Safeway supermarket in Grantham, Lincolnshire, is to rebrand Gingerbread Men as Gingerbread Persons.
They claim this is because they are due to introduce a Gingerbread family complete with children (and perhaps a cat, though personally I can't see those selling very well - but I could be biased!!) and consequently labelling their shelves with the individual gender descriptions will become too cumbersome.
However, the more cynical amonst us, including the store manager Tom Lax, assume it is yet another assault by the Political Correctness brigade.
It's An Outrage!!
Gingerbread Men are clearly different from Gingerbread Women (or Ladies), as they don't have skirts or long, flicked hair.
And how many Gingerbread 'persons' have actually complained about their gended specific labelling to warrant this move?
Are we to see them lobbying Parliament in the near future with angry slogans neatly iced onto those big, flat, round lollypops you only see in comics and at funfairs?
I'd have though that the prospect of having their limbs bitten off one by one before having their heads munched (or worse, in the case of younger children, simply being gnawed into a soggy mess) would be their first concern. But as I'm not a thing of sugar, oats and ginger I guess I'll never know.
Anyway, Safeway should stick to the traditional, descriptive names given to these pieces of confectionary several hundred years ago, lest they fall foul of the famous Gingerman's fate.
For those of you who don't remember the fable, the Gingerbread Man ran all round town causing mischief, thinking he was cleverer than anyone else. Until he ran into a VERY clever fox who tricked him and gobbled him up.
Okay, it's a tenuous link, but try and make the leap with me...
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