“Chicken ‘N Waffles” Syrup and Why Torani Brand Ruined April Fools’ Day
Torani, you are a respected San Francisco based family-owned company that has produced flavoring syrups, sauces and blended drink bases for years. In fact, your history dates back to 1925, and some even credit your involvement in the creation of the ‘flavor latte.’
Fast forward to 2012, over 80 years later, you will now be credited with possibly ruining April Fools’ Day for the lot of us.
Or so it seems. Late in March, we caught wind that Torani brand might be launching a “Chicken ‘N Waffles” flavored syrup. Us being gullible quirky food newsaholics were giddy over the possible existence of such a flavor. Actually, in all honesty, the flavor didn’t sound that good, but the novelty factor of it was too interesting not to bring to public attention.
Sure enough, the flavor was fake. The gimmick was, Torani didn’t announce it was fake until this morning, which completely takes a piss on the unspoken April Fools’ Day etiquette of confining the antics to the 24-hour period of April 1st.
What makes the situation irritating is that when we did our fact checking on the product last month, we went straight to the source, the Torani website. Low and behold there was already a product page created for the syrup, a few lines of information, and a note that the product was launching in April.
When it comes from the source, that’s enough for us to make a post about it. It would be in poor taste for McDonald’s to announce bankruptcy on the 29th of March, and a few days later use April 1st to say “Just kidding about that bankruptcy thing!”
You Mad Foodbeast?
A little, yeah. You [Torani] are tampering with the awesomeness that is April Fools’ Day.
Imagine you had a cousin who calls you on March 27th, telling you that he found two brand new iPods, and he plans to give one to you when he sees you next week. Sure enough, on April 1st, your cousin comes to your house and says he has no iPod, it was an April Fools’ Day joke. Good joke, douche.
An April Fools’ Day joke that started in March? Punch your cousin in the face. You wanted an iPod. He told you, in the confines of trust that exist in the generally joyous month of March, that you would be able to listen to your classic Limp Bizkit tunes on a brand new iPod.
What did he give you? A lame April Fools’ Day joke.
It Gets Worse, I Now Have To Beg For an iPod/”Chicken ‘N Waffles” Syrup?
Not only was it a terrible “made-up flavor,” Torani’s Public Relations team apparently planned for it to be such an amazing PR move — such a ground breaking flavor — that they would hope people would CAMPAIGN for its creation. Here’s a look at the e-mail we got this morning:
What could have been a cool April Fools’ Joke was ruined by not launching it on the actual holiday. I love pranks. Pouring salt into the sugar canister at IHOP so my friends sip salty coffee? I do that!
Suddenly break up with my girlfriend in January, and then on April 1st, pop into her bedroom screaming “April Fools! I didn’t really break up with you back in January!” ? Nope, that doesn’t work very well.
Still Mad Foodbeast?
No, I’m good now. I guess I just needed to talk about it with someone. Hell, maybe the Torani April Fools’ Day jokes was better than I thought?
Meh.
