I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! is a butter substitute produced by Becel/Flora/Promise, which is a subsidiary of Unilever.[1] It was introduced to the United States in 1986 and later to the United Kingdom and Canada in 1991.[2][3] The product was put on the market in Germany in 2011.[4] Advertisements featuring the product often end with the question, "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, can you?"
Nutritional information
The U.S. ingredients for the current Original Spread variety are:[5]
The basic British formulation is:[6]
Imitation
The trademarked butter imitation has itself spawned numerous imitators, including:
- "Butter It's Not!", a Kroger and Fred Meyer brand[7]
- "Isn't It Butter?", a Food Lion brand
- "What, Not Butter!", by Matthews Foods, which lost a trademark dispute with Unilever[8]
- "Could it be Butter?", a Gold-n-Soft brand[7]
- "You'd Butter Believe It", an Asda brand[8]
- "You'd Think It's Butter!", an H-E-B brand[7]
- "Unbelieveable[9] [sic] This is not butter", a Taiwanese brand[7]
- "Not Butter But Better", an Irish brand[8]
- "Tastes Like Butter", an Aldi brand
- "Is it Butter?", a Spartan Stores brand
- "Utterly Butterly", a Dairy Crest brand
- "Better By Far", a Morrisons brand[10]
- "This is not Butter. It's Butterific!", an Albertson's brand
In popular culture
- In Two and a Half Men, Season 9; Episode 4 it's mentioned by Alan Harper, referring to Walden Schmidt & Courtney having sex.
- In the ""The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" episode "The Science Fair Affair", Jimmy invents a machine for the science fair called I Can't Believe It's Not Oil!.
- The Vicar of Dibley episode "Animals" begins with over a minute of Alice explaining a complicated conspiracy theory in which I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and a knockoff brand are both lying, "and, in fact, there's a lot more butter around than we all thought there was."
- In The Simpsons episode "Secrets of a Successful Marriage", when in his job interview to teach an adult education class at the Springfield "Adult Education Annex", Homer is asked if he has any skills, and says he has the ability to tell "The difference between butter, and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter", only for the interviewer to say he cannot and nor can anybody else. Also, in the episode "Little Girl in the Big Ten", Lisa watches the Itchy & Scratchy Show episode "Butter off Dead", in which Itchy milked Scratchy from a cow and process him into "I Can't Believe It's Not Scratchy!" butter.
- An episode of The Mary Whitehouse Experience suggested the presence of other similarly named convenience foods, such as "Surely these are Pineapple Chunks", "Oooh, but these must be Gravy Granules, aren't they?" and "Bollocks - this is custard powder and I'll deck anyone who says otherwise".
- In the Everybody Hates Chris episode "Everybody Hates Earth Day", Chris' uncle says that he helps the planet by using "I can't believe it's not margarine".
- In the Family Guy episode "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter", Peter mentions "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" twice, both after two Family Guy characters make a statement starting with "I can't believe...".
- In The Big Bang Theory episode "The Monopolar Expedition", Sheldon offers Leonard a cup of hot chocolate with a stick of butter in it. Leonard reminds Sheldon that he can't eat butter because of his lactose intolerance, but Sheldon says "I'm way ahead of you, that's an I Can't Believe It's Not Butter stick." In "The Lunar Excitation", Sheldon expresses no problem believing that it's not butter.
- On one episode of Codename: Kids Next Door, Number 2 has two circle shaped melba toasts, topped up with a parody called "I Can't Believe It's Not Booger".
- The rock band Bloodhound Gang references the brand in the lyrics of "Hell Yeah": "I can't believe it's not butter, I'll sing as I'm flogged - yeah that's what I would do if I were God".
- In the first season of Felicity as a running joke, Felicity Porter's roommate Meghan Rotundi talks in several episodes about how "it tastes so much like real butter."
- In Tim Rickard's comic strip, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Agent X developes a human substitute for a tribe of man-eating aliens: I Can't Believe It's Not Humans.
- On an episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien, Fabio Lanzoni, one-time endorser of the product, participated in a sketch in which he revealed a celebrity "secret", whereby when first endorsing the product, he pointed out that the name contains a double negative and should be called "I Believe It's Butter".
- A common Chuck Norris joke states that 'Chuck Norris, can, in fact, believe it is not butter.'
- Voice actor and musician Snazin Smith recorded a tribute to I Can't Believe It's Not Butter on his 2006 album Hot to Trot.
- On the "Lunchtime" episode from the Plants vs. Zombies series "Zombie Temp Worker", the Zombie grabs a bucket that says "I can't believe it's not brains".
See also
References
External links