Factory Mix-Ups and You!
10.25.4
Factory Mix-Ups and You!
A guide to fanciful food products.
On occasion, some genius in a food factory somewhere will pull the wrong lever, or press the wrong button. Sometimes they are too busy grabbing the hot intern's ass to properly monitor production. Sometimes, these workers are just plain incompetent. These things, however, almost always lead to the same thing:
Delicious goodness!
The first and most common error, is for two ingredients to be switched. For example: Uh-Oh Oreos, which features white cookies, and a chocolate center. Or Reese's Inside-Out, which similarly, has it's usual peanut butter filling on the outside. These things are easy to understand, and of course could happen to anyone. Furthermore, these mistakes are tantamount to putting your left shoe on your right foot. You never notice until it's too late. So, what is a company like Nabisco to do when something like this happens? They could throw the "damaged" product away and pretend the whole thing never happened, or they could do the smart thing, and package them as limited edition candies. Not only do they make a few bucks, but we, the consumers, are exposed to whole new worlds of tastiness.
Next up, is the "Oh crap, we put too much in" error. These errors happen when the ratio of good ingredients to bad ingredients gets thrown out of whack. Take Cap'N Crunch, for example. Even setting aside their usage of the fictional contraction "Cap'N," it can be safely said that nobody likes this cereal. They came close to making it bearable when they added "Crunch Berries," but still didn't quite hit the mark. Then, some idiot savant came along and must've done something wrong, because we ended up with the "limited time only" Cap'N Crunch: OOPS! All Berries!. Now that is my idea of a cereal. I can only hope and pray that this sort of thing happens at the Lucky Charms plant. I swear to God, if I ever see Lucky Charms: OOPS! All Marshmallows! in my local grocery store, my head will explode in a rainbow of joy and happiness.
Speaking of the "Cap'N." This brings me to the final, and most mystical type of factory error. The Complete Change -Up.
Recently the people at "Cap'N Crunch" released a cereal called Cap'N Crunch: OOPS! Choco-Donuts!
Oops...Choco-Donuts?
Now...I can tell you right now, that most factories do indeed have a magical laser beam that turns anything into "Choco-Donuts," but with all the warning labels and safety features, it is fairly hard to imagine that anyone would have been stupid enough to turn it on. However, someone apparently did. It is a fortunate thing that this mistake doesn't occur more often, or else life would be very different for you and I. Think about the possibilities: You wake up when your Choco-Donut goes off. You go downstairs to eat some Choco-Donuts at your dining room Choco-Donut. Then you drive your Choco-Donut to work, and when you get there you have a couple of Choco-Donut breaks. Then Choco-Donut, Choco-Donut, Choco-Donut. It would be madness! Once is enough thank you...
Here's the interesting part: It seems that these kinds of whimsical lapses in judgment only occur in factories where food is manufactured. Most of the time, miscalculations of this proportion lead to much less fun and fancy. Firestone tires explode into balls of fire, killing countless SUV-driving soccer moms each year. Toys designed for children 3 and under break apart leaving a temptation that no toddler could resist. The temptation to jam a choking hazard down their throats. Pairs of pants hit store shelves before anyone realizes that they are so ridiculously flammable that one could burst into flames simply wearing them outdoors on a hot day.
In 1988, a rocket fuel factory named PepCon, blew up outside the city limits of Las Vegas, NV. The explosion was so massive that around 500,000 people in the state either heard or felt it. 300 people were injured and 2 people even died. This is the kind of thing that happens when employees fuck up.
However, just to prove my point here, I'd like to tell you my strongest memory of that day. You see, PepCon was right next to the famous Kidd Marshmallow factory. The Kidd plant was also flattened by the explosion. However, instead of the flaming shrapnel that flew around the PepCon property that day, Kidd was treated to tons and tons of marshmallow goo flying about. I may never forget the images on the television that day of workers walking around covered in that sticky white sweetness. I'm sure that had they been making anything besides marshmallows, the explosion would have caused a violent blood-extravaganza, instead of this sugary hoedown.
One might even go as far as to say that the marshmallows saved their lives that day.
So, the next time you see a food company marketing a product that almost seems to apologize for its own existence with it's name, don't wonder if they're really just capitalizing on some bonehead's mistake. Know that these things happen for a reason, and that we should be thankful each and every day for them.
