Homeling Seal of Approval: the Lockwood Bacon Companion
by SealWyf, HSM Editor
Ladies and gentlemen of Home, you are witnessing a historic occasion. For the first time ever, we are awarding the Homeling Seal of Approval to an item that has not yet been released in Home! Doing so was a bit of a scramble, since it’s coming out this Wednesday. But we felt it was important to make a statement.
The item is, of course, Lockwood’s new Bacon Companion. It’s receiving our highest accolade for Homeling-friendly virtual goods on the strength of the press-release description and a couple of publicity stills. But nobody should be surprised by this. Anyone who knows the Homeling Collective knows that we are obsessed with bacon.
The Homeling bacon obsession dates to September, 2010, when the HairBrainedIdeas media group (led by the redoubtable Gideon) hosted a Bacon Day celebration in Central Plaza. International Bacon Day had recently been founded as a somewhat official annual celebration of the popular breakfast meat, to be held on the Saturday before Labor Day. That was all that was needed to set off an enthusiastic Home-based celebration, which was immortalized in a video:
Although the Homelings are not in evidence in the video, one of the participants was TheBrightestGlow, an active Homeling member. Glow brought his newfound enthusiasm for bacon back to the Collective. And the rest (as they say) is history.
So why did bacon-enthusiasm take off among the Homelings? My guess is that, as aliens newly exposed to Earth culture, we naturally gravitated to a delicious food group we had never experienced in our native Fluidic Space. That explanation makes as much sense as any, I suppose. And it fits in with the comic side of our grand role-play.
However, the constant bacon references have recently started annoying some of the more serious senior Homelings, and we have been asked to tone it down. Fun is still one of the main principles of Homeling culture, but too much emphasis on fun can make us appear shallow and clownish. And constant Fun can get in the way of our other principles, Glory and Respect. Bacon references have now been reduced to an occasional leitmotif, rather than the constant in-your-face cacaphony they had become.
However, I suspect that’s about to change.
It’s not surpring that Homelings adopted bacon as a thematic mascot. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the world at large in the midst of a massive bacon orgy. Once a simple pan-fried accompaniment to a traditional American breakfast, bacon is now prepared in every conceivable way, and has appeared in countless recipes and food venues, from diners and county fairs, to fast-food and family restaurants, to high-end gourmet extravganzas. You can get chicken-fried bacon, chocolate-covered bacon, bacon ice cream, bacon-maple donuts, bacon sushi, and drinks based on bacon-infused Bourbon whiskey. If you don’t feel like adding actual bacon to a recipe, you can add its distinctive smoky flavor by sprinkling it with Bacon Salt, which is (oddly enough) vegetarian.
Bacon has also become a symbol of dietary excess. Bacon has been added to just about every dish, simply to make it more fattening. A image search for “bacon sandwich” reveals some truly remarkable creations, the “only in America” kind of meals that celebrate having more than enough to eat, and ignore the fact that obesity and heart disease are national health crises. A Google phrase search on “bacon-wrapped *” uncovers even more culinary excess. Bacon-wrapped cinnamon rolls, anyone?
And this is not counting the the explosion of non-food products celebrating bacon. A quick perusal of the Archie McPhee catalog turns up bacon bandaids, bacon soap, a bacon wallet, a bacon-themed board game, a bacon belt, and many other fine bacon-related products. Bacon-patterned toys, clothing, jewelry and furniture are not uncommon. Any way you look at it, bacon is everywhere. Including, now, in Home.
The Bacon Companion began as a joke. Someone suggested the idea to Lockwood via Twitter, and their response was a quick mockup of an avatar beside a googly-eyed floating bacon strip. The accompanying text stated that Lockwood had no intention of actually producing such a thing. To which the overwhelming public response was, “Why not? We would totally buy it!”
After some more give-and-take, Lockwood announced that they had decided to produce a bacon companion after all, and announced a contest to determine the new item’s name. The best entries were narrowed down, and a final vote was conducted. The winning name was “Sir Francis Bacon”.
Sir Francis has been designed and coded, and will be released via the Lockwood Gift Machine this Wednesday. Lockwood scores some additional thinking-outside-the-box points by making this a free item. Anyone can send their friend a free Bacon Companion, just by visiting their Gift Machine. While they’re there, they might decide to send some other gifts as well, such as the recently-released Sunlit Meadow private space, or clothing items such as the new Leather Jackets or Canvas Plimsolls. It’s an excellent example of what we have come to know as “asymmetrical marketing” — basically, using cleverness to increase market share.
And so, come Wednesday, the Homeling Collective will officially relapse into it bacon obsession. I have no doubt whatsoever that all of us will be racing to send each other Bacon Companions. And we will gather in Home’s public spaces, bacon at our heels, to dance in circles and stand at attention, celebrating the deep playfulness, and sheer glorious Fun, that makes up so much of PlayStation Home. For this, we unreservedly award this new item, sight unseen, our coveted Homeling Seal of Approval.
September 18th, 2012 by SealWyf | 16 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer by day, and an officer in the Homeling Collective by night. She has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is utterly addicted to PlayStation Home.
Queen_Eli applauds the bacon article and lists Seal as first on her list of Sir Francis Bacon recipients! GLORY Seal! Loving the Seal too! (Where’s the TM!)
Thank you, Eli! Looking forward to my glorious new BACON!
I’d like a Sir Francis Bacon companion also, but I’d prolly eat it when I got hungry!!
LOL
Forgive the very shameless plug, but I recently wrote an article on the impending bacon, and in it I stated that strictly out of the principle that Lockwood listened to the masses and created a companion for the fans, I was defintely going to buy it. Lockwood just stepped up the cool factor to about 40 megafonzies when it put it in the Lockwood gift machine for free…Lockwood continues to rule, and they didn’t pay me to say that. They earned it.Well wait, maybe they paid me in bacon…Sir Francis Bacon. Good write.
Shameless plugs are us!
BACON!!! Sorry where was I? Oh yea great article Seal.
Indeed! A fun read and a fun product!
Love eating bacon, too. Yum
…
Greetings, Sir Francis Bacon!
*bows*
Welcome to Home!
What we didn’t see in the publicity stills were the truly hilarious animations this companion displays. It flops on the floor! It crawls! It peers at you suspiciously! It hops behind you when you walk!
Last night’s Representatives’ Council meeting was full of Bacon Companions, all hopping, crawling, flopping, and peering. Thank you again, Lockwood, for this awesome present!
Dunno if anyone noticed, but when it’s flopped down, it’ll start to crinkle up, as if it’s being cooked. Also, taking it to the Glittering Sands Beach, you’ll notice that if you’re in the water, but now swimming, or you’re standing on one of the rocks, the bacon will float on top of the water.
I went to my Lockwood Dream Yacht to get mine, and went to the top deck hot tub…he stands at perfect height to look funny, just his eyes peering above the water line. Dang good job Lockwood!
Good job Lockwood and Woot Baacccoonn :):)
Woooooootttttt
Great article as always Seal. You make not only the Collective proud, but the entire Home Community. Keep up the glorious work. *bows*
It’s been great seeing Homelings with their new Bacon Companions the past few days. I look forward to seeing a lot more of them tonight when we gather on the new public beach!
We always knew that Lockwood could bring Home the bacon.
Now, it’s official.
I prefer my bacon the old fashioned way: in my mouth.