You Can Play With Your Food

Commentary by Lore Sjöberg
02:00 AM Mar, 01, 2006 EST



Last week, we took a look at the wonderful ways in which technology has improved our food without making it healthier or better tasting. This week, we're doing more of the same, starting with a product that will delight people who wish their toaster waffles more closely resembled plastic toys.

Lego Eggos
It's an obvious idea in retrospect. Not a great idea, but an obvious one: Combine Eggo waffles with Lego-brand-building toys that will cause people to send you annoying mail if you call them Legos. Each waffle is scored into six pieces, each of which is shaped vaguely like a Lego brick. The box suggests you "toast, break and build!" But each waffle is a highly processed rectangle of pure disappointment. The top of each "brick" has eight studs that look, honestly, like meerkat nipples. The bottom has three holes. Just three. You can't build. You can just kind of stack. Heap, really. It's so depressing. I'm going back to bed.

Downside: Will make you sad for the rest of your life.

Hidden Key Lucky Charms
The "hidden key" here refers to certain specially endowed marshmallows. Before you pour milk on them, these marshmallows have vaguely key-shaped dents in them. After you pour milk on them, they have vaguely key-shaped holes in them. Astonishing! Technically speaking, though, it's not really a hidden key, it's a hidden inverse key. Presumably you use the marshmallow as a mold. Pour some molten steel in there, let it cool, and you have an actual tiny key. Which you then use to, I dunno, go through Lucky the Leprechaun's porn drawer or something.

Downside: Clearly, magic like this can only be the result of a pact with Satan.

Scooby-Doo Tattoos Fruit Roll-Rups
The "Rups" is because it's Scooby-Doo, and, you know, Scooby-Doo puts "r" at the beginning of his words. And they let him design the box. Or something. Anyhow, I have at this moment a vaguely rectangular blob of blue on my tongue. It was supposed to be a picture of a bone saying "Rooby Rocks," but it turns out that bumpy, slimy surfaces are not the best place to transfer sharp, intricate images. Maybe I did it wrong, but this blue crap doesn't come off easy and I only have so much tongue. I'd be disappointed, but you know, I didn't really want a cartoon dog bone slogan in my mouth today.

Downside: Pretty much all downside. Hard to find an upside, really.

Easy Writer Food Decorators
Everyone likes cupcakes and cakes with interesting decorations in the frosting! If you don't, then everyone but you likes them. The problem with traditional frosting decoration is that it requires you to clench a little tube, which everyone hates. OK, everyone but you. Well, clench no more! These are like little brush-pens full of food coloring. With a little patience, you can draw the design of your choice on the cupcake of your choice, provided said cupcake has white frosting. They actually work pretty nicely. They don't make the food taste bad, or different for that matter. Finally, a food product that doesn't disappoint. Good going, Ms. Crocker!

Downside: Do you really want to draw carefully on two dozen cupcakes?

Sunsweet Ones
Why is it that people don't eat more prunes? Is it that they taste kind of musty-sweet gross? Is it that they have the texture of a buttered slug? No, no, no. No! It's because you don't have to work hard enough to eat them. When you're able to reach into a sack of prunes and just pull one out, you don't appreciate the treasure lying flaccid in your palm. That's why these prunes are individually wrapped. Once you've experienced the labor involved in unwrapping every single prune you eat, you'll treasure every syrupy, mucilaginous bite.

Downside: Prunes.