Oh, America, when did you go so so wrong? Ever since my first trip to Japan, I've worried that the United States might some day fall behind Asia in the marshmallow arms race.
But I always took comfort from knowing we'd always dominate the campfire market. Seriously, you just try putting a rinky dink, individually wrapped, melon-flavored Hello Kitty marshmallow on a s'more.
As we packed this afternoon for the annual cousin cookout up the canyon here in Salt Lake City, my mom caught me off guard with some kind of experimental marshmallow technology. It was so surprising, I even had to tweet about it:
Campfire Giant Roasters, which are basically massive, cylindrical marshmallows the size of four old-school Jumbo marshmallows.
And Kraft Stackermallows, flattened, rectangular marshmallows clearly optimized for s'more construction.
Holy crap. If this is the best our marshmallow scientists can do, we might as well throw a bucket of Gatorade on the fire and just get some S'more-flavored Pop Tarts at the Maverik station by the freeway. What a marshmallow disaster.
First off, the Giant Roasters are too damn big to roast. If they don't just straight up fall off because they're so unwieldy, they're too big to cook all the way through. The outside gets way overdone before the inside is even warm. If you want to put them on a s'more, you're supposed to use an entire graham cracker and an entire Hershey's bar. Which is disgusting. What kind of Wal-Mart Supercenter supershopper did they design this for? No kid could eat that much, or should. The only way to make any sense of these beasts is to pull them apart and roast the two halves. I'll admit, this does create a nice, uneven surface which can brown in attractive peaks, not unlike the pictures of a baked alaska. But still.
The Stackermallows turn out to be even worse than their name. Sure, they fit on a half-cracker s'more perfectly, but who cares? You can't roast them at all; they don't stay on the stick. Hell, they don't even go on the stick, they're so thin. They're really only good for toaster oven s'mores, and if you're really toaster-oven-desperate, just get the damn Pop-Tarts.
I'd end my rant/warning there, if only I hadn't Googled for a picture of Stackermallows. And found the saddest blog post in the history of sad, brandwhory blogposts. 175 people tweeting and commenting and facebooking at Laughing Lindsay's giveaway blog, all for the chance to win three bags of Stackermallows [retail value, $6.87], which are perfect for making "indoor s'mores using the microwave." Microwave s'mores, people. What has happened to us?
Stackermallows perfectly shaped marshmallows! giveaway [laughinglindsay]
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^^^^
Please please please leave this spam comment in...it's managed to wrap from annoying/pathetic all the way back around to art. Particularly given its juxtaposition against the social media nonsense regarding indoor smores.
The kraftpocalypse is upon us. Seriously, they manage to ruin food in so many ways.
I could actually see myself roasting the rectangular ones with multi-tine commercial roasting forks. No good if using branches though.