Oh, kale no! Veggie candy canes horrify Internet
Forget lumps of coal. This Christmas, naughty kids get kale.
Kale-flavored candy canes have arrived to ruin the holidays, thanks to Archie McPhee, a Seattle-based manufacturer of novelty toys and candy.
The company, which has been selling “impractical items” since 1983, announced its new veggiecanes last month on Twitter, where they’ve since gone viral.
The green-and-white striped treats purport to taste like leafy greens, but they’re not exactly nutritious.
“This set of six Kale Candy Canes gives you the flavor of kale with none of the dietary benefits,” reads the description on the Archie McPhee Web site, McPhee.com. “No more pesky holiday flavors to worry about, just the bitter grassiness of your favorite vegetable . . . Tastes just like the kale you love.”
This offbeat sweet isn’t an anomaly: Other unusual Archie McPhee candy cane flavors include ham, pizza, pickle, coal and — blech — clam.
But the kale canes, in particular, sparked outrage online.
“Apparently, someone is making kale-flavored candy canes and I want to know why this isn’t illegal,” writes one Twitter user.
“Hard no on candy kale,” writes another.
Besides the sheer insult of greens-flavored candy, David Wahl, Archie McPhee’s “director of awesome,” points out another possible issue: green-striped canes usually taste minty.
“We do want to warn people that the green color of the candy cane might lead someone to believe that it has a minty flavor. We wouldn’t want anyone to be fooled into eating one accidentally,” he tells Today.