Monday, July 27, 2015

Star . . . bust

Dear Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company:

I just bought another bag of Starburst FaveREDs, the assortment of watermelon, cherry, strawberry, and fruit punch Starburst chews.

I have had the impression in the past that there were too many of the flavors I didn't like, and too few of the ones I did like. But I had never done a quantitative analysis of this idea before.

As it turns out, I was right. When I dumped out a brand new bag and sorted them into four groups, I found that the most prevalent flavor by far is the disgusting Fruit Punch, with 36 pieces out of 81, or 44.4% of the bag. Coming up next is cherry, with 26 out of 81, or 32.1%. Watermelon is 11 pieces, or 13.6%. Finally, there's strawberry, with 8 pieces or 9.8% of the bag.



Now I realize that you can't please everyone, but why not make the flavor mix closer to equal among the four? Watermelon and strawberry are my favorites, but together they represent a paltry 22.4% of the bag! So I'm not going to buy FaveREDS anymore unless you change it so each flavor in the bag gets a quantity deviation of no more than 5%.

I am sharing this letter on my consumer affairs blog, the "eValue-ator," and I will share your response there as well.