Are you against blue M&M's? Okay, so here's a weighty subject that's just been begging to be tackled. Why the heck do food manufacturer's have to mess with a product that's worked for years? What is up with all these new colors in candy and breakfast cereals? Did Froot Loops really need purple and green Os?
It seems like every time I want to take a trip down memory lane, the signs along the road have changed. Is nothing sacred? They've messed up Cracker Jacks and Hydrox cookies, discontinued Crispy Critters, and ruined Trix cereal. What ever happened to Space Food Sticks and Spoon Candy? Were they really that lame? Well, okay, so Space Food Sticks tasted like chocolate flavored rubber. (I don't even want to talk about the "caramel" flavored ones.) So Spoon Candy tasted like sweet plastic foam covered with a bizarre chocolate-like substance that hardened when you put it in the fridge. Why do these manufacturers get us hooked on these useless junk foods and then heartlessly discontinue them or change them to a nearly unrecognizable form?
One of the main problems is all this unnecessary focus on health. When I'm eating junk food, I expect junk. Not some vitamin injected substitute. And I miss lard. What was wrong with lard? It made the cookies taste so much better. When I first had Golden Fruit cookies as a kid, they were great. Lots of smashed raisin filling inside and flaky pastry outside. Then health issues and cheapness on the manufacturer's part ruined them. They cut back on the amount of raisins they used, substituted "healthier" vegetable shortening for the lard and then added more pastry. So now you get a whole mouthful of chalky pastry and hardly any raisins. It's criminal.
And just whose idea was it to add more colors-not-found-in-nature to Froot Loops? What was wrong with yellow, red and orange? I don't like green, purple and blue and pink swirly colored Froot Loops. And why the heck did they need to add so many new shapes and colors of marshmallows to Lucky Charms? First it was the green clovers. Then the blue diamonds. Then the rainbows. Now they've got so many different shapes and colors of marshmallows, I've forgotten what was originally in there.
But this blue M&M thing has got to go. When I'm popping a handful of M&Ms into my mouth, all I want to see is red, green, dark brown, light brown, yellow and orange. When I see those blue ones, some part of my brain says "Button. You're eating a button." Blue is for plastic, not junk food. With the exception of blue Otter Pops, of course. And raspberry Icees from 7-11. But while we're on the subject, why was blue singled out to designate raspberry flavor? Who the hell decided that one? I can't help but think "Windex" when I'm drinking or eating blue frozen liquid. That bright blue is just not a food color. Light brown is a food color. Speaking of light brown, don't look for it in your bag of M&Ms anymore. They took it out when they added the blue ones. Sucks, doesn't it?
So each one of these food manufacturers has some fruitcake in marketing who makes these abhorrent decisions. Okay, so they're trying to target a new audience. What about their old audience? They hooked me on their products over thirty years ago and now have rudely dumped me like yesterday's garbage. I am a baby boomer. I want the same products I enjoyed as a child. They've taken most of the molasses out of Cracker Jacks, changed the flavor and shapes of Trix cereal (Didn't they learn anything from that ill-fated attempt in the 70s when they changed the old ball shape to a space ship shape?) dropped Chocolite and Marathon candy bars completely and left me feeling abandoned. Egregious transgressions all.
I remember when this whole product changing/dropping phenomenon first impacted me. When Hydrox cookies changed in the early 70s. They were great. They had this weird, melt-in-your-mouth icing inside and chocolate cookie on the outside that kind of had a dirt aftertaste, they were wonderful. Then Sunshine decided they would compete with Oreos and bammo, reformulated them and the cookies became just like Oreos. If I'd wanted Oreos I would have bought them. But noooo, Sunshine (such a misnomer) decided to completely change the formula and abandoned the old. I remember being so enraged. I felt helpless. Just like when I discovered the new button-colored M&Ms befouling my bag.
Forget the election, forget politics, the war in the Middle East, poverty, crime and Monica Lewinsky. I think it's time to focus on the important issues facing today's consumer. The loss of products we've come to love and crave. Next election, I'm going to find an advocate for lost products. Put some pressure on M&M/Mars and help them get their priorities straight. No More blue M&Ms!!! The Baby Boomers are the biggest generation ever to hit the supermarkets. It's time to flex our muscles! We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore!
http://www.virtual-paper.com/whistler/coastviews.nsf/2d66ac52553f81a188256a02004cb341/f52b37e3dff0f3a0882569e000746e9d!OpenDocument
ew. what a psycho.