I’m not and have never been a fan of the mediocre at best range of Crocodille sandwiches, so ubiquitous to the Czech Republic, and only ever purchase these on the most emergency of occasions (the last, I recall, being one of those Gurman baguettes prior to a long Student Agency coach trip down to Český Krumlov a couple of years ago).

However, even the most Crocodille averse of us cannot have failed to have noticed that the company has jazzed up its range recently, ditching its only decent sandwich in the now obsolete Turkey Club and introducing a new variety of “trendy” options such as Brie & Fig, Roast Beef & Mustard, and Chorizo & Egg.

One of the new range of products includes the Špíz baguette, which may have come to your attention (as it did to mine) by its strange choice of logo on Crocodille delivery vans across the Czech Republic.


Is it only me who finds the sight of a cartoon chicken, perky pig, cycloptic pepper and gurning onion all seemingly in the throes of ecstasy at having a dirty great skewer gouged through their mid-riffs just ever so slightly odd...?? After all, what greater joy could there possibly be for our cartoony protagonists then to meet a collective death by impaling solely in order to serve as ingredients for a lacklustre baguette...??

And it gets weirder.

If you go on the Crocodille website, there is actually an entire online game dedicated to the Špíz that you can play, whereby you select your murderous persona from a range of largely culinary-based avatars (though, oddly, also including the choice of Cat Woman and apparent orthodox priest) and proceed to harpoon as many of our merry cartoon characters as possible in a given timeframe. Careful though not to inadvertently spear any non-Špíz ingredients such as the sausage, sheep, rabbit or (I think) pineapple characters in the process though, as this will lower your score.



I’m not a vegetarian, so know full well that it is somewhat hypocritical on my part to question the active association of happy little cartoon characters with the actual slaughtered ingredients of my sandwich. That said, it does strike me as a vaguely odd concept for an advertising campaign, even in such a happily meat-guzzling country as the Czech Republic (or then again, maybe not).

Either way, this – as shown on the Crocodille website – is the finished Špíz product.


This is the infinitely less appealing reality, which - purely for the sake of review - I purchased from Albert at the grand price of 47kč:


It was pretty much as you’d expect from your bog-standard Crocodille sandwich – chewy bread, uninspiring filling, artificial twang, and reliant more on quantity than quality to sell. Not really much more to say than that really – am sure you’re all as familiar with this inexplicably popular chain as I am by now...

Suffice to say that I for one will pass on the Špíz (and all it's Crocodille companions) next time, and let Cheery Chicken, Spicy Pepper, Teary Onion and Porky Pig run free and blissfully unskewered from this day forth...