Originally published at: Rare Discontinued Choco Taco being auctioned off for $25,000 | Boing Boing
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I had never heard of this dessert, but upon seeing the photo, I am now sad I missed out. That looks goddam delicious.
It’s always interesting when companies cancel a product, presumably because it wasn’t selling well, then suddenly there’s an uproar. Sometimes this uproar succeeds in bringing the product back, but usually not. Is it a case of people didn’t buy the thing as often as they think they did? Or they loved the idea of the thing bit never actually bought it? Or they liked the thing as kids but had forgotten about it until they found out they can’t have it anymore? The media around these events always makes cancelling the product seem dumb because “so many” people love it. Yet if those people were actually buying it, it wouldn’t have been cancelled, presumably?
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They were, at least for a prepackaged novelty ice cream treat. Pre-pandemic when I use to go to a local store for game night that was one of my most frequent picks for “night out treat”.
Any of those could be true, but I tend to think the “real” reason is for products where it takes say hundreds of thousands of purchases monthly to make it viable to support a production line, distribution, and so on it only takes say 2000 people complaining about the cancelation to make a headline.
Adjust numbers until true, but I think they are at least two orders of magnitude apart.
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I think you’re quite right about that. It’s good to remember that most of what we think of as trends online are all noisy minorities. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. All the best things in the world are done by noisy minorities, but it’s still a good thing to remember.
I am reminded of a study a while back that less than 5% of humanity is on Twitter, and 98% of the content on Twitter is generated by 2% of its users. Again, adjust numbers until true, but the real ones were similarly dramatic. We all (used to) treat Twitter like it’s the pulse of the planet, but in fact it’s always been pretty much a shitty, very small, and very loud minority.
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Roy Wood Jr. talked about this on TDS, and summed it up well said “It was just a’ight, it wasn’t a classic – it wasn’t no legendary ice cram treat. Let’s be real about the Choco Taco. It wasn’t legendary. It was a’ight.”
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I’ve never had it but from the various videos i’ve seen of people trying it over the years it was disappointing to eat. Falls apart real easy and the waffle cone is way too soft, the concept for it is great but not a good execution, it’s probably nostalgia that kept it going for so long
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In my experience, that can happen with any pre-packaged waffle cone items. Like Drumsticks, when they are fresh are crispy. When old they are too soft. 
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Yeah age does make things softer… oh you’re talking about the choco taco. Right 
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People spending $25K for ice cream are going to be feeling pretty foolish when Klondike starts producing them again. They’ve said they will, which suggests it might have always been a stunt to get attention for the brand when the brought it back, the shut down being a temporary measure to ramp up production of other items seeing spikes in demand during the pandemic.
Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to be disappointed!
“The team is working on a plan to bring it back, though it may take some time,” Klondike said.
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Maybe they can make a version where the waffle cone is made from Necco wafers instead. Imagine the uproar!
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I’ve had them in the past with some modest frequency (say >1/month, <1/week).
Yes the “cone” is soft, no I’ve never had a problem with them falling apart. They were in no way a fantastic quality treat, they were on par with a drumstick with a slightly different novelty.
They sold these in my high school cafeteria when I was in High School. Ate one every single day. God I loved those things.
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