The force is strong here...

...the maths, less so.

May the sauce be with you.



In the US, the Campbells Soup Company released some very similar Star Wars pasta shapes, as well as soups featuring characters from the films on their labels, as part of a promotional tie-in when the most recent film came out last year. This ended up creating quite a stir (no pun intended) - not because of the products themselves, but as the adverts for them featured a gay couple feeding one of the soups to their adopted son. This enraged some people so much that they launched an abusive online tirade against Campbell's, threatening to boycott the company for promoting 'unnatural' family values. You can see the advert itself here via YouTube - and some of the comments it has provoked underneath:

Personally I think it is rather charming, and clever too - I can't believe no-one ever thought of this brilliant spin on the universally-known "I am your father" line before. And I say that despite having almost no interest whatsoever in the Star Wars films. But you wouldn't find me posting abusive comments and threatening never to buy Campbell's soups again just because they'd decided to put a picture of a robot on the tin. That would just be stupid. Sadly, there will always be plenty of  stupid individuals out there, whose narrow-minded views on how people should be allowed to live their lives are frankly more terrifying in the modern world than anything on the dark side.

One a brighter note, back on this side of the pond, those of you feeling more creative might like to head over to Fish is the Dish (the consumer website for Seafish, the government authority on seafood) who have some delightful Star Wars-themed recipes to try. They specify fresh fish for these, but tinned would be equally good, particularly for their "May the Fourth be With You" Fishcake, in the shape of Yoda, and the Princess Leia Fishcake with Spaghetti, a thing of such rare beauty that I dare not make it myself, for fear that it could never be as good as the photo online:

But I feel they have missed a pun here - surely it should be the Princess Leia Fishercake, in honour of the actress who originally played the part?