Musical sandwich hits the market

LONDON - Tired of the same old lunch at your office desk? Help is at hand. A supermarket is launching the ultimate life-enhancing snack -- the musical sandwich.

In a trial certain to be welcomed by the estimated one million Britons who eat their lunch at their desks each day, Tesco will use technology similar to that used in singing greetings cards to sell musical sandwiches.

Opening the top of the sandwich box will activate a tiny sound module that plays a selection of music. This season's offering will be a medley of Christmas tunes including Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

Tesco Spokesman Jonathan Church said the potential of the melodic munch was enormous.

"It's designed to provide busy office workers with relaxing music to make eating lunch at their desks more enjoyable than ever before," he said, adding that the concept could be easily adapted for Easter, Valentine's Day or Mother's Day.

While it's not certain how your true love would react to being given a tuneful tuna lunch on February 14, Church said the idea could also be used in conjunction with record companies to launch songs by new artists clamouring for the kudos.

The first offering will have no such ambitions, and will consist of a turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich with pork and cranberry stuffing. The new musical sandwiches will go on sale this week.

But further out, flavour/song combinations under consideration include Prawn To Be Wild, Let It Brie and that old Julio Iglesias favourite, Fillings, Tesco said.

- REUTERS