A friend of mine has recently become a convert to Fiji Water. He’s tried several times to tell me how much he likes it, how much better it non-tastes than other waters, but I still find myself skeptical. I finally suggested the ironic term “vibrantly neutral” to describe it, but he actually embraced it.
As I thought about this, I came to the conclusion that what was going on was something remarkable. Several hundred years ago, in “Hamlet,” William Shakespeare made a wonderfully dirty joke out of “nothing.” A bit over a decade ago, Jerry Seinfeld made his fame and fortune off a television show about “nothing.” And now, the bottled water manufacturers have made a whole (very profitable) market out of “nothing.”
It’s been observed that there is only one company that, when you reverse its name, describes its customers to a “T.” If Evian actually made produced sold this “Fiji Water,” it could be argued that they had achieved perfection.
I plan to start marketing bottled fresh mountian air. Only $1 per liter. The city people should go nuts over it.
…although I have heard that people on the left coast don’t trust air they can’t see…
I have never purchased that stuff. You have to check the ‘well of record’ to see where it came from.
When I lived in St Louis, there was a local brand of bottled water that was very popular. I looked at the label and it said “City of Brentwood local well”, which was the same water coming out of my tap!
BTW, best city tap water ever.
Jay you might want to tell your buddy that Fiji water tops the pack of bottled waters for arsenic and other contaminates.
I will take “vibrantly neutral” over the stuff that comes out of our tap any day. Living in a drought stricken part of Texas, our tap water tastes like a mix of chlorine and dirt. And during our lake’s annual algae bloom in July the smell was almost overwhelming. If someone was taking a shower, you could smell the water in the next room. I only drink bottled water, or filtered water out of our fridge.
Imhotep, I grew up in St. Louis and I agree, they have the best tap water.
Sorry Jay, you’re 180 degrees off on this one.
Fiji water is dope.
A number of the bottled waters have specific flavors. There’s this stuff called “Carolina Mountain Water” that I like, for example.
Well the Fiji bottle is prettier but other than that, most tap water is just as clean and a whole lot cheaper. That being said, I do have a couple of “used” Aquafina bottles that I keep filled with tap water and in the freezer – for road trips!
Yeah Paul, aresenic is dope.
Give the people their due. They say right on the bottle they are selling you water and what you get in the bottle is water. BTW, I think ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ would have been another good reference of how people can fall all overthemselves about ‘nothing’.
You should watch Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit” on this topic.
Bottled water has LESS oversight than tap water. In many cases, the bottled water IS tap water. In blind taste tests, bottled water hardly fares all that well.
It’s all a marketing gimmick.
-=Mike
It’s so fun to mess with people that are “bottled water dependent”. I had some fun with a couple of people a few years ago that talked about how at theme parks they never drank from water fountains and only drank bottled water from the in-park vendors for “health safety” reasons. I then started questioning the sanitation of the ice water bathes that the park employees dispenses bottles from, the fact that the people keep putting their hands in the ice water to retrieve the bottles, what sort of substances might be on the sides of the bottles before they are placed in the ice water, and the fact that water from the bath is still on the screw threads of the bottles when you then drink from them…. You should be seen how they all grossed out and declared they’d only bring in personal water into the parks from now on!!!
Consumer Reports did a survey on sources of bottled water. One best seller from a major bottler came from the Indianapolis,Indiana municipal water system.
OMG, I just read my Kentwood Springs Water bottle and its source is not Kentwood, LA – but Blue Ridge, GA. I never knew
I thought that Pepsi had hit the bottom when I found out that Aquafina listed its source as Latham City water (suburb of Albany, NY). I was wrong. The source is now Clinton’s Ditch! As if I would pay for Clinton’s Ditch water!
PT Barnum said what about a fool and money?
I think the square bottle makes people think the water is “special.”
Does “Natural Spring/mountain Water” get filtered and purified before bottleing? If not it is about as good as your average non-clorinated tap-water.
I prefer a local brand that is bottled from well water in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Tastes just like tap water. It’s cheap, and the bottles are tough enough to bounce around in my rucksack all day without leaking.
This story reminds me of some guy, years back, who made tons of cash selling sand in a bottle. I should go look for a link about it, but I’m off to the soccer field with three kids. Anybody remember that story? Or the pet rock – another brilliant idea.