For decades, children rummaged through their cereal boxes, collecting small prizes. But some unlucky cereal eaters found it much worse than a toy dinosaur floating in their breakfast bowls. In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported a long list of stomach-churning findings: a woman dug up a bug in her Cheerios and a man bit a bone out of his Frosted Mini-wheat box. And this week, Jensen Karp, a former rapper and current writer and podcast host in Los Angeles, joined the corrupt cereal club when he discovered what he claims to be shrimp tails, rat droppings, and floss on your Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
ONE Rivalry on Twitter between Karp and the cereal brand. CTC is trying to clear your hands of the matter, while Karp continues to go viral with his disgust like him investigate your discoveries. Slate talked to Karp while he was on his way to test the possible “rat poop” squares.
Slate: Can you explain Monday morning?
Jensen Karp: So we bought Cinnamon Toast Crunch on Saturday at Costco in Woodland Hills, California. And I’ve been a big fan of Cinnamon Toast Crunch since I was a kid. It is literally the only cereal I eat, even at 41. I am not ashamed of it. I poured myself a bowl and ate that bowl. I have a 21-month-old son and I usually eat a second bowl and give him some. He thinks they are like cookies.
I was preparing my second bowl when something fell out of it. I was like, What is that? At first, I thought it was a grouping of two pieces of cereal together. But then I looked more closely and thought, This is a shrimp tail! There was nothing else that could be. There was no other option.
And then I looked inside the bag and another shrimp tail was cooling on top of it. And they are coated with sugar and look like processed.
What was your reaction to seeing this?
I wanted to get into traffic. I pushed away and it was like disgusting. And I immediately sent a photo to my wife. I went through the complaint form process on the General Mills website and also tweeted the photo online.
Now you have gone viral. And you’re struggling with Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
I love Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I don’t want them to look stupid. I want to be nice to them forever. But the only reason this is viral is because they were so crazy about their answer.
I would have abandoned that immediately if the CTC said, “Hey, let’s investigate and call Costco and do all the things we need to do to protect people with seafood allergies or people who buy Cinnamon Toast Crunch because it’s kosher . We will take care of that. ”Instead, I got the exact opposite. They were really cool in private messages, but publicly they posted a really weird message answer where they said, Hey, we investigated that. It is not a shrimp tail. It is an accumulation of sugar. And, like, there is literally no world where people think it’s not a shrimp tail. It is a shrimp tail.
And then, at that point, it made me crazy. And my friend called me and said, “Dude, you have to touch the rest of the bag.” I had never thought of doing that. In the bag, he found a piece of string, which appears to be a pistachio nut that also went through the sugar coating process, and some of the squares have black spots on them. In addition, some of the squares have a red ink. And when my wife came home, she said that we have to look at the other bag. And the other bag has a piece of dental floss and the bag looks like it was closed with tape.
What is your response to people who’s saying this is all just one publicity stunt?
I don’t even have anything to promote. I mean, I have a podcast where I would never talk or joke about it. This is not something that I necessarily want to be reminded of. This is not what I wanted to spend the day doing. I don’t want to go to poison control.
In addition, the items are actually cooked in the Cinnamon Toast Crunch squares. They were all coated with sugar. I don’t know how I would do this as a joke. Also, the pranks must be funny, which is not.
So, why not try the shrimp tails for public confirmation?
No. No one will ever try the shrimp tails. My stomach is upset and I am medicated for OCD. I don’t want to play that game. [Karp has since tweeted that he’s sent the tails to a company that has offered to DNA-test them for free.]
What have you eaten since the incident?
I haven’t eaten since. I’m going to clean it up with juice today simply because I don’t even want to think about eating. I feel really bad. Not physically. But I feel very mentally ill.
Are you going to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch again?
No, I will never eat it again. Which is a drag because it is really the only cereal I eat. That sucks.