Rant
May 11, 2011
August 09, 2008
Rant: Flavor Blasted Goldfish
Let me state for the record that I like Goldfish. I actually consider it an incredible snack food. I've been snacking on Goldfish crackers for as long as I can remember. The only other snack food that I have that "old" of a memory of is the thin pretzel sticks. I used to take Hershey's chocolate syrup, put it on top of vanilla ice cream and mix it all together until it had the consistency of a modern-day Wendy's Frosty. Then I'd use the pretzel sticks as really tiny, ill-equipped for the task spoons. Ah, the joys of childhood. But I digress.
I remember Goldfish being salty and cheesy. Not as cheesy as say, a Cheez-It, but cheesy nonetheless. However, if I pick up a random bag of regular Cheddar-flavored Goldfish, I would be hard-pressed to describe the flavor as anything other than vaguely salty cardboard. Now, I believe that a vast majority of people have not noticed the leeching of flavor out of the standard Goldfish crackers. As I've tried to explain this phenomenon I always end up feeling a little like Charlton Heston at the end of Soylent Green screaming "Soylent Green is people! Soylent Green is people!" while everyone around either pretends not to notice him or looks askance at him as he is wheeled away. But Pepperidge Farm has definitely changed the recipe for Goldfish (most likely to either save money in production or to create a desire for a higher tier product for which they can charge more money). That product is: Flavor Blasted Goldfish.
I'll be darned if Flavor Blasted Goldfish aren't the closest thing available taste-wise to the Goldfish of my youth. And of course, as befits a "premium" product, they cost more than regular Goldfish. I suppose that nowadays Pepperidge Farms believes that I have to pay for the Cheddar flavor that I used to receive once upon a time in my youth.
So now, by slowly draining the standard Goldfish of any flavor whatsoever and then launching a premium product that actually has flavor, Pepperidge Farm, has forced me to spend more money to get virtually the same product that I was able to get 10-15 years ago for the (inflation adjusted) same price.
If you don't believe me, try this little taste experiment. Get a bag of the standard Cheddar Goldfish and the Xtra Cheddar Flavor Blasted Goldfish. Eat them back-to-back (cleansing your palette with some cold ice water in between) and you tell me if the regular Goldfish don't taste just like crunchy bits of salty cardboard. While this doesn't exactly prove the point that Pepperidge Farm has purposefully drained the flavor out of standard Goldfish in order to move more of the premium Goldfish, I'd be very interested in hearing another logical explanation.
/rant
