October 28, 2004:
Granted, this isn't exactly a "Halloween" item, but it debuted during the season and the colors are right. We've already seen enough Shrek crap on X-E to last four lifetimes, spanning from 7-11 Slurpees to green-dyed popcorn. I thought it was over, and so did you. For whatever reason -- promotion of the Shrek 2 DVD being the most likely culprit -- Shrek has bounced back this month after finally going dormant over the summer. Even more remarkable is how they saved the weirdest promotions for last. I recently picked up two Shrek-themed Kid Cuisine microwave dinners, where at least 1/4th of the contents turn kids' tongues green. As strange as that one sounds, it's got nothing on Hostess Twinkies with "Ogre Green" creamy filling.
Quite possibly the most inspired food promo ever, Shrek's latest endeavor also breaks the decades-running unspoken rule that we, preservers of Americana, should never tweak the Twinkie. Even as we collectively grow an inclination towards healthier and healthier foods, nobody with a soul is lining up to eliminate or change Hostess Twinkies in fear of reordering the universal balance and forever fucking up their destiny of three 7s in Reno. DreamWorks and Hostess have taken an awful risk, but if we consider children's penchant for licking stuff that looks radioactive, it'll probably pay off.
Quietly, Shrek has become the most beloved kiddy character of the decade. He won't get credit for that until the children of today grow old enough to doodle their own pathetic nostalgia sites, but if you really think about it, today's kids are much more familiar with Shrek than their religious icons. Thank God he's such a noble guy. Something tells me that the next generation of world leaders will never fear shame in telling people when they have gas. By the time Urban Dictionary publishes a book on Cafepress Version Six, "jackass" will be confirmed as a compliment. Until then, all of the Twinkies you eat are filled with green slime.
I suspect many of you are ill-prepared to witness the vile upgrade hiding beneath those irresistible golden sponge cakes, but seeing the evil is a mandatory step of the healing process. Save for the three fill-holes on the Twinkies' underbellies, everything looks perfectly normal. If you hadn't seen the box, there's little chance of realizing that the familiar white has turned stranger green. In this we can construct many a fantastic college prank, perhaps offering someone a Shrek Twinkie and cackling into a beer funnel when they bite into it and think some off-camera jokester defecated inside. Prepare for a sight never before seen...
The box says the Shrek Twinkies taste exactly the same as the originals, but I didn't experience that familiar throat-tickle upon biting in. Actually, the creamy middles feel a lot heavier, seem more sugary, look like wasabi, and other than the fact that they're inside Twinkies, bear no similarities at all to the original white goo. I've never known kids to turn down anything edible and toxic green, so the promotion should do well. If it doesn't, I'll edit this article in a few weeks to make my psychic skills look better.
They're on sale now, I guess at every store that normally sells Twinkies. The most common package offers ten Shrek Twinkies in a limited edition foil-enhanced box that seems like it'll be ripe to sell on eBay five or six years from now with a two dollar bold headline. The boxes are super eye-catching; the foil bits reflect light so well that you're forced to notice them even at distances of ten grocery store aisles away. Course, more interesting is the precedent set. Now that Hostess has agreed to such an alarmingly anti-branded promotion, the door is open for other franchises to have Ed McMahon deliver them comically oversized novelty checks in return for Twinkie cream colored to their every whim.
Shown above are the cute two-packs also on sale, lacking a foil package but surviving on the merits of not contractually obligating you to eat ten Twinkies per purchase. They're really no worse for you than the gamut of junk food slopping up supermarkets, but Twinkies will always be considered an edible of the most sporadically eaten kind. We tend to liken those able to eat three Twinkies a day to construction workers with metal lunchboxes who call pretty pedestrians "honey." In these visions we often see their asscrack and lack of teeth. The associations will ultimately hurt Twinkie sales.
Give these out and you'll be way more popular than the guy next door, even if he's handing each trick-or-treater a new car. Kids know they can't drive. However arguably, Shrek's green Twinkies join the pantheon of Halloween-themed Hostess snacks, partly covered last year. All are poisoned.
- Matt (10/28/04)
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