Jelly Beans

Dear Jelly Bean,

I am well aware that you have enjoyed a fairly long period of popularity, but I am writing you to call attention to your flaws and question your integrity. The Christian church and the Hallmark company have certainly been very good to you, but I know what you're hiding.

First of all, you are not what you say you are. Your name is nothing but a misleading mess of inappropriate comparisons. You are neither jelly nor bean, but you are just close enough to confuse people. How dastardly dare you be? Jelly you are not. You are similarly sweet and often fruit flavored, but spreading you is woefully difficult. You are certainly no bean, either. You are similar in size and shape to a bean, but you weren't grown on a stalk and you taste nothing like any legume I've ever eaten. Also, putting you in a burrito is a catastrophic mistake.

Furthermore, your flavors are misleadingly attractive. Upon reading your enclosed list of flavors, I was enticed and excited by the vast and varied selection of what you claimed to be realistic and true-to-life "taste sensations". WRONG. Even after the incredible difficulty one has with choosing flavors correctly according to the pictures on the guide, the array of problems only grows. I was aware that 98% of your ingredients are sugar, corn syrup, maltodextrin and modified food starch, but I vainly hoped for a miracle in edible technology. Unfortunately, as soon as I bit into one of your "Sizzling Cinnamon" beans, I realized just how deeply the corruption runs. Sizzle did my tongue? Nay. I was moved to remove it from my mouth to recheck the flavor chart, just to be sure it was truly "Sizzling Cinnamon". I did not choose incorrectly. Sadly, though, the lunacy continues. "Strawberry Daiquiri" has little to no discernible alcohol content, "Juicy Pear" contained absolutely no juice, "Wild Blackberry" was quite docile, and who in their right mind willingly eats the "Buttered Popcorn" flavor is a mystery to me. Besides its tasting nothing like butter or popcorn, why that particular flavor is regularly being eaten and manufactured is absolutely beyond me. Honestly, why?

What is certainly not my final quarrel with your product, but will be for the purpose of this letter, is that your suggested flavor combinations are a frustrating mess. As I careened down the laundry chute of dismay, chewing on the truth of edible misery, my plunge was slowed by the glimmer of hope presented by the beguilingly brilliant idea of combining two or more of your initially godawful flavors into something better. Perhaps, I thought, the combination of jelly beans will be greater than the sum of jelly beans' parts. Much to my chagrin, said combinations only make for a multiplicity of abhorrent flavor mutations. Adding the peanut butter and strawberry jam "flavored" beans together to create what was promised to be the flavor experience of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich only left me wishing for a bread flavored bean to add to the mix, because, after all, the only thing sadder than misery is incomplete misery. I would continue with explanations of why each flavor combination only leads the taster closer and closer to broad nihilism, but reliving the experience is a burden large than any I care to shoulder.

Please, unless your manufacturers suddenly discover the ability to grow genetically modified beans that are spreadable like jelly and usable in Mexican cuisine, I must request an end to this jelly bean madness. Because madness is what it is, and although easy to package and apparently quite profitable, even during times of economic recession, madness is still almost always socially irresponsible.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen