Monday 9 April 2012

Anusol-Searching

What you will get in South Africa if you ask for 'arse cream'.

Chemists have a section in their shops called ‘Family Planning’. But it’s woefully underprovided. Not one brochure. No suggestions like why not take your kids to the zoo? Or how about a trip to Alton Towers? Yet proper family planning would be so useful in the summer holidays, for instance, when the kids could do with a bit of structure to their day. All there is in the Family Planning section, is a selection of condoms. You can’t just give them a condom you got from Family Planning and say there you go have a nice day; look forward to hearing all about it when you get back. Life doesn’t work like that.
Anusol has taken over from condoms as the embarrassing item to buy over the pharmacist’s counter. The name of the ‘piles alleviator’ has helped achieve this. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)


‘Here’s the challenge – can we come up with a name that will leave no reasonable doubt or misunderstanding what a cream with anus in the title could be for?’ asked the marketing manager at Anusol.
‘Other ideas floating about?’ he added. What’s the consensus team on ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Haemorrhoid Cream’?
We now have the benefit of hindsight. The answer the team came up with was… ‘Anusol’. And so too do we know the answer to another question asked of the marketing team at Anusol: ‘Anyone here know what a euphemism is? Anybody…? Nobody?’
Editor’s Note: When travelling in Chile, I was suddenly struck down by a bout of haemorrhoids. I repaired to the only chemist shop in the town of Puerto Monte. As my Spanish was limited, I took along with me a travelling companion fluent in the lingo. I tried asking her to request the Anusol, but that didn’t work. She wouldn’t. She instead told me the Spanish for haemorrhoids and left me to it. Off the assistant went to search for the cream as I stood waiting with a host of townsfolk who had up till this point regarded me as a stranger. They were now intimately acquainted with the facts surrounding my haemorrhaging arse. ‘Este por mi madre,’ I then hastily added, inspired, summoning up enough scraps of Spanish to convey that the medication was not for me but my mother. The assistant returned with the cream and made a reply that I didn’t understand. ‘What did she say?’ I asked my translator friend, who replied:  “That’s what they all say”.’ Understandably, I was rather proud of myself. “That’s what they all say,” the shop assistant had said. My Spanish was patently improving.

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