![]() Maskless contestants soar jubilantly down its aisles, and the show’s ringmaster, Leslie Jones, turns in a virtuoso performance as the rare American thrilled to be working inside a grocery store.īut there is something uncanny about its glossy, high-definition look. The incidental nature of a Mini Brands acquisition - you never know what you’re going to get - mimics the old pull of impulse shopping, where you enter through the whooshing automatic doors in search of toothpaste and emerge, bewildered, with an armful of snack items you may never actually consume.Īt first glance, the new “Supermarket Sweep” represents a narrative triumph over Covid-19. ![]() It’s an inversion of those toy gumball machines parked at the end of checkout lines now the groceries themselves are the prize. Instead you can stock your own tiny supermarket by ordering a 5 Surprise Mini Brands! Surprise Ball ($6.99 on ), then cracking open its flaxen plastic shell to reveal a random selection of branded miniatures. You can still go to the grocery store, but you can no longer lose yourself there. Mini Brands service a nostalgia for the very recent past, when the grocery represented a familiar expanse it was a place where, as Allen Ginsberg put it in “ A Supermarket in California,” a person could go “shopping for images.” Now that same space feels anxious and claustrophobic, recast as a site of potential infection and a backdrop for violent confrontations between neighbors, captured by trembling cellphone videos. As the virus rages outside, hobbyists can at least flex control of their own little worlds. Miniatures of all kinds have experienced a pandemic bump. I discovered Mini Brands through the writer Emily Gould, who advised me that Mini Brands “have the reassuring quotidian comfort of a trip to the ol’ grocery store,” adding, “Which, you know, is gone.” Though Mini Brands are nominally marketed to children, they scratch a grown-up itch: for the lost pleasures of the supermarket experience. On Instagram, you can find Mini Brands clutched in the dexterous paws of famous hamsters and chinchillas, and on TikTok, influencers like film themselves hunting for the 2-inch treasures at big box stores and peeling open the complex packaging with a hypnotic rhythm. ![]() Zuru, the toy company that sells Mini Brands, has introduced dozens of household miniatures since their 2019 debut, including little Tresemmé bottles, little Babybel cheese rounds and little Wet Ones antibacterial wipes. They’re called Mini Brands, and they represent branding liberated from product. There is no tiny food in any of these tiny packages. Sometimes I unfurl a tiny paper grocery bag and place the tiny pepper bottle inside, next to a tiny tin of Spam, a tiny jar of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter and a tiny tube of Gourmet Garden Chunky Garlic Stir-In Paste. ![]() There is something oddly relaxing about a banal item inexplicably shrunken into a fetish object. I keep it around for its brain-soothing properties. The bottle is small enough to pinch between my thumb and index finger it looks as if it was made to fit the spice rack of an anthropomorphic hedgehog. On my desk is a detailed miniature shaker of McCormick Crushed Red Pepper flakes.
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