By Theresa Garner
A piece of Kiwiana that has delivered splurts of tomato sauce for 30 years has captured the hearts of the British - and provided a tasty export market for a local manufacturer.
Britons, it seems, just can't get enough of our bright red tomato-shaped plastic tomato sauce dispensers.
Morris Watson,
who owns Premier Plastics in Sandringham, admits his sauce bottle is garish - "it's the tomato everyone loves to hate" - but it keeps on selling.
He has been making the bottles since setting up his company in 1970 and now believes he has the only tool in the world able to make them. More than a million have been sold here, and around 50,000 a year are made for the New Zealand market. And now, he says, "every fish-and-chip shop in London wants one."
An English woman who lived in New Zealand for a time was so taken by the bottles she took a carton of 60 back home with her this year.
"The next minute she was on the phone, saying, 'Can we have 5000 more?' " said Mr Watson. He is now preparing quotes for an export order of 100,000.
Mr Watson can't explain the continued popularity in New Zealand, but suggests that "nostalgia" could be a factor. And while the bottles are built to last, he guesses that because they sell for a little over $1, "people wash it a few times, then grab another one."
