Five New Questionable Foodie Products

There's never an end to the profusion of food, drink and accessories that cause a double-take, followed by an audible “WTF?!” The latest parade of fascinating eats, sips and gear includes some that aren't too whacked-out, like Trader Joe’s new pretzel bagels and sweet Sriracha bacon jerky, the good news that Doritos Jacked 3D has more “D” than ever before, and the fact that Ben & Jerry’s will indeed make cannabis-infused ice cream when it’s all legal to do so.

Here’s are five questionable new foodie products: Buckle up for Girl Scout cookie DIY, things in squeezers, too many paczki, and the most inappropriate liquor flask ever created.

5) Concentrated coffee squeezies.

Okay, it’s official: Millennials demand their sustenance available in squeeze form, and they will get it. So far, we're safe from pea soup pouches (I’m sure that’s next for soup trends), but coffee, the lifeblood of civilization, has been concentrated and packaged in little squeezers by Maxwell House (not exactly the premium brand for coffee anywhere), which can then be purchased and squeezer-ed into cups, booze flasks, water bottles — or straight-up into your mouth. Yep — I said it. You were thinking it. You are supposed to shoot the squeeze coffee concentrate into milk/water/ice, but c’mon—it would just be more efficient to go squeezer-to-mouth.

Now granted you're not going to get a great cup of Joe from one of these little coffee shooters (which are mainly intended for making iced coffee drinks), but if these little caffeine blasters take off, watch how fast Starbucks steals the concept and makes like a frazillion more dollars off all of us.
4) The Girl Scout cookie oven.

Fall 2015 is when we will all have to make a choice between letting adorable Girl Scouts fleece us into buying cases of thin mints, or letting a company called Wicked Cool Toys fleece us into buying a Girl Scout cookie oven to bake those delicious little drugs at home. The new toy works like an Easy Bake oven, with refill cookie packs to fill it with and sorta-bake, and it’s kid-safe which means that the first person to burn themselves using it will absolutely be a stoned adult. The packs include the good ones — Trefoils, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Coconut Caramel, Chocolate Chip, Sugar, Oatmeal and PB Sandwich, and of course Thin Mints.

I can predict that this could well be popular with kids, but the actual demographic will include stoned adults. Lots of them.



3) Squeezy pouch cookie-stuff frostings.

And here we are again with the squeezable things. The funny story about the new Signature Brands’s Oreo and Hershey’s S’mores icing pouches is not even that they exist, but why they hadn’t been concocted sooner — because marketing geniuses should never, ever underestimate the spending power of stoned adults. Now squeezy frosting in next-level flavor combos is a concept with some merit, but why did it have to be the two grossest flavors first? Why not roll out strawberry cheesecake icing, or blueberry paczki frosting pouches instead of fake-chocolate, sandwich-cookie goo?

If people are gonna go all apeshit on Polish pastries (see the next out-of-control trend), then why not take advantage of the trend and make them into icing, in little squeeze pouches?

2) Paczki, Paczki everywhere.

Paczki are Polish pastries made once a year as a final treat before the fasting period called Lent (also known as everyone's half-hearted attempts to stop drinking for a few weeks). The dense deliciousness of the cream. jelly, or prune-paste paczki isn’t weird in and of itself, but what is strange is the sudden interest in them by everyone, in droves, for no apparent reason. The Great Paczki Rush that hits Chicago and Detroit every year just before Lent (Paczki Day is the Thursday before Lent begins, but Fat Tuesday is also a popular sales day) makes sense, given the history of the Polish population in those cities, but the sudden interest from non-Catholics (and others who don't know Ash Wednesday from Ashton Kucher) definitely represents the dark side of foodie obsession. Even Kroger has jumped into the fray in an attempt to cash in on the trend that was once limited to specialty bakeries. We even spotted the doughnut-like desserts at a Denver King Soopers.

The good news is that if you missed out on your paczki fix on Paczki Day or Fat Tuesday, you can still  buy yourself a jelly doughnut and just say you gave up mocking the homeless for Lent. Go, gluttony.

1) The fake-baby drinking flask.

Jesus bless Kickstarter, the place where dreams go to be funded, because a guy named Simon Philion is close to his goal of manufacturing the “Cool Baby” drinking flask. He describes this innovative creation as “An expressive, customizable, hands-free beverage insulator that looks like a baby. Drinking in public is now adorable.” It’s an eerily realistic looking human infant doll, like the ones you get sent home with in high school so you can quickly decide to stop having unprotected sex, and you can fill its adorably body cavity with vodka. Then drink the booze…from its head.

I think we as a society have reached the point where sucking on an infant’s head for liquor in public is probably okay to do.

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