Dear Mr. Food

I have recently purchased and tried a bag of your Limited Holiday Edition Merry Berry Popcorn Mix, with Cap’n Crunch “Crunch Berries,” and I suppose that congratulations are in order – y’all have somehow packaged, marketed, and sold (for Good American Dollars) a product that a 16-year-old stoner would “develop” and “design” and “workshop” in their head at 4 AM while blazed out of their skull. But that’s not where the congratulations come in – no, you have somehow made it worse than Our Protagonist The Stoner would.

I’ll admit, I approached this product with trepidation. Conceptually, I thought I was getting a product made by a raging stoner who never got the good stuff, but was constrained by either geography or budget to bottom of the barrel schwag weed. But then, once I got the package in the mail, I had to reconsider, because what in the actual hell is going on with the packaging?

“Clearly, the products have been enlarged to show texture.” There are three visual elements on the front of the package: popcorn, “Crunch Berries,” and a wholesome cob of maize. The maize has not been enlarged, no, it has been shrunk, since it takes up all of four inches of visual space. The “Crunch Berries…” well they’re a mixed bag, some may have been slightly enlarged but I also compared “Crunch Berries” from the actual product to the picture and they’re about the same size? The only thing that has been “clearly” enlarged are the popcorn kernels, and they’re less “enlarged” than they are “digitally created and composited.” Popcorn as perfect as pictured does not actually exist, either in nature, an air popper, an oil popper, or in your bags of mostly air.

Then we get to the obvious lies - “Guaranteed Fresh Until Printed Date.” Mr. Food, you are, to the best of my knowledge, almost exclusively a popcorn magnate and distributor. You, of all people, should know that bags of popcorn are never fresh. They are always stale. It’s a fact of life, one of those little lies that allows society to function - we all know that we’re trading quality (and Good American Dollars, popcorn is like the cheapest snack possible) for convenience. Your “guarantee” is one of two things - either it’s a “wink wink nudge nudge” or you’re getting high on your own supply.

Given this “product” I will not hazard a guess as to which is more likely.

Looking at the back of the bag… well, I have a lot to say, but I’m going to focus on the ingredients list for a moment: what in the corn-popping, timber-rotting, berry-crunching, tooth-decaying, corn-maltodextrin-extracting Sam Hell is cream cheese doing in the ingredient list? I have seen a lot of shelf stable products in my day but cream cheese? Cream Cheese? CREAM CHEESE? Seriously? I figured it had to be from the “Crunch Berries” so I headed to your trusty colleague Mr. Google’s search service and – color me shocked – the actual cereal has no cream cheese in it at all.

I don’t understand, Mr. Food. I initially figured that this product was just caused by drugs. Either you, Mr. Food, are a habitual smoker – and I’m from Oregon, it’s cool, I’m not a narc and I’m not judging – or you came downstairs after being awoken by a clatter in the kitchen late one night and found your son, the Young Master Food, mixing cereal and popcorn and somehow took that as inspiration. But – cream cheese? Really? Really and truly? Something more sinister than just boring ol’ mary jane, the absolutely common marijuanica, is going on here, and it was at that moment that I decided I was going to get to the bottom of this mystery… if not to the bottom of the bag of popcorn.

It was also at this moment that I realized there was nothing more for it, and I had to open the bag. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but immediately upon opening the bag I was punched directly in the nose by a cartoonishly large fist of… well, I’m sure you, Mr. Food, want me to call it “aroma” but let’s be honest, it was odor. The odor of a thousand fruit punch milkshakes rotting in the bottom of a New York City dumpster in early April - not as offensive as the same dumpster would be in August, but still entirely unpleasant. As the wave of horrorsmell was washing over me, I dropped the bag and actually had to leave my office for a couple minutes in the hopes that my air purifier would reduce the stench. Goodness gracious, Mr. Food, I’ll give you this - you know how to give your products a memorable entrance! I will not be forgetting that fruity sour milk facepunch any time soon!

As my poor nostrils recovered, I pondered the mystery of who in your immediate circle was a closet joker/smoker/midnight toker. I hadn’t yet come to any conclusions, but I was beginning to assemble all my clues. I have to say, the best part of this product is that it made me feel like a detective in a third-rate hard boiled novel; I’m looking for clues, I was just assaulted, and now I had to flee my office to lick my wounds and recover in peace. Again, congratulations are in order, sir – I’m not sure this product is evoking what you wanted it to, but it sure is evocative!

After my recovery period, with trepidation, I went back to my office. The moldy milkshake miasma still hung in the air – detectable two rooms away, even – but had faded like expired tear gas on the breeze, no longer making my eyes water and my soul retreat in fear. Pouring the popcorn and “Crunch Berries” into a bowl did raise the foul stench yet again, but as it wasn’t contained in a bag, it was less of a punch and more of a series of gentle slaps about the face and neck. It seemed important, though, to pour this creation into a bowl, because the top layer was all popcorn, and as you so thoughtfully told us on the bag, “cereal pieces may settle” and shaking the bag did not resolve the settlement.

I can’t say that an initial visual inspection of this product yielded any clues about the product’s origin. It looked exactly as one would expect of such a reefer haze-inspired Chex Mix knockoff - popcorn, and “Crunch Berries.” Mixed together. That’s all. That’s what was advertised, and that’s what it looks like. No surprises here.

I tried a popcorn kernel first. Again, no surprises. Stale popcorn with a faint whiff of April Milkshake Dumpster. Exactly as I expected from the smell. I don’t know where the cream cheese came from or went, but I assume that is Knowledge That Man Was Not Meant To Ken, a retail mystery for the ages, in the same vein as What Lies Beyond The Bed And The Bath? And that’s okay, this is not the mystery we are here to delve.

So I tried a “Crunch Berry.” Against all observable evidence, I am actually a grown-ass man, and I have not had Cap’n Crunch (with, without, or Oops All “Crunch Berries”) since I was a small child, so I don’t know what I expected. The answer was both surprising and banal; surprising because the “Crunch Berries” were not stale, providing a nice contrast to the gummy popcorn, banal because they tasted exactly like the bag smelled, and I think we’ve covered pretty well my opinions on that particular Tastetacular And Smelltacular Experience. Should you need a refresher – I am keeping my arms and legs and tongue and nose inside the vehicle at all times.

I went to try a kernel and a “Crunch Berry” at the same time – for Science! I am nothing if not a Man of Science and Fairness – and then stopped, my hand mere inches from the bowl. Because… I’ve accepted a lot out of you so far, sir, and one of the things I had to accept to get this far is that this Limited Holiday Edition product was comprised of two things: popcorn, and red and green “Crunch Berries.” So… Why were some of the green “Crunch Berries” also brown?

My first thought was that, well, “Crunch Berries” are probably manufactured in a continuous process, like Dum Dums lollipops, and so I was just seeing the Mystery Flavor Lolly interface where the red dough was dropped into the extruder’s hopper while there was still some green dough in it. But that didn’t explain why, as I searched further, some of these unexpected brown “Crunch Berries” had zones of green running through them, like banding in sandstone or fat marbling beef, but far, far grosser! That might have made sense still – we all know doughs don’t always mix evenly – but some of the green “Crunch Berries” had zones of red in them! Strangely, it was only base-green “Crunch Berries” that had brown or red inclusions; the base-red nuggets were red all the way through.

Unfortunately, this was the point at which I needed to stop eating this product. I had fought through many smells and tastes and textures and sensations that I did not care for, and the presence of brown “Crunch Berries” put me off my feed. Heck, now I’m wondering, does Mr. Chocula manufacture his cereal on the same equipment as the Noble Mr. Crunch manufacture his? Was your “product” contaminated with other cereals?

I’m still not eating one to find out.

Whatever the solution to Encyclopedia Brown And The Case Of The Off-Color “Crunch Berries” turns out to be, I had enough evidence at this point to close my actual case. I had gotten to the bottom of the mystery of who in your rarefied orbit is the closet picker/grinner/lover/sinner: no one.

And you know what, thank god for that. After a bit of looking around online, I found that the first time this “product” was on the shelves was 2020. That year took many things from us, and if we had to have Denis Leary revise his immortal line to “Pot doesn’t lead to other drugs, pot leads to marketing” as a result of your retail malfeasance from that year… well, we’d also have to invent time travel to go back to 2019 and make sure the Giant Meteor actually came and took us out before 2020 happened.

No, sir, I was forced to come to a conclusion I didn’t want to come to, but a conclusion that makes sense given that you live in the Great State of Texas, where God’s Honest Weed is heavily criminalized. You’re not a stoner, you just don’t care. Nasty brown “Crunch Berries,” a product that smells of a dumpster in April, stale popcorn backed by what I have to assume is a tongue-in-cheek winkwink nudgenudge “freshness guarantee” – which still has eight days to go, not ending until the 31st of this month – even the inconsistent, incorrect, and yet insistent “clearly enlarged” verbiage on the package… Sir, it all comes together to paint a picture of a slumlord of a company owner, a man who no longer cares about what products are produced under his good name, a man who has given up all thought about his legacy and cares only about getting yet one more of those Good American Dollars before the sun sets on another short winter’s day.

And so I regret to inform you that after this travesty of a “product,” I will not be buying any more of your products. I’d guess that that’s the only thing that you care about, but your packaging includes, at the very bottom, facebook and instagram logos with the phrase “Please like us, we need your attention.” I won’t be liking you, but I do hope that this letter fills the void in your heart that your plaintive, whiny request so baldly lays plain.

Sincerely,

Alex Parise