Arnott’s Shapes, the most vaguely named snack food on the market and once a staple of primary school lunches, has changed how they put the bits of brightly coloured mystery-flavour into their biscuits. They’ve changed it, you guys, and they’ve put out a press release to announce that fact. Turns out, when they stopped pouring so much oil over the biscuits a few years ago, the chunks of salt/MSG/“flavour you can see” stopped sticking to the biscuit, leaving consumers with a plain, dry cracker and a small plastic bag full of dust. To solve this problem, Arnott’s doubled down and started baking the flavouring right into the biscuits and also covering both sides in more flavouring, probably while maniacally screaming ‘YOU WANT FLAVOUR? I’LL SHOW YOU FLAVOUR! I’LL FUCKING SLATHER THIS NONDESCRIPT SHAPE WITH SO MUCH FLAVOUR YOUR FUCKING TONGUE WILL FALL OFF!’
Now, were it not for my dramatization, you might be asking, ‘Chattr, why do I care about this? Why do you think I am thinking about the changing recipe of a brand of biscuit I enjoyed eating when I was 7?’
To answer that question, all I can do is direct you toward the screaming insanity that is corporate Facebook pages. There, you will find people for whom this news was devastating. Much like Snow White’s poisoned apple, it would seem just a taste of the new Shapes is enough to send one spiraling into a deep despair from which they may never awaken. Some choice comments that would also sound at home in victim testimony at a criminal trial include:
“What have you done?!”
“You are toying with people’s emotions and memories!”
“You have destroyed something I loved.”
And at the bottom of that pit of anguish and fury lies the poor social media intern at Arnott’s who has to patiently explain to everyone who complains the exact nature of the changes, and offer the desperate olive branch of BBQ Shapes Original, which will apparently remain on shelves for anyone who needs to eat an unchanged box of Shapes every day or their goddamn head will explode. Other consolation prizes include Savoury Shapes remaining unchanged, and in what may be the greatest phrase we’ve ever seen in an official corporate statement, “Chicken Crimpy has had a minor tweak… but the flavour remains the same!” As though anybody knows what the fuck a ‘Chicken Crimpy’ is. As though the word ‘crimpy’ does not immediately make any human being sick to their stomach. As though any of us can be expected to overcome the profound emotional trauma of eating a substandard snack that was once delicious!
As Arnott’s Shapes hang their heads in disgrace and limp away into the night, let us gather together and mourn the passing of a precious, beloved, nutritionally worthless food item. RIP in peace, Pizza Shapes. May you one day be resurrected, in new packaging, to once more dance upon our taste buds like in that one weird ad they used to air.