Conspicuous Consumption

Arizona Daily Wildcat

Yes, they're real. They'll run you $1.09 wherever you purchase your Hostess Products. Seeking answers, I spoke with Mark Dirkes, Senior Vice-President of Marketing for the Interstate Bakers Corporation, the subsidiary of the Interstate Brands Corporation, which makes, among other things: Wonderbread, Hostess Cakes (including Twinkies, Cupcakes, Ding Dongs, and Ho-Ho's) as well as Dolly Madison products. They are the largest producer in the country of "fresh" bakery products, with sales of around $3 billion annually. "It's a national introduction," Mr. Dirkes explains. "You should also be seeing a product called Hostess S'Mores on shelves soon."

Once in a while a product appears on the shelf without any provocation, or any apparent demand. Focus groups - you've gotta love them. A select, small group of people shared their views with the right executives in charge of major corporate decisions, and we ended up with Bubble Gum Mini Muffins.

"The process starts with a team relationship that involves the research and development people, the marketing people and the consumer," says Mr. Dirkes regarding the conception process for new pastry products. "When we developed this last round of Mini Muffins, we sat down at the lab and said 'Give us a half-a-dozen types of Mini Muffin varieties - we want a product that'll be fun and appeal to kids,' and they put together a bunch of product samples. They actually baked little Mini Muffins in the lab at Kansas City. And we went down and tasted them - there are four people on the marketing staff - and we made some comments and they tweaked the formulations a little bit. And then we went into focus groups with consumers, young men, kids, as well as mothers, and said, 'Well, what do you think of them?' We got them to talk about how they use Mini Muffins and what they liked and what they didn't like."

It's not the taste that's the problem - the Bubble Gum Mini Muffins are a marvel of industrial food technology and taste exactly like bubble gum. It's just unnatural. You expect to chew the muffin like a stick of gum, but it crumbles and turns to goo in your mouth.

And what is bubble gum flavor, anyway? It's not like bubble gum grows on trees, despite what you might've heard on the playground. It's wholly artificial, a mix of cherry fruit flavor and lots of sugar that we call, by convention, bubble gum. It's always pink and it's always FUN!

You have to wonder about the group that said they really wanted their muffins to taste like bubble gum, though. My own focus group, which consisted of myself, another guy, a girl and my cat, unilaterally rejected this new Hostess product. They were, however, impressed with the incredible job Hostess did creating the frighteningly authentic bubble gum flavoring. It just didn't happen to taste good.

Rachael Blumenthal, anthropology senior, made a horrible face upon consuming the product. "It's really chemical tasting," she commented, "and the taste keeps coming back. I'd eat one if I were in a state of starvation, but I'd never buy it."

Will MacIntosh, philosophy senior, agrees: "Initially the taste was horrible, and it got more and more powerful as you ate at it. But it really did taste like bubble gum, I'll say that."

My cat, Soliel, nibbled at the muffin and wandered away uninterested. Perhaps she was first attracted by the smell - a quick whiff of the package after the initial rush of nitrogen drains reveals a good nose - but the aftertaste got her in the end, too, I'm sure.

Nitrogen? What? There's actually a lot that goes into the design of Mini Muffin packaging. "If you look at the package, it's inflated a little bit, almost like a balloon," points out Mr. Dirkes. The product has to be treated specially, as all the Mini Muffins in the country are produced in Indianapolis. "It's packaged with a system called 'Modified Atmosphere Packaging,' and the product is flushed with nitrogen. It keeps it from molding. Once we've decided to go with the Modified Atmosphere Packaging, there are other concerns. One is you've gotta keep the seal tight for a relatively long period of time, certainly longer than is on say, a Hostess Twinkie.

Not that we're not concerned with [the Twinkie's] seal, but when you're sealing a seal that's as thick as that, we need to be assured that it is going to stay tight. The film is multiple layered and laminated and is designed to keep that nitrogen flush within the package. We also want to keep light out, and that's why you've got the opaque packaging."

A lot of thought went into these new muffins, and it's shame it's such a terribly misguided idea. Sales figures were not available, but they seemed to be sold out at Circle K. As for me, I'd rather just keep my bubble gum and my muffins separate. They are an odd concoction though, and they'll probably join my collection of epic and strangely ill-conceived products, right between Orbitz and Vanilla Ice's "Mind Blowin'" album.