ICC #3 (October 2011)

Ask and you shall receive!   While I was somewhat unsurprised by the idea that cereal companies no longer put prizes (or good ones at least) inside their boxes, I walked into my local Kroger to find Golden Grahams (along with a few other cereals under their banner) offering up Spongebob Squarepants toys in their boxes.   These are all of Spongebob himself only, but are the same size as the gashopon released some years back that was pretty popular. 

                As an added bonus, there is actually a cutout of a pineapple underwater set up with Patrick and Squidward.   This is exactly the type of thing I was looking forward to in the cereal world.

                On the other side of the coin for this month, I recently tried the new Fruity Boulders cereal, put out by Fruity Pebbles (Post) and claiming to taste like caramel covered apples.    I can define how it tasted with two letters: “Ew”.   This is not the worst cereal I have ever tasted; it is the worst food that I have tasted ever.   I have no idea how this got past the marketing people because after eating it I immediately felt like I was going to throw up.   This cereal is so bad it even makes the milk taste vomit-inducing.

                When I emailed my concerns to Post, their response was less than sympathetic.    I gave their cereal a shot and it was awful.   I only spent $2.28 on the box, so I’m not too bent out of shape over it or anything, but it would have been nice for them to offer me a coupon or something for “one of my other Post favorites” so as not to lose me as a customer completely. 

                In any event, here is what their email response looked like.   I sent a very professional, dissatisfied email to them through a web form on their official website.

From: postconsumeraffairs@casupport.com
To: <withheld for security purposes>
CC:
Subject: Regarding Case #:19136852
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2011 13:34:45 -0400
September 08, 2011

Dear Joshua Macala,

We regret you were disappointed with Post Pebbles Boulders Apple and thank you for bringing this to our attention.

We value your comments and assure you that we will be sharing them with our Quality Assurance Department. We are sorry for any concern this situation has caused you.

Thank you for contacting Post.

Kenneth Ettlemyer
Consumer Response Representative

~~TLXEA_19136852~~N

            I encourage everyone to contact Kenneth with any and all of your problems, concerns, questions or just to chat.   I’ll be back in November with more cereal goodness.   Until then, stay away from the Fruity Boulders and email Kenneth!   That’s going to be my tagline now:

            ~Do Not Eat the Fruity Boulders~