Oh, my Lord. I didn’t want to believe a link a friend just sent me. There is a new flavor of Skittles candy – mustard! I repeat – mustard-flavored Skittles. I’m gagging as I type this. Folks, the end times have to be near.
Though not as bad, Kellogg’s has introduced additional flavors of Frosted Flakes cereal – Strawberry Milkshake and Cinnamon French Toast. My response to this decision is one word: “Ugh!” In my opinion, this is heresy. To take a classic cereal that I grew up with like Frosted Flakes, and give it “new” flavors is just wrong to me. And what’s worse, it brings the total number of Frosted Flakes flavors to six. Six! Why isn’t one flavor enough?
Oh, I know why they did it – I majored business and spent years in sales. Some guy at the Kellogg’s home office in Battle Creek, Michigan, did a focus group of a few people and their responses indicated a bump in sales if Tony had some newer, hipper tastes. Well, my focus group of one says, “Horse hockey!”
Marketing people call the new flavors “line extensions,” and the reason they exist is to take up more shelf space and fill up the product pipeline. Most of the time there is no appreciable increase in consumer takeaway.
They are ruining a good thing by giving us too many choices. What’s more, they’re not even good choices. I’ve never really understood why people want to make something new out of something old just to be doing it. It doesn’t make sense – especially when the old one was just fine.
The one exception to this rule is medicine. The makers of Kaopectate have a vanilla-flavored version of their product. I’ll give them a pass, because original Kaopectate tastes bad, and they know it. But come to think of it, do you really care what a medicine tastes like if it stops your diarrhea?
As frustrated as I am with Frosted Flakes, they don’t hold a spoon to Cap’n Crunch. Since it was invented in the early 1960s, there have been 25 kinds of Cap’n Crunch that have found their way to the grocery shelf. Most of them were total failures. Cotton Candy Cap’n Crunch? Cinnamon Roll Crunch? Most of these my dog wouldn’t eat. And is there even such a thing as a Crunch Berry? How about just a bowl of good ol’ Cap’n Crunch?
The greatest example of this kind of idiocy occurred in 1985 when the morons at Coca Cola decided to eliminate their 100-plus-year-old flavor – the one that made it a worldwide brand, and come out with New Coke. I’m sure that a marketing genius had some good results from his focus group studies on this one. But apparently his studies didn’t indicate how angry folks would become when you start messing with a cherished American icon. Letters and phone calls from upset people flooded into Coca Cola. People protested, and bought original Coke like an alcoholic before Prohibition.
Finally, they saw the error of their ways – well, almost. Let us not forget that since they pulled New Coke off the shelves, we have seen Cherry Coke, Lime Coke and Vanilla Coke. And none of them have been a success.
I’ve noticed that a lot of fast-food places have begun to put in soda machines that can dispense dozens of flavors. Dozens! Is it any wonder that so many of us have attention deficit disorder? And if you don’t have ADD, you will after a few times of deciding whether to drink a lime-flavored, caffeine-free Coke Zero, or a vanilla-flavored Fanta Orange light. I think the old machines were doing their jobs just fine, and they didn’t take a degree in engineering to operate.
When I was a kid, Tony the Tiger was the man. “They’re Grrreat!” And they were. When I was a small child there’s nothing I would rather wake up to than a bowl of Frosted Flakes and milk. What have they done to you, Tony?
The great country singer Waylon Jennings said it best when he sang, “Maybe it’s time we got back to the basics….”
You were right, Waylon. You were right. And I don’t think he’d be eating mustard-flavored Skittles.
Joe Hobby is a barbecue-loving comedian from Alabama who wrote for Jay Leno for many years. Find more of Joe’s stories on his blog: https://mylifeasahobby.blogspot.com. Follow him on Facebook at Joe Hobby Comedian-Writer.
