Packaging proves you can flog anything Ð even porridge

Date Published: 02-May-2012

Of all the souvenir gifts you could bring back from Ireland – and we have quite a selection, covering the full gamut from classy to crass – perhaps your commoner garden packet of porridge wouldn’t be the one to indicate the uppers reaches of imagination.

But there on display in the duty free shop at Shannon Airport, amongst the Aran sweaters and the Guinness tea-towels, is a stand dedicated solely to the joys of Flahavan’s Irish Oatmeal, packaged in a variety of styles and sizes and all ready to light up the life of your loved one after your return from the oul’ sod.

Of course we’ve had clever marketing heads here before who’ve sold everything from ‘eau de turf’ to Irish air, and the Yanks fall for it every time. But really.....would a box of porridge strike you as the perfect gift even for the most patriotic of Irish ex-pats?

And yet, it’s obviously not there to fill out floor space, so someone must be buying porridge at the last minute before boarding their flight – a sort of airport version of the bunch of dried flowers you’d grab in the forecourt of your petrol station, having completely forgotten it’s Valentine’s Day.

In Flahavan’s defence, there’s already a huge market for Denny’s sausage and rashers and Kerrygold butter and soda bread in the US in particular – and they’s nearly mug you for a bag of Tayto crisps at a time when half of Ireland is munching into Walker’s.But porridge?

The stuff that was shovelled down your throat on the darkest days of your childhood; the breakfast food you’d have rang Childline about if such a service existed back then – and if you had a phone; the perpetual reminder of wet winter mornings and homework you’d forgotten until it was too late.

That’s what porridge means.

You can picture the scene as hubby arrives back from his arduous business/golfing trip to the Emerald Isle and produces from his suitcase a tubular container that, from the packaging, looks like an expensive bottle of single malt whiskey.

Would he be swept off his feet with a hug or a right hook? And how would the children react to the delight of a traditional Irish breakfast that looks like it was made from a combination of wood shavings and wallpaper paste?

There are, it must be acknowledged, many people who enjoy nothing more than a bowl of porridge before setting out to greet the day with great gusto, but then again there are people who willingly eat muesli in the morning. It still doesn’t make it right.

That said, if you can flog packets of porridge to passengers in an airport, what other opportunities are we missing out on from this rich vein of nostalgia?

Selling them bottles of Irish rain water would be an obvious starting point – given that we have such a naturally heavy flow of it – but given that we’ve previously shown the ability to flog little plastic leprechauns on slivers of marble rock or packets of clay or bottles of air, we shouldn’t underestimate our potential for cash in on the worldwide appeal of the jolly green giant.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.