Eight months ago, I became aware of a newly announced product from Maynards Candy Company and Post: a new form of cereal, the likes of which the world had never seen. Eight months ago, I was innocent. There, in the damp, dimly-lit aisles of my local Walmart, I saw it: Sour Patch Kids Cereal.
Just Imagine… Sour Patch Kids Cereal
Imagine, for a moment, you’re a board executive. Some scrappy young businessman with slicked-back hair and dreams of fame and fortune approaches you with a brand-new idea: Sour Patch Kids, but with milk.
Milk! And sour things! You’ve never heard a better idea in your entire life. By God, you realize that if you don’t take this ingenious idea, this young titan might very well take his pitch with him and change the whole world. Of course, you rush it to the shelves, flood the internet with buzz, and go home feeling like a whole new person. You’ve made it. You’ve finally left an impact on this earth.
The Truth Behind the Horror
Needless to say, this is easily the most disgusting cereal product released in the last fifty years. Around the time of its international release, I elected to purchase a box. I was a fool. I was a fool.
For all the horrors I’ve witnessed in my life, I’ve never regretted anything more than the moment I dipped my spoon into the milk and took a bite. In fact, I daresay I’d rather die than ever taste it again. There’s more fruit in it than you’d expect, and it’s way too sweet. If that were it, this wouldn’t be awful. Unfortunately, that’s not it. More unfortunately, the chefs at Post forgot that sourness and milk have an unfortunate relationship. In other words, this cereal makes the milk taste like it’s spoiled. So, good news if you like the flavor of expired milk. For the rest of us, it’s a nightmarish flavor combination.
Beyond that, it should be obvious that this is nowhere near nutritious. With 13 grams of sugar and 25 grams of carbs in just one serving — keep in mind, a serving is just one cup, and most kids will probably have at least four cups per bowl — this is basically high cholesterol in a box.
Fruity, sweet, and sour, Sour Patch Kids Cereal is proof that companies will accept any idea, no matter how stupid, so long as they can associate two things that people like. Star Wars and toilet paper? You recognize both of those things! That means you have to buy it. Pokemon napkins? Your kids will scream at you if you don’t buy them. So then, when your child’s walking through the Walmart aisles, and they demand you buy some kind of colorful, clearly unhealthy cereal, why not make them never want to eat anything with color again? You hate your kids enough, right?
Innovation Isn’t Always Imperative
Needless to say, nobody needed Sour Patch Kids Cereal. Nobody wanted it. Nobody asked for it, least of all me. Ultimately, it was a product of affluent executives who read a document that said it would make them a quick buck, and they took it. Sour Patch Kids is one of my favorite candies, but this just isn’t right.
Cereal is something nostalgic everyone remembers, even when they’ve grown old. There’s nothing like the childhood joy of waking up early on a Saturday morning and rushing downstairs so you can get to all the crummy cartoons you like, pulling out the sugariest, unhealthiest thing you ever nagged your mom into getting you and chowing down. That’s what childhood is.
In an attempt to exploit that joy, these aged, stony-faced councils of vultures put as little effort into their products as they possibly could. They bend the facts about the health benefits and use wacky colors to trick kids and parents into falling for their con. This is just a small misstep in an otherwise massively profitable industry. Maybe I’m just unreasonable. Maybe I get mad too easily. But, maybe, children deserve better than Sour Patch Kids Cereal.
