Is Cap'n Crunch Smartfood Popcorn Worthy of Your Mouth?
I eat a lot of popcorn. Sometimes I eat popcorn that I pop on the stove, sometimes I eat microwave popcorn. Sometimes I eat popcorn that comes already popped in a bag. If I go the bagged route, it is usually Smartfood, because of their really excellent cheese powder.
But capitalism waits for no brand, forcing “innovation” even if the product is perfectly fine just the way it is (see: toothpaste and toothbrushes). Even incredibly munchable white cheddar popcorn is not immune to the demands of the free market, so Smartfood is shaking things up by putting all sorts of “spins” on their already fantastic product. You can get Flamin’ Hot Smartfood (I’ll allow it), Sour Cream & Onion Smartfood (maaaybe), and—amazingly—Cap’n Crunch’s Crunchberry Smartfood.
I suspect the problem lies in the seemingly never-ending glut of Crunchberries that has been plaguing the cereal economy for decades. Though the Captain was able to adapt to the great Crunchberry surplus of 1997 with the creation the vaguely contrite Oops! All Berries, he continues to flood the market with spheres of purple, blue, red, and green, insisting we consume them in increasingly absurd and perverse forms. (Perhaps it’s our fault for letting him get away with a half-assed apology back in the day; but Change.org didn’t exist in 1997, and I hate to blame the consumer.)
Anyway, I actually didn’t think this combination sounded that bad, at least not initially. Cap’n Crunch is a corn-based cereal, and a quick glance at the back of the bag informed me that this popcorn was flavored with cream cheese instead of the usual white cheddar. Most of my colleagues were, however, quite horrified by this frankensnack, so Joel and I decided to snag a couple of bags for a transcontinental taste test, which you can see the results of in the video above. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will tell you that the aroma was much more potent than I was expecting, and that the free market has a clumsy, brutish palate.