1. Goldfish!

    Grand Union recently had a special on Goldfish – you know, the baked snack cracker from the good folks at Pepperidge Farm, sure. A dollar a bag. Who can say no to that? Not me or you, I’ll tell you that much.

    At a buck a bag, I could afford to try a few different varieties, and among those I purchased were these:

    I guess I was pulled in by the exciting graphics and vibrant colors, but let me tell you, I wish I had given this purchase a little more thought.

    First of all, who’s the idiot who decided to mix two flavors in one bag? We’ve seen this with Doritos, too. And invariably what happens is both flavors and me, the consumer, loses. When I first tried those Doritos “Collisions” a few years ago (“Doritos Catastrophes” they should have been called), I presumed there was some sort of cellophane or foil divider inside my Big Grab to keep the Hot Wings chips and the Blue Cheese chips from commingling – and then I opened the bag and it was Brown v. Board of Education all over again. But in this case it was a bad thing.

    Same with these Goldfish – let me pull one out here: Is it a Parmesan one? Is it a Flavor Blasted Xplosive Pizza one? I have no idea. Here, I’ll eat it.

    …Okay, I ate it. And I still have no idea.

    That’s not even my biggest problem with these crackers. My issue is with this “Mix-Up Adventures” bullshit on the package. How is a bag of crackers “an adventure?” Give me a story on the back of the package. Provide me with some sort of narrative explaining how this happened, how they were mixed up – make me care about the fish inside. And then invite me to join in the experience by, I don’t know, moving them along some sort of inexpensive but colorfully printed game board, maybe a thin plastic sheet that can be folded up and packed inside the bag and measures at least 24″ x 24″ when spread out on the floor or my bed, and then you move the crackers along a path through things like caves and off cliffs, over waterfalls and into jungles and stuff.

    That’d be cool, right? They should do that. That would be an adventure. And it would probably make us slow down and eat them one at a time, preventing us from shoveling these things into our mouths by the handful, and then the bag is gone in five minutes and we’re back to gnawing on a dry brick of Maruchan ramen and then dabbing a wet pinky into the seasoning packet and eating it like Fun Dip.

    Posted by on August 16, 2011, 9:00 AM.

Ted Parsnips: Too Many Kittens! © 2011–2024 Ted Parsnips. All rights reserved. Layout by Andrew Sylvester. All content property of Ted Parsnips or its respective owner, unless otherwise specified.