We tried Thanksgiving dinner flavored candy corn
the flavor of regret
Whew. Good morning, clowns!
First of all, thanks again for thinking of us after losing Cricket. Last week’s piece was a tough one to write, but we’re coping with the loss the best way we can. There’s little reminders of her everywhere and hopefully the sadness will pave way to happy chirping memories.
Now, I’ve mentioned this before, but one of Cricket’s favorite foods was candy corn.
I do not know a single human being who considers candy corn one of their favorite foods. Perhaps there’s a secret in candy corn that she saw and we didn’t. Personally, I think candy corn is kind of gross.
Someone, at some point in time, thought it was a good idea to make a candy roughly shaped like corn that has nothing to do with corn whatsoever. Maybe they were on jenkem.
But speaking of terrible, I found this floating around the Internet:
I mean, Pee Wee Herman is talking about it. This must be serious.
I thought this was sort of an Internet prank, until I read about it further. You can get it at Walgreens, of all places, which is where I found a bag. I thought things you buy at drugstores were supposed to cure you, not kill you.
Despite the fact that this shit is widely available, it seemed like nobody’s been talking about it.
So I said, “Dannis Ree, greatest food writer in all of history and inspector of all culinary things that are terrible and disgusting, you must taste-test the entire assortment of flavors with the Babe and see if this is a nightmare in a bag.”
The gang examined the bag, and then examined me for head injuries.
Let’s rewind this slightly. Halloween candy hasn’t even been released yet.
Apparently we’re just skipping around to holidays with reckless abandon. In that case, I’m declaring that tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and the day after that is the 4th of July.
Here are the flavors listed in no apparent order: Green beans, roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, ginger glazed carrot, sweet potato pie, and stuffing.
Unlike a sack of Jelly Belly jellybeans, there’s no legend to show you which color is which flavor. You’re on your own, dickholes.
When I opened up the bag, it immediately farted out what can only be described as a cacophony of terrible smells. I died.
As far as I know this is the first time I’ve ever used “cacophony” in food writing, which should really tell you something.
I lined up a pair of all the matching colors, which is a critical skill I obtained in kindergarten, and Davida and I took notes as we tried each flavor.
Here’s Harvey, showcasing what we surmised to be green bean. We guessed this because it is green.
Dannis: This tastes suspiciously like grass. Or maybe that weird organic parsley-based spray cleaner we have under the sink that I was forced to buy when everyone was panic -buying disinfectant when they ran out of the high octane shit.
Davida: Tastes like green but only slightly like bean. Kind of reminds me of the grass-flavored Jelly Bellys. This is somehow less fun than Bean-boozled.
Hi, Scat! She’s modeling the vaguely orange candy corn, which we’ve identified as the ginger glazed carrot flavor.
Dannis: This tastes like a smelly soap scented with ginger. Or a knockoff fall-scented Yankee candle. You know it’s not good when it tastes like a knockoff of a Yankee candle and not the real thing.
Davida: Love this. Loooove this. Definitely tastes more like ginger than carrot, but I’m okay with that! I feel like the addition of the ginger flavoring is almost a cop-out to make it actually taste like something.
This is Pepper, curiously examining the kernel that we’ve deduced is cranberry sauce flavored, due to its luxurious fake pinkish-red color.
Dannis: This…this one’s hard to explain. It looks like it’d taste like fake cherry, but it doesn’t. It tastes like an imitation of an imitation berry flavor. Also, after you bite into it, it looks like a bloody tooth.
Davida: Painfully sweet. Definitely a “fruit” flavor but not immediately identifiable as cranberry. Actually, not identifiable at all. Don’t bother reaching for one of these if you feel a UTI coming on.
Mr. Bee is reporting in with the diarrhea brown-colored kernel that we’ve decided is roasted turkey.
Dannis: My immediate reaction is to spit this out because it tastes like toxins. They derived this flavor from burnt crude oil or from rotting bog bodies. I don’t recall the last time I had such a negative visceral reaction to anything.
Davida: Tastes like if Gerber made a limited edition tire flavor. Don’t feed this to your child. Or yourself, or anybody.
I don’t think we ever named this dilated pupil bee, but here she is, staring at what we think is stuffing flavored candy corn.
Dannis: This doesn’t taste like stuffing at all! This is bullshit. It tastes like blackened popcorn.
Davida: Somehow this tastes more like turkey than the turkey… unless this is the turkey? I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. It’s just garbage.
And, last, but not least, here’s Yoshi modeling the sweet potato pie flavor, preemptively gagging on our behalf.
Dannis: I can get behind this one. It’s fine. Tastes like nutmeg. But who knows anymore. I still don’t understand why this all even exists. I didn’t know candy corn was screaming for attention.
Davida: Extremely nutmeggy. Reminds me of when I was a little kid and I would periodically sample everything in my mom’s spice cabinet, straight from the jar. So basically it reminds me of dry, caked-up nutmeg that’s been sitting in the cabinet since 1976. But I did try eating another one along with one of the gingery carrot ones, which made for a nice festive treat!
Well, thank God that’s over. I can’t get these flavors out of my mouth.
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If I can think of something to do with this leftover hell corn, it’ll be a subscribers-only post, very soon. Feel free to comment with any suggestions, because as you know, I’ll do anything for attention.
And, last but not least, I’d like to thank Sam Markus, who designed this wonderful new logo for Food is Stupid.
It’s amazing.
If you need anything designed, visit her website and drop her a line! Who knows? Maybe you’ll see t-shirts, mugs, or lower back tattoos in the future. Life is an unpredictable and magical place.
I feel like you ought to re-sample all of these with a flight of fortified fruit-flavored 'wines.'
For classiness.