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Brazilian Brands: Toddy & Toddynho

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When I think of Brazilian food, the dishes that spring to mind are feijoada, moqueca, pão de queijo, picanha, farofa and I’d better stop before I start drooling on the keyboard. But if you asked someone else they might provide an alternative list: doce de leite, beijinhos de coco, pudim, kindim, pão de mel, creme de papaia com cassis and (of course) brigadeiro.

Brazilian cuisine provides plenty of satisfaction for savoury food people like me, but it also has a lot for you glucophiles. Today’s Brazilian brand falls squarely into the latter category – something this sweet was sure to be successful in Brazil wasn’t it?

 

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Toddynho

Toddy & Toddynho

Name: Toddy / Toddynho (sounds like Todgey and Todge-EEN-yo respectively).

Product: Chocolate powder / chocolate milk.

Background: In 1916 Pedro Erasmo Santiago, a Spanish immigrant in Puerto Rico, lost his entire Cacau plantation in a hurricane. He moved to the USA where he worked his way up from toilet cleaner to prosperous businessman in the food industry.

In 1928 he bought the rights to the brand name “Toddy” for all of South America. Prior to this, “Toddy” was the name of a Scottish drink made of blended whisky, sugar/honey and spices, served hot. However, Pedro’s product, a sweetened cocoa powder to be made into a chocolate drink, was just as often served cold.

In 1933 Pedro Santiago was granted permission to market Toddy in Brazil. He set up a factory in Lapa and set about marketting his product with innovative publicity stunts, such as using planes to write the name of his product in smoke in the skies over Rio.

In the following decades, Toddy became a hugely popular drink across Brazil. Although Toddy was the first chocolate powder in Brazil, other brands soon followed, notably Nescau made by evil Swiss company Nestlé.

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Brazilian Brands: Balas Tamarindo Marllon

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Brazilian Brands is back! Before we get going I should explain a little about the word bala. If you type this word into Google Translate, the first translation it returns is “bullet”. However, we aren’t going to be looking at some special brand of Brazilian ammunition! We’ll be looking at the other meaning of bala: “candy” (or “sweets” as we say in the UK).

I’m guessing that the ‘bullet’ meaning dates back to the days when ammunition was a spherical ball of lead that was pushed down into a musket. Then when candies became popular, they were similarly shaped and so took the same name. Or could it be the other way round? Does musket shot pre-date candy?

Regardless of how the word and its meaning originated, you should know that the term bala perdida means “lost bullet” (literally), but a better translation would be “stray bullet”. Sadly this term is in the news quite regularly in Rio (and many other Brazilian states), when people are hit by stray bullets.

kayser-bala-perdida

The ‘lost bullet’ looks at a picture which says “You are here”. 

 

Anyway, today we’re talking about the tasty, sugary balas, so let’s get on with it!

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Bala-Tamarindo-Marllon

Balas Tamarindo Marllon

Name: Balas Tamarindo Marllon.

Product: Balas de Tamarido (Tamarind flavoured candy).

Description: The manufacturer is called ‘Balas Marllon’ and is based on the other side of Guanabara bay in a town called São Gonçalo. They make a variety of other candies, but these Tamarind flavoured are the best known and most widely sold. Inside the colourful wrapper you will find a dark brown, slightly sticky ball.

Although the Tamarind tree is native to Africa, it was introduced into Central and South America in the 16th Century and has become a common ingredient in Brazilian cuisine, particularly in the north where it is made into a refreshing drink.

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Brazilian Brands: Bis

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The British take biscuits (not cookies!) pretty seriously. I put this down to our tea drinking habit – tea and biscuits go together like, well, tea and biscuits! 

If you ever find yourself with multiple British people and you feel the need to get the conversation going, just try bringing up the subject of biscuits. For example, you could mention that you heard that the best biscuit in the world is the chocolate digestive (a fine choice). Before long you would have people arguing over the relative merits of Hobnobs, custard creams and ginger nuts. We even had a big court case between the government and the manufacturers of Jaffa Cakes over whether their product was a biscuit or a cake (no seriously).

There are many sub-divisions of biscuit and one close to my heart is the ‘biscuit-bar’. The English biscuit bar of choice would surely be the Penguin. In Scotland they have a chocolate, caramel and wafer affair called simply Tunnock’s. The Australians favour something called the Tim Tam which can be ingeniously employed in something called the Tim Tam Slam (everyone should try this at least once).

penguin-biscuit

The humble Penguin biscuit – two biscuit layers with soft chocolate goodness in the middle, all covered in delicious milk chocolate. Good stuff.

 

Before I get carried away with all this biscuit talk, let’s come back to Brazil shall we? In Portuguese, the word for biscuit is biscoito. Now I thought I was fairly knowledgeable when it comes to biscuits, but it wasn’t until I arrived here in Brazil that I was told about the origins of the word. Apparently it can be broken down to “bi” (2) + “coito” (coitus) – the er, ‘union’ of two biscuit layers! Can this really be true?

OK, let’s look at Brazil’s favourite biscuit bar and today’s Brazilian Brand:

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Brazilian Brands: Paçoquita

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Regular readers may be aware that I’m not a big fan of super-sweet things. I do like chocolate (I’m not completely crazy), but the really sweet things like Brigadeiro are a little too much for me.

With that in mind, it may come as a surprise to hear that I rather like today’s Brazilian brand.

 

Paçoquita

Paçoquita

Name: Paçoquita (‘passo-KEE-ta’)

Product: Paçoca (‘pa-SOCK-a’).

Description:  First let me explain that Paçoca is the generic name for a super-sweet, crumbly sweet made from ground peanuts, sugar and salt (and sometimes that Brazilian favourite, sweetened condensed milk). Paçoquita is surely the best known brand of paçoca. The website is slightly vague about when the Paçoquita brand was established, but it looks to have been someone in the 1980s. Today they are commonly found in a small basket or bowl next to the cash register in Kilo restaurants, gas stations and Casas de Sucos (juice bars). The bright yellow, matchbox sized brick has striking red lettering with a chirpy looking peanut man on the side.

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Brazilian Brands: Aviação

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How do you feel about brands? Whether it’s food, clothes, electronics or detergents, they’re all around us whether we like it or not. Some of us willingly embrace a brand, while others feel that brands are simply a cunning marketing ploy to fool us into paying more than the fair price.

I have to admit that I find some aspects of branding really interesting. I like the design elements of the packaging and find it interesting how these are involved in the way we (at least some of us) develop an affection for certain brands. Of course a lot of this brand indoctrination starts at a very early age so that by the time we’re old enough to be buying our own tomato ketchup we don’t even stop to think about why we always pick Heinz.

An interesting aspect of transplanting yourself into a new country is that you come to the market cold. Many of the brands from home are unavailable and so you find yourself adopting new favourites.

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