Saturday 21 January 2017

Potpourri – Kiwi icons


 Today's Saturday potpourri gives you a taste of some Kiwi icons (not including some I've wittered on about before):

The Buzzy Bee is a favourite – made originally in the 1930's.  It's a little wooden bee with rotating wings that makes a clicking noise when it is pulled along.


The All Blacks, or as we call them the AB's are New Zealand's rugby team.   Not only is rugby our most important sport, the team has done us proud over the years.  They've won the World Cup 3 times and also now pretty much have a mortgage on the Bledisloe Cup (which is fought for by Australia).


Footrot Flats was a long running comic strip by Murray Ball.  The main character is a sheep dog, called in a typically laconic NZ way 'Dog'.  His owner is a farmer called Wal Footrot.


L&P (not Lea & Perrins) but Lemon & Paeroa is a soda which originated in a little NZ town Paeroa which used the local mineral water and lemon – hence the very imaginative name.  The company came up with the sloga 'World Famous in New Zealand'.  This large bottle can be found – you guessed it – in Paeroa.


Marmite is the New Zealand incarnation of what the Australians call Vegemite.  There is a Marmite in the UK but it is not the same – according to Kiwis, anyway.  One of the impacts of the Christchurch earthquake some years ago was a national shortage of Marmite which caused a lot of angst.  It was termed Marmageddon.  It's a yeast extract, a byproduct of beer brewing.

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