iSnack 2.0: The unfortunate story of Vegecreme

A couple of months ago my mother gave me a jar of the new Vegemite cream cheese hybrid, which I christened Vegecreme. I don't like cream cheese at the best of times (except maybe sandwiched between two lattice biscuits...) but I took it because I'd just run out of Vegemite and I thought it would serve me until I could get another jar.

The next day I immediately went out and bought a large jar of Vegemite. Vegecreme sucks. I mean, if you want Vegemite and cream cheese, go out and buy a fucking jar of Vegemite and a fucking tub of cream cheese and combine them yourself you lazy fucker.

A jar of Vegemite is useful on its own. You can have Vegemite on toast. You can make my favourite toastie (multigrain bread, Vegemite, avocado and cheese). A tub of cream cheese is useful on its own. You can blend it with sugar and lemon and sandwich the chilled results between two lattice biscuits. Together in the one jar it becomes a very poor substitute for Vegemite or salty cream cheese that you can't make into a popular dessert.

So anyway. Kraft ran a competition to name the new product. The name that won? iSnack 2.0. I thought it was a joke or some kind of Twitter mistake, but no, Vegecreme is officially Kraft iSnack 2.0.

There are three main reactions I've gauged thus far:
1) Surely Apple will sue.
2) The name's a piece of crap and the product is a piece of crap.
3) This is a marketing stunt right?

Well...
1) No, Apple doesn't own the 'i' prefix (think iRiver), and certainly not for food products in Australia.
2) Yes, the name doesn't really represent the product. I think it's trying to be clever ('I snack too') but it will date very quickly. And yes, as you've surmised, I think the product is a piece of crap.
3) Yet to be seen. Most people who think it's a marketing stunt are saying things like 'the name's so bad this can only be a marketing stunt'. There's no doubt that the announcement of the name has generated huge amounts of publicity with even The Guardian picking it up. It was a trending topic on Twitter at one point, too.

However, large amounts of publicity does not mean large amounts of sales and I don't see all this hype representing much financial benefit to Kraft. In fact, there has been a huge backlash with negative views on Vegecreme (such as this one!) being written and read that never would have seen the light of day had it not been for the publicity about the name.

So, #vegefail?

There have been upsides to the hype, though. My favourite was the call made by Twitterer @allanmoran: I wonder if iSnack spreads easily on a Rick-Roll :P #vegefail

...but also this gem: