Is Cap’n Crunch Smartfood Popcorn Worthy of Your Mouth?
I eat a lot of popcorn. Sometimes I eat popcorn that I put on the stove, sometimes I eat popcorn from the microwave. Sometimes I eat popcorn, which comes in a bag. If I walk the path in bags, it’s usually Smartfood because they have really great cheese powder in them.
But capitalism does not wait for a single brand, imposing “innovation”, even if the product, as it is, is in perfect order (see Toothpaste and toothbrushes). Even the incredibly delicious white cheddar popcorn isn’t immune to the demands of the free market, so Smartfood is shaking things up by adding all sorts of promotions to their already fantastic product. You can get Flamin ‘Hot Smartfood (I authorize), Sour Cream & Onion Smartfood (maaaybe) and, surprisingly, Cap’n Crunch’s Crunchberry Smartfood.
I suspect the problem lies in the seemingly endless glut of Crunchberries that has plagued the grain economy for decades. Although the captain was able to adjust to the massive crunchberry surplus of 1997, creating vaguely repentant Oops! All berries, he continues to flood the market with spheres of purple, blue, red and green, insisting that we consume them in ever more absurd and perverted forms. (It may be our fault for letting him leave with a half-hearted apology; but Change.org didn’t exist in 1997, and I hate to blame the consumer for that.)
Anyway, I really didn’t think this combination sounded that bad, at least initially. Cap’n Crunch are corn based flakes, and a quick glance at the back of the bag showed me that this popcorn is flavored with cream cheese instead of the usual white cheddar. However, most of my colleagues were horrified by this snack, so Joel and I decided to grab a couple of bags for the Transcontinental Flavor Test, which you can see in the video above. I don’t want to say too much, but I will tell you that the scent was much stronger than I expected and that in the free market the taste is awkward and rough.