People Who Need Souvenirs
Now available is the price list on the much-touted catalogue of Barbra Streisand merchandise being sold to coincide with her current concert tour.
If the prices on the items are any indication, marketer Sony Signatures must hope its coffers will be kept evergreen as a result.
Included is a Barbra silver key chain for $100, a Barbra coffee mug for $15 (set of four is $50), a kid’s T-shirt and watch combination for $50, a commemorative Barbra scarf for $75 and a tour jacket for $400.
Also available is an Italian silk tie for $60. According to the catalogue, “Our tie pays tribute to Barbra’s career.”
The Way It Crumbles
The recent scathing analysis of the healthiness of movie popcorn from the Center for Science in the Public Interest prompted us to ask if the center would also be willing to analyze the healthiness of the famous chocolate chip cookie recipe of First Lady and health care reformer Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The center declined but referred us to Dine Systems Inc., an Amherst, N.Y., company whose “Dine Health” computer program is sold by the center.
According to the computer analysis, Clinton’s cookies--which got a batch of attention during the last election in the debate over whether they were better than Barbara Bush’s--are slightly lower in calories and fat than major store-bought brands. They are about the same in cholesterol but don’t fare well against newer reduced-fat cookies.
According to the analysis, one small (14-gram) Clinton cookie contains 67 calories and 3 grams of fat, 1 of which is the dreaded saturated fat.
Dine Systems executives said 14 grams of a Chips Ahoy cookie would have 100 calories and 6 grams of fat, 1.5 of them saturated. A Chips Deluxe of that size would have 70 calories, with about 4 grams of fat, slightly less than 2 of them saturated.
Reduced-fat Snackwells chocolate chip cookies have fewer calories for the same size and only about one-third the fat of the Clinton cookies.
All Pre-American Family
Were Fred and Wilma Flintstone born 2,001,776 years too early?
It appears so. Universal Pictures has been sending out promotional material for its summer comedy “The Flintstones,” based on the Hanna-Barbera cartoon couple living in the town of Bedrock in the year 2 million BC.
Producer Bruce Cohen is quoted as saying that the prehistoric couple “represent the traditional American couple who believe in family and want to better themselves so they can make a nicer life for themselves, their friends and their children.”
Briefly . . .
A river rafting company advertises that “Whitewater doesn’t just mean Bill and Hillary.” . . . Fun facts: Adolph Coors’ annual reports says the company sold 19.8 million barrels of beer in 1993, up 1.3% from a year earlier. . . . A 90-minute round-table discussion called “Astrology & Stock Market Forecasting” is scheduled at the Anaheim Hilton next month.
