Kantong is Australian

“Mama’s making Kan Tong, it doesn’t take long for the word to spread around.” – jingle in Kantong advertisements.

For those who don’t know, Kantong is a 30-year old Australian brand of Asian cooking sauces manufactured by Master Foods. It makes it real easy to cook Asian-style cuisine – stir-fry the vegetables, brown the meat and pour in the sauce.

Juji did a piece about Kantong which is related to what I wrote about the portrayal of Asian culture in local advertising in a previous post, “Of 7-Eleven, Kwik-E Mart and Apu“. Except she did it in art form.

Check it out, and click on the image to enlarge it for the hidden meaning. ;)

Kantong – Wholly Australian Made.

And while doing the research for this post, I stumbled across a Metafilter discussion about an ad which Kantong ran a couple of years ago. It’s a parody of wacky Japanese/Taiwanese TV ads using a mish-mash of stuff: the actors are Vietnamese-Australians (the guy is Hung Le, a comedian) who speak Vietnamese, the flashing words are Chinese with no meaning to the ad or product whatsoever, and the product is Australian.

Kantong TV commercial
Kantong TV commercial
Kantong TV commercial
images via: CultureBuzz

Watch it on YouTube. (thanks Herman!)

Some commentators on the MeFi thread saw racism, while some said it was a clever parody. I’m in the latter group. I’ve seen Hung Le’s act and that’s one of his favourite topics – ridiculing the more absurb aspects of Asian culture but in a good-hearted way. When my family first saw this ad, we all thought it was hilarious. Like I’ve said before, racial comedy can be really funny when done right.