I just love it when marketers use real “Hispanic insights” to sell us stuff, any kind of stuff, including eye-care products during the winter months.

Take Transitions Optical Inc., which today put out the following press release to inform us about its new winter campaign encouraging us, irresponsible, sun-loving, winter-ignorant Hispanics to avoid exposing ourselves too much to the sun (no matter it’s 28 degrees out there.)

Oh well, in the best of holiday spirits, I’d like to encourage you people not to stare directly into the sun (wait for the summer to do that!) Instead try to keep your eyes -and mind- focused on the beer bottles, the bacalao and the romeritos.

¡Feliz Navidad!

And speaking of alcoholic beverages and gringos who love to exploit everything that remotely sounds Mexican or Latino, a Texas entrepreneur has launched Dos Lunas Grand Reserve, a 10-year-old tequila that sells for “only” $2,500 a bottle.

But don’t get too excited. According to Mexican news agency Notimex, El Paso-based Dos Lunas will produce only 1,000 bottles of the Grand Reserve special edition, which makes us figure there must be about 1,000 suckers in the Texas area who will actually pay for it.

Founder Richard C. Poe II, who is also a car dealer (mmmm), has said his goal was “to create the smoothest, most refined tequila in the world.” (And in rip off some 1,000 Texans in the process, may I add.)

We have narco-corridos so why not narcocerveza?

My people (and by this I mean, Mexican people) have launched a new brand of beer called Malverde, after the famous saint patron of, well, drug-dealers. Malverde was actually appropriated by drug dealers, but it’s kind of a Robin Hood-type of hero from the North of Mexico.

The beer, which will only be sold in Culiacán and Guadalajara (for now) is produced by a local company, Minerva, which by the way has also launched The Simpsons-themed Duff beer.

My mom is from Sinaloa, so I’ve asked her to go hunting for some Malverde beer so I can soon report back on its taste.

Stay tuned, and ¡salud!

Photo is property of Reforma newspaper

From today’s Hispanic PR Wire.

Check out the following headline if you want to start your day laughing! (and before they go and change it)

 

Marketers just don’t seem to stop in their quest for innovation. The turn is now for Converse Shoes, which has launched a limited edition of Frida Kahlo-themed sneakers, according to Mexico City-based blog Compradicción.

(Do these people know the woman ended up her days unable to walk and tied to a wheel-chair?) Just wondering…

According to recent press reports, Philadelphia’s IronPigs’ baseball league has been forced to change the name of its mascot, PorkChop, simply because a group of Hispanics in the area claimed the moniker was offensive, outrageous, preposterous and ultimately unacceptable.

The team’s mascot is a large, furry pig, so I really thought PorkChop was an accurate (if not original) name. The creature is now called Ferrous. Whatever.

I still don’t quite understand how Pork Chop is offensive. To Muslims, maybe… but Hispanics?  Can somebody help?

Some woman called Deborah Frisch has come up with an English language method weirdly named ¡Binglés! La lotería para aprender inglés. And it’s no joke. According to a company’s press release, this “revolutionary and cost-effective method” uses our beloved juego de lotería to teach us, monolingual Latinos, how to pronounce things in English with lots and lots of accents: Watermelon, for instance, is Guá-ter-mélon; La Sirena is the mér-med; The musician is the myu-zí-shan, and so on. You get the picture (and it’s not pretty!)

In her Web site, Ms. Frisch tells us about her career as an accomplished language teacher, but most importantly informs us about the importance of the lotería in the daily lives of us, lazy Mexicans.

Wherever there are Mexicans and people of Mexican descent, while the parents take siestas after dinner, the kids find shady spots to play la Lotería.

And I thought I had seen it all… Good Lord!