For more than a century, Mr. Christie’s Arrowroot Biscuits have existed as a household favourite. But recently, this product was quietly “rebranded” by its corporate owner, Chicago-based Mondelez International. Gone is the “mister” honorific and the apostrophe S. Instead, Mr. Christie’s now exists as merely “Christie” (which, the last time we checked, is a female name.)
So, what’s behind this initiative? Is “mister” too much “toxic masculinity” for Mondelez?
Is the company suggesting that Mr. Christie has hopped aboard the LGBT-etc.-etc. bandwagon and has transitioned into a so-called “transwoman” simply known as Christie?
Or maybe Mondelez has taken inspiration from the wokesters at Hasbro? In 2021, this toy company dropped the honorific “mister” from the “Mr. Potato Head” brand. Now, the shapeshifting plastic spud simply goes by the “gender-neutral” monicker, “Potato Head.”
Wouldn’t want to offend the likes of Busty Lemieux after all…
We did indeed seek clarity by reaching out Mondelez via email, phone, and we even paid a house call to its Toronto production facility. Alas, Mondelez is yet another company that employs a media relations team that… does not bother to relate to the media. (Why do these flacks have jobs? Good question — especially if one owns Mondelez stock...)
When Rebel News took a look at the company’s website, we discovered that Mondelez is yet another corporation beholden to a woke-joke agenda.
For example, it embraces “DE&I [diversity, equity and inclusion] Performance Scorecards for all Business Units and Functions.” And Mondelez mobilizes “Brands and Marketing partners to drive change, equity and inclusion.”
Yikes!
Hey, Mondelez, how about this as a mission statement: focus on making tasty and affordable mass-produced baked goods?
Furthermore, what is truly egregious about this rebranding is that it amounts to a slap in the face to the original founder of Mr. Christie’s. Unlike Mr. Potato Head, which is a fictional construct, there really was a Mr. Christie. William Mellis Christie was a Scottish apprentice baker who first co-owned a Toronto bakery back in 1853 — some 14 years before Canada was even Canada.
Five years later, Mr. Christie was winning awards for his cookies. And as the decades passed, the company became a baked goods leviathan. Indeed, by the 1880s, Christie’s was the largest cookie and cracker maker in Canada, according to the Canadian Encyclopaedia.
A Toronto Star story chronicling the history of Mr. Christie’s notes that the founding baker always took a keen interest in the quality of his products. That commitment to quality would lead to the longtime company slogan of, “Mr. Christie, you make good cookies.”
As the decades passed, Christie Brown & Company would be acquired by various food conglomerates. Mondelez International would acquire Christie’s as part of its ownership of Nabisco, which it acquired after Kraft bought Nabisco in 2000.
But with Mondelez going woke, it apparently has no stomach for the masculine honourific of “Mister.” And surely the unhinged members of the radical transgender community are cheering on such “inclusion”, which, when you think about it, is actually yet another example of exclusion.
Mr. Christie, the baker that is, passed away in 1900. We wonder if this brilliant baker and entrepreneur is rolling in his grave given what Mondelez has done to his legacy?
But then again, as they say in the baked goods business, “that’s the way the cookie crumbles…”
David Menzies
Mission Specialist
David “The Menzoid” Menzies is the Rebel News "Mission Specialist." The Menzoid is equal parts outrageous and irreverent as he dares to ask the type of questions those in the Media Party would rather not ponder.