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Cereals are an integral part of american breakfast and they take much of a pride when it comes to innovating and offering new shape, size and flavor to cereals, but it seems Cinnamon Toast Crunch went a little too far and brought the english obsession of fish from the other side of the pond.
Well that might be totally unintentional and may be a mistake somewhere in their production line but imagine a spoon full of milk and crunchy cereals with the shrimp tail making a guest appearance.
As a consumer most likely you are not ready for this, specially when it is the first meal of your day.
New York Times has described the incident as a disturbing discovery in a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and yes it is indeed disturbing.
As the story started circulating consumers got horrified, none more so than Jensen Karp.
He described the incident in an interview saying On Monday morning, he ate a bowl of his favorite cinnamon sugar-striped cereal. As he began filling a second bowl, “something plopped out of the box,” .
“ he picked it up, and he was like, ‘This is clearly a shrimp tail.’”
He looked in the bag and saw what appeared to be another tail. Both were encrusted with sugar. “I get really grossed out, and I’m medicated for O.C.D., so this is a total nightmare for me,” he said.
Mr. Karp, a 41-year-old comedian and writer in Los Angeles, took a picture of the contents and sent it to his wife, Danielle Fishel Karp, who played Topanga Lawrence-Matthews on “Boy Meets World.”
Then he sent a form submission email to General Mills, which began selling Cinnamon Toast Crunch in 1984, documenting what he’d found. Soon after, he posted a picture of the items on Twitter. Eventually, Cinnamon Toast Crunch reached out to Mr. Karp through its brand Twitter account.
The brand account send a DM to Mr Karp offering a replacement as a damage control but grossed out Karp declined the offer and soon after that the brand account went public and issued a statement on twitter.
“After further investigation with our team that closely examined the image, it appears to be an accumulation of the cinnamon sugar that sometimes can occur when ingredients aren’t thoroughly blended,” the statement from Cinnamon Toast Crunch read. “We assure you that there’s no possibility of cross contamination with shrimp.”
It was totally frustrating for Jensen and he couldnt hold back and responded fiercely sharing clear pictures that pretty much looked like shrimp tail.
He wrote:
Ok, well after further investigation with my eyes, these are cinnamon coated SHRIMP TAILS, you weirdos. I wasn’t all that mad until you now tried to gaslight me?
When his tweet started getting attention, a friend called and suggested that he re-examine the bag of cereal. “I had never even thought about going back into the bag,” he said. “Never even crossed my mind.”
After looking again, he now wishes he hadn’t. In addition to a few objects that Mr. Karp described as “shrimp skins-looking things,” “a small string” and something that looked like a pistachio — all encrusted in sugar — he noticed a “small black piece” on some of the squares and at bottom of the bag.
Now there is a back and forth going on between the manufacturer and the consumer, consumer well may sue the manufacturer or the store where he bought the cereals from but a simple solution is to keep the edibles in jar and keep your eyes open.
