OPINION: Like everything, peanut butter is political
May 18—In both my nuclear and extended families, peanut butter has always been a serious issue. Everyone loves it, and everyone harbors extreme brand loyalty. Many battles have been fought in the Peanut Butter Wars, the duration of which makes the Cold War seem like a brief backyard scuffle over a croquet game.
I am not a soldier in this perpetual campaign, because I do not like raw peanut butter. At family reunions, I've heard my mother insulted in whispers by relatives who suggest I might not be a "real" Poindexter, since I don't like peanut butter straight out of the jar.
My father eats peanut butter on everything. If he were stuck in the middle of the Sahara desert and a dried piece of camel dung were the only potentially edible item available other than a dollop of peanut butter, I suspect he'd break the dung into two pieces, plop on the PB, hold his nose, and live to see another day.
Grandma Poindexter was a diehard peanut butter fan, and she was just as opinionated as her eldest son when it came to branding. "Branding" is a buzz word, in the newspaper industry and everywhere else. If you successfully "brand" your product, you can ensure customer loyalty. I can think of no finer example of brand loyalty than in the peanut butter industry.
Grandma Poindexter was a staunch Peter Pan buff. She often boasted, "I've always bought Peter Pan," which may have been true, since that particular PB debuted in 1920 as "E.K. Pond" just a couple of years before she was born, and was renamed Peter Pan in 1928.
When I was a child, I actually ate PPPB on what all my cousins and I called "Grandma's Toast." This was a piece of white bread, buttered on one side and sizzled on the griddle. The toasted side was slathered with peanut butter and jelly (usually grape) and folded in two. At some point, to the disgust of others in the family, I began to prefer "Grandma's Toast" without the PB.
My father threw over Peter Pan for Jif, which according to Wikipedia, hit the shelves in 1958. The affair lasted until the crunchy variety was introduced, at which point the "creamy" got the boot. My dad was known as somewhat of a skinflint, and he encouraged the buying of what we kids called "cheapie brands," except when it came to PB. My mother once made the mistake when I was about 8 of targeting PB when in a penny-pinching mode. I remember my father's reaction when he reached for the jar: "Hey, I told you never to buy that off-brand peanut butter!" I don't know what the "off-brand" was; as far as he was concerned, anything but Jif was an "off-brand."
Sniping over PB sometimes erupted when we visited my grandparents. My dad could never resist commenting on my grandmother's penchant for Peter Pan. Once he said, "Mother, I don't know why you keep buying Peter Pan; it tastes like crap." My grandmother's mouth formed a perfect "O," and she looked around and said to everyone else, "I swan! Did you hear what he said?" I was never sure whether she was more offended by the use of the word "crap," or the assault on her beloved Peter Pan.
In our house, Jif reigned supreme, and it was kind of like Super Glue; you could use it on anything. On the rare occasion when we had ice cream (usually a "cheapie brand" vanilla), we kids would drizzle our scoops with Hershey's chocolate sauce (always from the can, never from that plastic squeeze bottle); our dad smeared Jif on his ice cream. For the rest of us, it was margarine and Griffin's syrup for waffles; for my dad's stack, Jif had to be caked on.
PB&J was the preferred sandwich for my father, but he also accepted other pairings. A favorite was PB and mayo. I've also seen him consume PB and mustard, PB and ketchup, and on one occasion, PB and the juice remaining in a jar of maraschino cherries I'd used to make a cake. I suspect he would have dunked carrot sticks, french fries, meatballs or hot wings in Jif.
A prerequisite for marrying into our family is a love for PB. My husband fit the bill, but his status is diminished by his preference for Skippy. He will eat Peter Pan if that's all he can get, but he hates Jif. I'm not sure my father knows this about my husband; if he did, he'd lose all respect for him. Like most in my family (excluding myself and my cousin Tracy, another apparent oddity), my husband will eat PB from the jar with a spoon, and so will my son, who will "skim" the surface of the PB smooth to hide the magnitude of consumption. He does the same with ice cream. I'm not fooled.
Several years ago, I inadvertently caused an egregious argument on Facebook. It started when I posted a question on my brother's Facebook wall about PB to see where his loyalties lay. Before he could answer, my cousin Stacy jumped into the fray, speaking rapturously of PB, proclaiming "an affinity for Smuckers Natural," and labeling an addiction to PB as "second only to crack." When my brother weighed it, it was to profess his continued loyalty to Jif, though he was pretty much confined to Skippy or a local brand when he lived in Oxford. When this discussion ensued, he was living in Singapore and could get whatever he wanted.
Somehow this forum spilled over onto my timeline, and that's where the hostilities erupted. A couple squared off over Skippy vs. Peter Pan. Then, a female friend sang the praises of Smucker's and denigrated Jif, whereupon a male friend who has an affinity for both Jif and Donald Trump, chimed in with insults. These two went back and forth for a while before he finally uttered what he undoubtedly considered the ultimate insult: He called her a "liberal."
Like everything else now, peanut butter is apparently political.