Twizzlers Chocolate Twists and Twizted Summer Fusion

Twizzlers, in what appears to be a nationwide fit of either ambition or insecurity, has launched a new flavor of chewy candy-like objects.

Each rope of Twizzlers Twizted Summer Fusion pull-n-peel candy, by contrast, is made up of nine mini-ropes, flavored patriotically as white lemonade or red "wild berry" or "blue raspberry."

As far as it is a daring depature from traditional red licorice whips, Twizted Summer Fusions calls to mind a much more venerable product: Twizzlers Chocolate Twists, which offer Twizzler-shaped logs of waxy material impregnated with the awesome taste of cocoa.

Both represent serious variations on a theme for a brand that has, over the decades, sewed up a considerable part of the mass-market licorice racket. This diversification is a ballsy move for a company that manufactures items that, in 90 percent of the world, would be unrecognizable as food.

BUSHMAN OF THE KALAHARI: What are these tubes?

AMERICAN: They are a dessert item among our people. They're a sweet food eaten after the main meal.

BUSHMAN: These clearly appear to made of — how do you call it? — plastic? Yes. Touch, sight, and scent tell me that these are inedible plastic tubes.

AMERICAN: They're called Twizzlers. Here, eat one.

BUSHMAN: No, seriously. You are shitting me. Stop it.

The Bushman of the Kalahari caricature is making sense. The only reason we know that Twizzlers are food is that they're marketed as such, and we are, as a people, extremely attuned to whatever colorful packaging suggests.

But after decades of effort, the Twizzlers brand has won the day, having convinced most Americans and many Europeans that their waxy crimson tubes of barely digestible mystery material are suitable for enjoying at home or in the movie theater.

Thus: Time to kick it to the next level.

Twizzlers Chocolate Twists, although older than their Twizted brethren, still represent a serious depature for the brand. They taste like extruded pieces of soft wax that have been rubbed down with the sort of chocolate lip balm that is marketed to 7th grade girls not yet fully fluent in fashion, but fully aware that chocolate is totally delicious. "Rubbed down with lip balm," it's worth noting, is a long way from Scharffen-Berger.

The new Twizted Summer Fusion flavor is even dag nastier. The packaging seems to promise three distinct, lively flavors, but the effect of biting into Twizted Summer Fusion is akin to eating ancient bubble gum that's lost its chewability.

As I've argued before within these virtual pages, the collective American corporate world suffers from a sort of madness for infinitely accelarating profits and market shares. If one brand works well and sells a respectable amount of units every year, pressure to create sales growth demands that newer — often very stupid and poorly conceived — spin-off products be rolled out on a regular basis.

Granted, innovative repurposing of a brand sometimes creates something wonderful, and that's just swell. But mindlessly stamping one's brand onto vaguely related variations on a theme rarely ends well, and the expansion of the Twizzlers empire — no doubt under assault from the notably more pliable and suddenly hot Red Vines brand — seems to have completely bypassed any sort of effective taste-testing. The result are two products that fail to meet — let alone exceed — the incredibly low quality bar set by standard-issue Twizzlers.

There are those who argue that the collapse of Enron is symbolic of an upcoming crisis within the American economy. That argument may be correct — but is the expansion of the Twizzler product line to include so-called chocolate and "Twizted" incarnations any less serious?

Well, yes.

But not by much. At least that's what you'd say if you had to taste either or both of these flavors.

Pugh.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)