Flavor Blasted Goldfish Crackers have been eating at me for a long time.
I'm trying to picture the method of "blasting" crackers with "flavor."
Luckily for me, my daughters had passed the age of eating Pepperidge Farm's Goldfish Crackers when the company's "Flavor Blasted" brand hit the shelves.
And those little suckers have been eating at me, or nibbling at me, ever since.
I'm glad my little girls missed the "Flavor Blasted" era. What might have happened to their taste buds?
Think through this rationally.
To need a blast of flavor, a cracker must already be a food product so bland and processed that it requires military measures to become interesting.
It is not coated. It is not dipped. It is not soaked. It is not filled. It is blasted.
And by blasted, I think they mean "coated" to an extreme degree with extreme stuff -- with something like that stuff that coats Cheetohs and Doritos. It sticks to your fingers. What is that stuff? It can't be natural.
"Flavor Blasted" sounds like Pepperidge Farms took all that coating stuff, loaded it in a spray painter, and layered those crackers inch upon inch.
A "blast" has become a description of a product's experience. Spin-offs of Mountain Dew and Colt 45 have promised to be, or to deliver, blasts.
I don't mind that use of "blast." Language changes and evolves. The meaning of an individual word might just slip and slide during the course of centuries. That's nothing new.
But I wonder if the product developers, marketers and advertisers who deploy the word "blast" took a look at its current dictionary definition.
According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, "blasted" has these possible definitions:
1. "damaged by or as if by an explosive, lightning, wind, or supernatural force <upon this blasted heath — Shakespeare> <a blasted apple tree>"
2. "damned, detestable <this blasted weather>"
3. "slang: intoxicated from drugs or alcohol"
My take-away from this definition?
Flavor Blasted Goldfish Crackers have been damaged by flavor to the point they're detestable, and also they might be intoxicated.
Or, maybe adults must be intoxicated to eat them.
"Flavor-damned" offers another interesting possibility: crackers damned by their flavors.
You start chewing up a handful, and you're like, "Damn!" And then you're like, "These are terrible."
Maybe the process of hyper-coating these crackers is like "an explosive" or "wind," a very strong wind, perhaps a tornado of processed-food flecks.
And, of course, "blast" has sometimes referred to a gastro-intenstinal outcome of some foods.
-Colin Foote Burch
