I Can't Believe It's Not I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

Born and raised in Germany, I am thoroughly unfamiliar with products not being butter and pretending to be a perfect substitute for it. As which, apparently, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is marketed in the U.S. of A.. Over here, margarine is just that: margarine. Brand names usually sound terribly old-fashioned, as the advent of margarine in Germany is a pre-WWI phenomenon.

There are other brands of non-butter spreads, too, but they don't pretend any butteriness either.

German margarine brands:

• Alsan
• Becel (all-diet brand)
• Bellasan (Aldi Süd generic)
• Bertolli (pretends 'italianità' and contains olive oil)
• Bonita (Penny Markt generic)
• Buttella (Aldi Nord generic)
• Deli Reform
• Die Sparsamen (Spar generic)
• Du Darfst (all-diet brand)
• Eden
• Flora Soft
• Frisan (Norma generic)
• Goldblume
• Gut und billig
• Gut&günstig (Edeka/Euroshopper generic)
• Halbarine (yes, this is what the hilarious name suggests: diet margarine)
• Homa Gold (what my grand-parents used to, ahem, 'butter' their bread with; I hope this still exists)
• ja! (REWE generic)
• Lätta (marketed as somewhat Scandinavian and inexplicably sexy; Lätta commercials usually feature female frontal nudity)
• Looping (Aldi Nord diet generic)
• Münsterland
• Naturata
• Rama (this has caused the German translation of Rendezvous with Rama to be re-titled "Rendezvous mit 31/439")
• Rapunzel
• Rela (Plus generic)
• Sanella (marketed not as a bread spread, but rather as a baking ingredient)
• Sonnenreife (Lidl generic)
• Sosan
• TIP (generic of eponymous chain)
• Vitaquell

As you can see, pseudo-pharmaceutical names, often ending in "-san", are very common, for some sick reason I don't want to think of (did they try to make people think margarine would make them healthy?). The only margarine with a somewhat buttery name is Buttella. Alsan margarine is the only brand that comes wrapped in foil, 1900-style, which is how almost all butter is packaged in Germany.

I conclude that it would be pretty unlikely to ever have someone shout the title of this node^* at a German breakfast table, and, doing so, rest my case. Thank you for your kind attention.

^*This writeup was moved from "I Can't Believe It's Not I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" to "margarine". I liked the original title better, but what the hell. (2003-06-01)