I think "hot wings" have to be one of the great marketing campaigns of all time. Chicken wings, which are mostly bone, were always the late piece of chicken anyone ate, and had so little meat that they were hardly worth bothering with even for soup.
Then here come "hot wings," a bit of chicken with maybe two bites, and that take a lot of work to get even those two bites. For the amount of meat you actually get from them, they're probably charging more than I pay per ounce for sirloin. And in the grocery store, instead of being priced cheaper even than drumsticks, they often run almost as much as chicken breasts...for mostly bone, because people buy and make their own now.
I've had them a couple of times when other people wanted them, and OK, the sauces are pretty good. But really? I can only explain it as a really remarkable piece of marketing, creating the market for the piece no one wanted. And I must have missed the marketing, probably because I watch so little (now no) TV because I still look at them and see the orphan piece of chicken sitting on the platter. The sauce would be as good (probably better) on other, more edible pieces of chicken, after all.
Even if I didn't buy into the marketing, I do have to admire the talent involved in creating an appetite for something no one wanted. But if you want to keep your money in your wallet, stop and think about the marketing before you buy things.
2 comments:
I have wondered about that about 200 times. "WHO the hell eats wings???"
Of course, I don't do sauces, we know what happens with that.
We have a wing place just up the street. The place is always just JAMMED on weekend nights.
I won't be going in there, so not sure what the excitement is about.
Cracks me up that you wrote about this. It's been a topic of discussion between me and the hubby more than once.
And there's a similarity to the whole pet rock thing. Remember that?
Oh, yes. I had a pet rock, just to fit in. But I picked mine up out of the driveway, lol...
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