Why Snacks Fail
The discontinued item shelf at Wal-Mart is a wonderful museum of capitalist failure. For every sorry-looking, nearing expiration item on the forlorn shelf, there was once a passionate advocate in some company's product-development team. Each product was test-marketed and polled, each idea had research to support its value, each piece of packaging was created by a design professional and went through iterative testing. In other words, each of these loser products had seemed a great idea at the time. Today at the Food Kingdom, we'll see what market failure looks like, what it tastes like, and what lessons may be learned from it.
Incidentally, it may not be too late for you to try these, even though they're off the retail market. A good friend of the Food Kingdom recommended them to me a month ago and I was able to score a pack of three for $10 on e-Bay, with shipping included. If you're curious of what was and what could have been, act quickly and enjoy this window into food industry experimentation.
The discontinued item shelf at Wal-Mart is a wonderful museum of capitalist failure. For every sorry-looking, nearing expiration item on the forlorn shelf, there was once a passionate advocate in some company's product-development team. Each product was test-marketed and polled, each idea had research to support its value, each piece of packaging was created by a design professional and went through iterative testing. In other words, each of these loser products had seemed a great idea at the time. Today at the Food Kingdom, we'll see what market failure looks like, what it tastes like, and what lessons may be learned from it.
 |
| Behold the gallery of failure, and themes emerge. Shelf-stable ready-to-eat meals are forever being thrust at the public, but most people like their microwaved meals to be frozen. Does anyone make that much potato salad? And it's hard to compete against established brands like Wheat Thins, especially with a lame name like "Thin Wheat". I mean that's not even trying. |
Snack Pack Pudding Bars
Ah, Snack Pack Pudding, that childhood treat. We were always jealous of the kid beside us who'd found it packed in his lunchbox. And here, beckoning from the shelf is a product promising to fit that great taste into a dry snack bar. But that's impossible, because baked goods are not pudding and there is no way to "bake pudding in" to a cookie, cake, or bar. This false claim has a long history and it's time to put it to rest. Since the early 80s, cake-mix companies like Pillsbury have tried to claim that their cakes are more moist than others because of "pudding in the mix" but this is nonsensical. Let's consider what pudding actually is: milk, sugar, flavoring, and corn starch. That's it. There's no reason why adding any of those ingredients in any combination would make a cake more moist. Every cake batter already has some liquid in it. Cakes already have starch in them, usually in the form of flour, and cake mixes are dry by definition anyway so the only pudding they could contain would be "dried pudding." There's no there there, it's just empty gimmickry.
 |
| Consider this, partisans of the "pudding baked right in" belief: once you bake pudding, it ceases to be pudding. |
Now, all of this grumpy talk of pudding being an impossible ingredient in a baked good would be pretty irrelevant if this snack bar actually managed to taste moist anyway. One technique for making a baked good moist for extended periods is actually the addition of oil, which doesn't evaporate. Alas, no, these bars are actually drier than most snack bars of their kind. There's a strong, dark chocolate taste and the meager caramel drizzle is nicely pungent if you like the flavor of artificial butterscotch. Ultimately though, the dryness is too marked a contrast to the sensations conjured by the promise of pudding. Besides, your money only gets you six small individually wrapped bars. Broken promises, unimaginative execution, small portion size, and a dry mouthfeel equal a short shelf life. Good riddance, Snack Pack Pudding Bars.
 |
| Let's consign this bar to the dustbin of history with the simple truth that it tastes just like it looks. |
Chili-Nut M&M's
This was always a product with a limited market life unless it had won the three-way contest that Mars set up between it and two other flavors: Honey-Nut and Coffee-Nut. Coffee-Nut won the right to become a permanent flavor and I recently gave them a very favorable review. But it's a shame that all three couldn't have survived to be eaten another day. Just like the coffee-chocolate candies, these capsaicin-spiked chocolates have a grown-up taste; when you bite them, they really bite back. The chili spice is subtle at first, sounding an earthy base note that darkens the taste of the milk chocolate. As you eat more (and you will) the heat level gradually builds up until there's a constant drumbeat of pepper nipping at the back of your throat. These go great with a cup of black coffee in the morning and taste a lot like a boutique chocolate bar that typically retails at five times the price.
 |
| This photo does not appreciably exaggerate the intensity of Chili-Nut M&M's colors, and these colors were appropriately chosen, for they convey the fearlessness with which Mars injected real hot-chili flavor into their chocolate. |
A&W Root Beer Pop Tarts
Poor A&W. Once it ruled the root beer world as the unquestioned top brand, but it has since been overtaken by Coca-Cola-owned Barq's, and now its market clout isn't even sufficient to keep a co-branded Pop Tart on the shelves. I discovered those Pop Tarts at 6AM on a Tuesday morning in a dimly lit corner of the discontinued item shelf at the Chantilly Wal-Mart, waiting for someone to eulogize them, to declare that their existence hadn't been entirely pointless. Funny thing is, they're not as bad as you would think.
It's easy to be sarcastic about such a seemingly loopy idea. I mean who wouldn't want to take the refreshing taste of ice-cold, thirst quenching root beer and transform it into a dry, crumbly, gel-paste-filled biscuit with crumbly icing and heat it up in a toaster? I know, right? Here's the thing, though. It helps to think of root beer not as a beverage, but as a flavor. Though root beer has many flavor components in its blend, the primary flavor is sassafras, a species of deciduous tree whose leaves supply the dominant root beer flavor (so why do they call it "root beer"?). If you think of sassafras as simply a flavor and not as inextricably bound up in a beverage, your mind opens to the idea of hot, aromatic sassafras as the flavor driver of a warm breakfast pastry. Consider also that root beer flavored hard candy has a long proud heritage. From this point of view, the concept is no longer crazy. I actually enjoyed these a lot, so keep an open mind when scouring the remainder shelf for interesting values.
 |
| A new flavor no more: hot root beer for breakfast simply didn't excite the masses, yet it proved to be a homey, comfortable-smelling companion during four pleasant taste tests. |
I Just Couldn't
I wasn't willing to lay out the funds to subject myself to these, but the pictures say a thousand words and the caption adds a few dozen more.
 |
| You can tell from the Farmers' Market-style lettering that Sam's Club Butternut Squash Bisque is truly an artisin-crafted delight. If you act quickly, there are still four jars left at the Chantilly location. The rancid-peanut butter color is sure to delight your Thanksgiving guests. And for dessert, why not treat each of your loved ones to their own "Nature's Child" Pudd'n Pouch? After a third glass of wine, everyone will surely want to slice open the package and get at every last chocolatey remnant. CLICK HERE TO LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE, SO YOU NEVER MISS A SINGLE REVIEW! |
