P-p-p-pick up a Lamb Chop? Well, perhaps not

BUNHILL

It Was, as headline writers noted, a court case that took the biscuit. A seven-day stand-off between McVitie's Penguin bar and Asda's lookalike Puffin brand, in which the supermarket chain was ruled to have waddled too close to the wind.

If it is possible to be dogged by a puffin then McVitie's certainly has been, for in May last year Greenpeace demonstrators dressed as members of the fratercula arctica species blockaded its factory in north London. The protest was aimed at drawing attention to the company's part in depleting fish reserves in the North Sea, and it proved successful: United Biscuits, McVitie's owner, immediately pledged to stop using fish oil caught by industrial fleets in its foods.

If only the court ruling had been that conclusive. While all lovers of sea-birds will be gratified to note that a puffin per se is not a parody of a penguin, all Asda has been required to do by the judge is modify the packaging round its bar. Indeed, so confusing was the outcome that the marketing trade press didn't know what to make of it: "McVitie's wins", said one magazine; "McVitie's loses", said another.

Tom Blackett, deputy chairman of the Interbrand consultancy, says that far from deterring lookalike brands, the ruling is a copycat's charter. Supermarkets now know exactly how far they can go in pushing the limits of imitation, he explains, and these limits are none too constricting. All of which means that brand developers "will have to be even more unusual and distinctive than before", adds Mr Blackett.

This throws up intriguing possibilities, For instance, a washing powder called Surreal - featuring a one-legged possum with an eye-patch balancing on a trapeze wire - might defy imitation. As might a chocolate bar entitled Lamb Chop. Then again, these ideas are probably being developed as I write.

In the meantime, to aid Asda as it ponders its relaunch, I have printed the helpful picture below. If the supermarket were to put its puffin under what our espionage agents like to term "deep cover", surely even the penguin police wouldn't complain.

Peter Snow, eat your heart out - or rather, eat your sandwich. The latest device for gauging our election votes is not a hi-tech swingometer but a range of cheese sandwiches from Tesco.

Last Wednesday, the supermarket rolled out a series of snacks that come complete with political affiliation. We are offered Blue Stilton sandwiches for the Conservative Party, Red Leicester for Labour, Double Gloucester for the Liberals, Sage Derby for the Greens, and Cheddar with Fruit Cake for the Monster Raving Loony Party. Possible future fillings include "pick your own cheese" for the Referendum Party.

The sandwiches are available at selected stores around the country, and Tesco hopes to provide a regional breakdown of both our culinary and electoral preferences.

The scheme will run until 1 May, so early exit poll findings are somewhat unscientific. However, a Tesco spokesman reports an early surge for Cheddar with Fruit Cake; watch out for a Monster Raving landslide.

Pocket power

If You think London Transport doesn't move with the times, if at all, think again. For while the tube trains and buses may not seem futuristic, we could soon have a 21st century ticketing system.

After a large-scale trial on buses in Harrow, north-west London, London Transport recently received its first bid from the private sector for running the Prestige system. This is basically a hi-tech ticket network that would allow travellers to whizz through barriers on buses and trains using their own dedicated smart cards. These would register where passengers alighted and embarked, and add to their bill accordingly. They would also be automatically disabled if passengers reported them stolen.

Prestige itself has plenty of barriers to get through, such as the strength of the bids, the outcome of the election and uncertainty over the privatisation of the Tube network. However, it could be at a station near you by 1999.

The success of the scheme is important to London Transport, which says that ticket fraud costs it pounds 30m a year - money which could be invested in the network. Prestige could also provide a big pay day for the winning bidder which, under the Private Finance Initiative, would make between pounds 150m and pounds 200m in leasing the system over a period of 20 to 30 years.

More important still, however, is that the technology doesn't provoke passengers into unbecoming behaviour. As a London Underground spokesman admits, the developers will be alert to the risk of "Londoners joining the Ministry of Silly Walks".

To elucidate, a similar system is already in operation at Bunhill Towers where doors are operated by personalised smart cards to keep out undesirables (though not, curiously, journalists). As the pictures above illustrate, people armed with the latest hi-tech gadgets will never do anything so mundane as getting the cards out of their pockets.

The result is a series of bizarre postures. For example, those who keep the card in their breast pocket end up resembling a limbo dancer, while those relying on trouser power evoke an image familiar to anyone who has walked their dog in the park. But for the ultimate in contortions, look out for people with a card in their back pocket ... a posture that is truly vulgar.

Doing the smart card shuffle

Photographs by ADRIAN DENNIS