Not that long ago we had 2 bags of cheese doodles in our snack cupboard. Both bags had the same exact thing inside and looked exactly the same … if you only looked at the front of the bag. Both bags were open but we noticed Jay was only eating the cheese doodles from one of the bags and the other bag was sitting neglected.
I’ve talked about cheese doodles a lot here. It’s my sons most favourite thing to eat. It’s virtually a crime for us to run out. We take them with us in the car and he takes them with him to school. We have made night time walks to the corner store to get them. Jay didn’t used to care what brand it was, although for a while he thought the Pathmark (a local supermarket) store brand was the best.
Now, he was discriminating against one of our bags and the reason …….. One bag had a picture on the back of a corn stalk and one didn’t. He was only eating the ones from the corn-picture bag. WHAT??? I have no idea where this came from or why it popped up or how he came to think that if the bag had a picture of corn on the back it was worthy of being eaten.
The non-corn-picture bag ended up going stale (our fault). We should have just thrown what was left into the corn-picture bag. But now, when I go shopping and I pick up a bag of Cheetos, I inspect the back to make sure it has a picture of a corn stalk. I only hope they don’t change the design of their bags any time soon.
Maybe we should wash and keep an empty bag somewhere just in case.
I swear, I will never figure out how this kids brain works but it sure is interesting.
Oh my God – we have had SO MANY of these situations in my house. It started when Ryan was a baby. My wife decided she would make her own baby food. He refused to eat it. But if she put it in a Gerber jar, he’d eat it. For years, his favorite food was blueberry mini muffins. But one day, the packaging changed and he refused to touch them thereafter. We tried keeping one of the old packages, and restocking it with muffins from the new package, but he figured it out and refused. The things is, there is probably some logic at work here — if only WE had the capability to figure out what it was!
Wow! It really is quite amazing how they think. Who knew packaging was such an issue?
Neil has hit the nail on the head…if only we could figure out the logic. It makes sense – to them.
Wow it’s amazing in a “drives me nuts sometimes” kind of way. My guy is the same way about certain lights being on or off before he can eat or play and oh and there are the apple sauce fruit cups. It has to be strawberry but we only have apple sauce not strawberry and apple sauce….