Tate v. State

In their tooth & nail fight against nationalization of their industry (TIME, Aug. 29), Britain's leading sugar refiners, Tate & Lyle, were helped by a champion as ubiquitous and eloquent as Colonel Blimp ("Gad, sir, the Americans should be forced to pay us the money we owe them!") or long-nosed, war-born Mr. Chad ("Wot, no bacon & eggs?"). The free-enterprise champion was Mr. Cube, a personable lump of sugar invented by a 30-year-old ex-newspaperman and psychological warfare expert named Roy Hudson. On millions of sugar cartons, thousands of posters, pamphlets and ration-book covers, Mr. Cube's expressive face and thin, agile limbs have helped launch slogans like "You'll get the lump from Tate, but State will give you the hump." A "Memo from Mr. Cube," hitting state controls, went to 5,000,000 voters.

Last week, while the House of Commons staged a full-fledged debate over whether Mr. Cube constituted plain advertising or political electioneering (British law requires that all electioneering expenses must be made public), Mr. Cube turned up in another incarnation. His sponsors distributed free some 500,000 sets of Mr. Cube dice, neatly boxed in a miniature sugar carton together with rules for a new game called TATE & STATE. Each of Tate's dice has one of the letters S T A t E and a portrait of Mr. Cube on one of its six sides. The rules of play are like those of plain poker dice except for two special conditions. Anyone throwing Mr. Cube and T-A-t-E has achieved "free enterprise" and wins. Anyone throwing S-T-A-t-E reaches "stagnation" and automatically loses.

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