January 8, 2025 | 12:00am
I will admit that I love imports. My love for US products started quite early in my childhood, surprisingly shaped by American cartoon strips – specifically Popeye.
Perhaps Gen Z and Gen Alpha may not realize that the fast food chicken restaurant Popeyes was a popular cartoon about a sailor, with bulging biceps who smokes a wooden pipe, that first appeared in print on Jan. 17, 1929 and was still quite popular in the 1960s.
However, Popeye the sailor was not really into chicken. He was likely more of a vegetarian because his favorite was spinach, which gave him the energy to pop his already bulging biceps and throw a wallop of a punch to his enemies, foremost of which were Brutus or Bluto.
His true love was Olive Oyl and one of his more memorable character friends was a hamburger-loving moocher named Wimpee, more formally known as J. Wellington Wimpee, who regularly asked his friends for money to buy a hamburger with the famous line, “I’ll gladly pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
Oh how I enjoyed following the antics of Popeye, Olive Oyl and Brutus, and the eternal fight to win the heart of the stick-thin Olive. But what really was ingrained in my mind were hamburger and spinach. You see, before Popeye, may favorite snack of all time was a meaty footlong hotdog from Milky Way…the same Milky Way that continues to successfully operate under the stewardship of Jay and Malou Gamboa along Pasay Road, but alas no longer serves that footlong hotdog, but continues to serve delicious Filipino food favorites.
However, when I saw Wimpee swallow a mound of burgers, my mind was set that that was the best meal in the world. The available version of the burger at that time was from Tropical Hut. Unfortunately, for me at least, it did not have the same look and the burger tasted a bit sweet for my taste. Wimpee’s hamburgers were two round pieces of bread with a meat patty. So, I was fixated on having the exact same thing.
The spinach craving was quite easy to resolve at the time because of the presence of US military bases in the country, the nearest being in Sangley, then in Clark in Pampanga, and the then the far-off US Naval Base in Subic in Olongapo City. Luckily, too, my aunt was married to an American who was a US Special Services manager in Sangley in Cavite and it was, thus, quite easy to have them buy that “special” can of spinach.
Alas! Reality is always far removed from fiction, and what seemed like a magical energy source turned out to be a soggy, mushy clump of leaves to me – phew! That left only the hamburger.
My version of Wimpee’s hamburger only materialized in the 1980s with the opening of the first McDonald’s fast food store along Morayta Street in Manila. Finally! My dream came true and more – it was exactly how I envisioned the true American burger.
But even before I got to taste my “American burger,” I was already quite hooked on American made products, what with my aunt able to buy a constant supply of US products from the military commissary. But apart from the legal route, a lot, nay, a flood of smuggled US military provisions still found their way to the local markets and were popularly know as PX goods.
Almost any US product you wanted could easily be had in PX stores that popped up in Manila – particularly in Cartimar in Pasay City and even in the regular Sunday market in front of Baclaran Church. In Pampanga, whole shopping centers proliferated, selling PX goods tax-free. These goods were sold openly even though they were subject to confiscation if caught. Nobody did any enforcement whatsoever.
Fast forward to now, from my love of American shows and products, I have now shifted some of my preference to Korean food and products, and all of which again started from watching K-dramas which constantly feature and highlight their favorite foods such as ramyeon and kimchi and beauty face masks.
Even before the Philippine-Korea Free Trade Agreement took effect at the end of last year, Korean marts or K marts have proliferated in various parts of the country, as well as numerous restaurants that also sell Korean products and even meats imported from Korea – I just wonder how the Bureau of Customs allowed the meat importations. Even the famous Hanwoo beef is also available even though its export out of Korea is supposed to have been restricted.
Thus, it seems par for the course that the Bureau of Customs is only now releasing the guidelines for the implementation of tariff commitments under the Phl-Korea FTA, when in reality, the horses have been out of the barn for quite some time now.
In fact, there is one Korean mart located at the Fort in BGC, right beside the Seda Hotel that has been operating for months or a year already that is stacked with boxes of Korean products that somehow has been able to bring in their wares even before the FTA came into force. I wonder how and under what tariff classification these Korean marts have been operating in our country in the past.
As I wrote in my previous column, I just wonder how we can compete against the continued flood of imports when our own government seems unable (unwilling or looks the other way) to prevent the blatant entry of foreign goods while failing to rally our own local producers to immediately take advantage of FTAs or trade arrangements that should benefit them.
Surely, more should be done by our government to promote and upgrade Philippine agriculture, foods and manufactured products so that even we Filipinos will learn to love our own.
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