There has got to be some 7-syllable-long compound-word in German for the concept of Gift with Purchase, because it is a big one here. I was actually a little surprised when I received my first such freebie – a mini-pastry to go along with a sandwich I bought at a bakery chain. Nice, I thought, but weird. Not very German. Isn’t the gift with purchase a decadent American invention? It seems like something that comes only with the mindset that you don’t know what you really want and you could always use a little more. Why stop when you have enough? Buying shoes? Here’s a stuffed animal! Two coffees? Have a keychain!
Weirder still, the group that really seems to be excited about the Gift with Purchase is not the department store beauty counter but the pharmacies. Walk into any drugstore and you will walk out with a package of tissues, a little bag of candies, or a canvas bag with an ad for some sort of medication that it may or may not be prudent to endorse. Case in point: the little mouth shaped gummies for oral herpes medication. Do I even want to eat those?
I’m not sure about the ins and outs of drug advertising in Germany, but I guess this extra little consumer contact makes sense considering all the itchy-wheezy-sneezy promises found on North American drug packaging are almost invisible Most drugs, from vitamin supplements to cough lozenges to pain killers, are kept behind the pharmacist’s counter or completely out of sight. However, most of this stuff is still over-the-counter – no prescription required, only some patient nodding at the pharmacist’s advice about dosage and usage. (That being said, being able neither to putter around the shelves nor to explain myself to the satisfaction of the pharmacist means that I am currently taking my Vitamin B12 in a very expensive and sickly sweet liquid form marketed as an energy drink for health-conscious yuppies.)
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