How happy does a Lender's bagel make your family?

Bagels can bring us together

Has anyone else noticed that the number of products claiming to make your life better seems to have spiked in recent months? And it's no longer just about selling the idea of making your life easier or more convenient: Now it's all about products that claim to have something to do with your actual level of happiness while you're here on this big blue rock.

But it all begins to border on egotistical when an advertising campaign or product push paints itself as somehow responsible for improving some of the more personal aspects of your life. A bagel, for instance. Can a bagel make your family happier? Lender's Bagels seems to think it can.

In fact, right this very minute, there's a contest on their website asking bagel biters to explain what Lender's Bagels does for their family. (The winner pockets $1,000.) The page is plastered with an annoyingly happy couple spreading cream cheese on a bagel as if they were giving a their day-old infant its first bath. The recommended format for the contest is to complete the following sentence "Now that's a bagel that..." and include a photo of just how glee-inducing mass-produced bread products bring to your brood.

These won't be submitted to Lender's, but feel free to rip them off.

"Now that's a bagel that...my first wife ate while she told me she'd been sleeping with my brother for the last two months."

"Now that's a bagel that...my youngest son filled with a dog turd and threw at my head when I took his Xbox away."

"Now that's a bagel that...my mother-in-law choked on. Thank you Lender's!"

The contest runs through March 31, 2010 and you must be 18 or over to enter.