SpongeBob SquarePants Kid Cuisine!
Like I was going to pass up a SpongeBob-shaped chicken nugget.
Two things I hadn’t thought about in a while: SpongeBob and Kid Cuisine. Renewed awareness could have only come from mixing the two together.
I can’t remember the last time Kid Cuisine did something so heavily thematic, and I’m kinda surprised that SpongeBob got the nod. He’s long past the point of needing goofy promotions to keep his name afloat. Maybe ConAgra pleaded with Nickelodeon for the favor, using doe eyes and a comically oversized novelty check.
I don’t eat Kid Cuisine meals, but I’ve always appreciated them, more or less as edible outsider art. The regular versions are admirably wacky, but when they get their hands around a “concept piece,” they just go completely berserk.
Indeed, “berserk” is the only word to describe this. Chicken nuggets shaped like SpongeBob and Patrick, somehow coexisting with extremely incongruous Black Forest gummy bugs. And corn, too.
The chicken nuggets are the obvious stars, and the likenesses are pretty on-target.
SpongeBob lost his arms in the transition to chicken, but that’s okay, because now I can pretend that I have a chicken nugget shaped like a TV set that grew legs. Fetishes must never be universal, for then they would not be fetishes at all.
Patrick is more fully intact, because all ConAgra had to do was bend the top spike on their preexisting star-shaped nuggets.
Each meal comes with three pieces. I got two Patricks and one SpongeBob, which I assume to be the opposite of most kids’ preferred ratio. With only one SpongeBob, you really have to consider things.
Yes, it’s true that the second you see the SpongeBob-shaped chicken nugget, every impulse tells you to bite its legs off. But once you do that, you’ll have no more breaded SpongeBobs to treat like fucked up action figures.
DECISIONS. Decisions that would have far less reaching consequences if only you had two SpongeBob SquarePants chicken nuggets.
Next are boring compartments filled with boring corn and boring mac & cheese. I’m not terribly fond of corn, especially “TV dinner corn,” so it is proof of God’s wrath that ConAgra gave me four times as much corn as cheesy macaroni.
(Seriously, that’s a pitiful serving of mac & cheese. It would only count as two forkfuls if you used a shrimp fork. The bright side is that now you have a reason to use a shrimp fork. You’ll feel like you’re playing Operation.)
Strangest of all are the gummy candies. The BUGS.
Kid Cuisine’s obsession with bug-shaped gummies was established long before SpongeBob joined the party, but it’s so much weirder to see the bugs next to him. These aren’t “comical” or “cartoony” bugs, mind you. They’re realistic, and depending on where you land, maybe even a bit spooky.
It’s just such an odd mix of flavors. Not flavors in the literal sense. “Flavors” as in “styles.” Though I suppose chicken nuggets and gummy candy are an odd mix of literal flavors, too.
I was excited about the free “Best Buddies” wristband… until realizing that it’s one of those deals where you have to send in two proofs-of-purchase and wait 6-8 weeks. Isn’t that just a glorified rubber band? They couldn’t throw one in the box?
As a matter of full disclosure, I should mention that this isn’t the only time SpongeBob has teamed with Kid Cuisine. It first happened years ago, and they even used the same nugget shapes. I don’t know if repurposing chicken nuggets is a dealbreaker for you, but it isn’t for me.
Fifteen minutes later, and I’m still drawing a blank on how to close this review. A letter grade seems inappropriate, since I didn’t actually eat anything. This may be a cop out, but I’m gonna end things with a haiku about Jaws 3.
What you want to see
Is the shark breaking the tank
Skip everything else
