DONUTS! As any casual reader of this blog should know, donuts are my weakness. I can eat lots of them. I remember in my younger days downing a six-pack of Krispy Kremes and a bottle of chocolate milk for breakfast most mornings as a security officer for Target. There are sweets that I greatly enjoy, but donuts just might be at the top of the list. Once I start, I can’t stop eating them.
With that in mind, donuts don’t really have big shoes to fill for me. Put one in front of me and, as long as it has icing or sprinkles, I’m game. (Note: Tim Horton’s pushes my limits. Those things are boring.) Even if it doesn’t have any “extras”, I’ll still eat it. I’ve polished off entire packages of donuts by myself, when other members of the family didn’t want them. It might not have been enjoyable, but hey, it was a donut. And if there’s one thing I won’t let go to waste, it’s a donut.
At least, that’s what I used to think. Then along came Freshness Guaranteed Old-Fashioned Donut Holes, which have singlehandedly proven to me that even donuts can be horrible.
An initial examination does a valiant job of hiding the horrors that await: These look good. They are not overly uniform, giving them a kind of “realistic” homemade appearance. There’s a nice glaze coating the outside, which also suggests a sweet experience. I’m pretty sure my mouth started watering even before I opened the packaging. Sure, they look a little boring, so I knew these weren’t going to be anywhere near the top of my list of favorite donuts. But between my son and I, I fully expected them to be gone within two days.
Instead, I learned that just because a food consists solely of edible ingredients, doesn’t mean they’re actually edible. And after trying a handful, I must confess that I can’t understand the goal of these. Is it part of an evil ploy to ruin donuts for everyone? Is it a part of some elaborate social experiment to test the limits of what humans will attempt to digest, just because it looks like a donut? Was it an April Fool’s Joke that, through confusion, accidentally made it to store shelves? There has to be some sort of logical explanation, because these are awful.
It’s true that these donuts are already boring by design. It’s also true that these are clearly labeled “old fashioned”, which I guess hints that these are based off of donuts from the 1800s, or some shit. But that’s still no excuse for a product to taste this bad. Tastes change. That’s why recipes and formulas change. Therefore, labeling something as “old fashioned” does not give it a right to completely suck. Hell, try giving one to your grandma, and even she would probably spit it out.
It’s yet another hit for Walmart’s “Freshness Guaranteed” label, which just may win the award for worst brand name of all time. It’s also making the push to be one of the worst overall store brands out there. Alas, the products inside may be guaranteed fresh, but I’d rather they be guaranteed to taste good, something very few I’ve tried have managed to accomplish.
And these opinions are not just my own: Both my wife and son refused to eat them. My sweet-obsessed six-year-old who will eat anything with sugar in it. And my wife, who has a sweet tooth the size of Texas. These didn’t last the two days I had previously estimated; they lasted a week before they ended up in the trash.
Overall: 2/10. I’ll admit, “boring” donuts (those without sprinkles or icing) are far from my favorites. But a donut is a donut; I’ve been known to polish off an entire package of them, simply because they were there and in front of me. Even when I wasn’t a huge fan of them. But Freshness Guaranteed (up for the worst brand name of all time) has proven that there is such a thing as an awful donut. It’s proven that some things can’t be eaten, no matter how badly you want to. And it wasn’ t just me: My wife, and six-year-old boy – who will literally eat anything as long as there’s sugar in it – refused to go near them. I can’t remember the last time I threw away a donut, but I do now.
