Hasta La Gadget!

Mar 14

Let them eat Yoda: A geek food feast full of fun and failure

Ready to suck some juice out of the Incredible Hulk's head.

(Credit: Amanda Kooser/CNET)

I recently stood at the end cap of a grocery store aisle, doing a double-take at a stack of macaroni-and-cheese boxes. I rubbed my eyes. I wasn’t seeing things. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Kraft mac and cheese is a real thing. And it’s not alone. Geek marketing of foods is a trend.

There are Angry Birds fruit gummies, Super Mario Campbell’s chicken noodle soup cans, Spider-Man Cheez-It crackers, Iron Man candies, and some sort of mysterious juice beverage with the Incredible Hulk’s roid-rage head on top of it. I bought them all. I poked and prodded them. I inspected Yoda’s apple-flavored gummy ears. I held crackers up into the light to evaluate the artwork. I even ate them.

Since the early days of “Buck Rogers” tie-ins with Kellogg’s back in the 1930s, geek properties have found a way to hook up with food-related products. For the most part, the results fall into the snack food and candy realm, the kind of products meant to fuel a binge video-gaming session. A few, like the Super Mario soup, could pass as main dishes if you have a flexible idea of what qualifies as an entree.