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Thanks to @samoff on Twitter who has drawn my attention to this - Orange Burst Soleros. Is this real? Is this some kind of awful joke? Is this a product from the 1970s that someone has rediscovered? Or has someone asked AI to come up with the most unlikely product there could ever be? An Orange Solero? Now I've seen everything.
For non-Solero aficionados (I despise you, but will indulge you) you might think there is already an Orange Solero. You fucking idiot. The flavour you're thinking of is Exotic Solero, which is made of (I presume) the freshest possible peach, passion fruit, mango and pineapple.
I consider myself an expert of Soleros (not how they are made or who invented them, but on eating them) and long-term readers will know, except in the direst of circumstances I eat one (AND ONLY ONE) Exotic Solero a day. It's the perfect dessert: delicious, satisfying and only 98 calories and most importantly ONE IS ENOUGH. If I eat a piece of chocolate I have to eat all the chocolate in the house, but a Solero leaves me sated in every respect. It is the most delicious food on earth,
"Oh," someone who doesn't know me might now say, "Do you ever mix it up and have a Red Berries Solero?"
To which I say "Fuck you and anyone unlucky enough to know you, you moron. NO I DO NOT!"
Red Berries Soleros are the most disgusting food product on earth. They are like pig swill that has been run through a sewer. That the same company can make the world's most delicious and most disgusting food stuff makes no sense, until you realise that they must have released Red Berries Soleros, not to make money (who would buy more than one?), but to make a philosophical and artistic comment about the opposing forces of good and evil in this world. Think about it - a Red Berries Solero could not have been created and marketed by accident. Someone at Walls must have tasted them. They know they are bad. They put it out so we would consider the dual nature of morality and also so that we'd really, really appreciate the proper Solero when we have them.
I love Soleros. I have done more to promote them than the company that makes them and also buy at leat 365 a year (my kids also eat them, much as I don't want them to) which must swell their coffers. You'd think they'd give me money for doing such a good job of letting people know about them, but for some reason they just ignore me. Maybe it's because of me repeatedly saying I'd rather rim Anne Widdecombe than eat a Red Berries Solero. I give the proper Soleros such great reviews, but like any artist Ian Walls is sensitive to criticism and doesn't like it when I say he has created something that I keep a supply of dog shit on hand, just in case I accidentally eat a Red Berries Solero, so that I have something to get the dire taste out of my mouth.
I am though, astonished that I had to hear about Orange Burst Soleros from a total stranger on Twitter. Did Walls not want to run them past me first? Just to check I thought it was a good idea. Or at least just let me know so I'd be prepared for this seismic shock. After all the money I have given them (around £304 a year). After all the reviews. After all the nerds I have persuaded to eat Soleros, not because Soleros were paying me, but because I thought they deserved the plaudits and I would feel strange taking money from them for telling the truth which I am happy to give freely.
They could also try and explain what they are attempting to do here artistically. They already have the best and worst food stuff covered, what do they hope to gain by introducing a third flavour? Do they think they can make something better than Exotic Fruit? Good luck with that - you might as well ring up God and tell him you've created an even better Heaven. Do they think they can make something taste more like excreta than Red Berries? Satan, there's someone on the phone who thinks they've come up with a way to make Hell a bit hotter and pitchforks a bit more pointy.
Or are they trying to make the most average foodstuff possible. Something that sits right in the middle, something that no one will actively like, but no on will actively hate. It's a middle ground already occupied by Twix (as I explained at length in one of my stand up shows - NO I DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE. WATCH THEM ALL). So even that would take a bold artist to attempt to defeat. I want to make something that will satisfy no one, but also disappoint no one. Like the comedy of Richard Herring. If it didn't disappoint loads of people.
I don't know what is going on. If I was going to bring in a new Solero (which I never would) I think I would have done one that wasn't also Orange coloured. Whilst it's good to make sure that Red Berries can never be bought by mistake, so to give it an unnatural purple colour that no one would eat and which also mocks the idea of them being called Red Berries, if you're making a third Solero then maybe go for green or even yellow. Blue would even be OK. Or a rainbow coloured Solero. Why bring a second orange coloured Solero on to the market?
Do you know how often supermarkets substitute in Red Berries Soleros in their deliveries when they have no Exotic ones? This is just going to confuse them more.
I now have to go out and find some Orange Soleros, because despite all the free publicity the cunts at Walls aren't giving me anything. What have those pricks got against me? And it's a no win situation for me. Like them or hate them or neither like or hate them, it unbalances the Solero Universe and everything that I have come to believe as true.
I'd say we should boycott Soleros until this Orange Solero is withdrawn and also all the Red Berries one thrown into a pit and pooed on, but Walls know I won't hold out for half a day. If I could stop eating Soleros I'd cut out 3000 calories a month. You see that belly? It's a Solero belly.
Anyone else on Substack (
why not head over there and subscribe to get these delivered to your inbox) writing about Soleros? No there fucking isn't. It's all sex crime and fascism and how to do well on Substack. You know what the answer to all those problems is? Soleros, that's what. Give everyone Soleros. Not the Red Berries ones. Red Berries Soleros is the thing that probably causes all those problems.
And if we'd got people worked up over Soleros rather than Brexit or Woke v anti-woke, then I think we'd all be a lot more united. It's probably what Ian Walls was doing. Unity isn't about building walls, it's about all eating Walls. And having to choose between two things where everyone will agree that one is by far the best.
You may call me a dreamer. And I may be the only one in this precise case.
