was excited to try some new things in this strange country but to be honest we're largely homogenized now into having the same products. If anything we seem like we possibly get more trial products (launches special editions etc) probably because we are the same currency as the rest of the UK and quite a small market. The main issues of contention with us are Tayto, this will not be discussed here, I have grand plans for that later on in the year.

I did notice one thing and it made me a bit sad.

http://www.redcups.ie/aboutus.html


The humble red cup. The indicator of parties the world over, well no the indicator of parties in America and American films which means it's recognised and known in most of the western world as the symbol for Parties so they've started selling them in Ireland.

I found this a little sad. It's an iconic design of course but surely it's ok for us to have a bit of a national identity of our own?

This isn't an attack on the guys selling them, fair play to you both but I think as cheesey as it may be it might have even been nice if they were green....



Also to be fair to the Republic they do still seem to have Quiznos which dissapeared from local streets due to the amazing popularity of Subway here.

Have I missed a special Republic of Ireland treat? We now get Carmello, Golden Crisp and the other Dairy Milk specialities here via Centra. I think Finches is even more prevalent here than in it's home nation.