I realize we’re in a trade war, but can we talk about how America invented an alcoholic Pop-Tart you drink?
I kind of feel like a real Bill Lumbergh asking you for a cover sheet on your AI slop before you send it and then saying, “Oh, and remember: next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.”
But it’s 100% true. We’re talking about a trade war and BuzzBallz and Pop-Tarts recently launched two ridiculous ready-to-drink cocktails. Frosted S’mores and Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon. They are 15% ABV and run for $3.99.
I had the same feeling as Matt Lindner. “Have you ever found yourself eating a Pop Tart and thinking ‘Man, I really wish this Pop Tart could get me drunk?’ Good news.”
And we can’t buy them here? If this wasn’t a reason for us to start a Drink Cart bootlegging operation from Michigan across “Lake America,” I’m not sure what we’re even doing anymore.
The brand told USA Today the unique collab was “created specifically with millennial fans in mind,” and that the drink taps “into the nostalgia of enjoying Pop-Tarts growing up in the 90s.”
That is the kind of thing you write in a PowerPoint deck when you don’t want to bring up that the millennials are old now, aging into their 40s and binge-watching Sterling Point about the Muskokas from the Muskokas.
What’s fascinating is that the drinks are made with “vodka and other than standard orange wine with natural flavors.” Somehow that makes these little darlings street-legal and sold in drinkable ball form.
As I mentioned, I can’t buy one. Canada and America failed to reach a deal on trade, and that means we’re still in an insufferable boycott of American alcohol. So no bourbon, no juicy California cabs, no delicious Oregon pinots and certainly no spherical s’more shots.
Sure, my wife brought me a freezer slushie Palm Bay Rainbow Twist Pouch. But if this is part of Mark Carney’s tariff compensation package, it needs at least 15% ABV and to be in a ball format.
The heart wants what the tariffs and the elbows forbid.
THE SLOP HAS BROKEN CONTAINMENT
LinkedIn’s new “Seems like AI slop” button has been hit over one million times in its first three weeks in service.
The Verge reported that “LinkedIn announced the button a few weeks after AI detector Pangram determined that 41 percent of LinkedIn’s longform posts were flagged as fully AI generated.”
And chief product officer Hari Srinivasan reports that the copy and paste articles powered by AI are now getting 40% fewer views.
The New York Times reports that it has gotten so bad that tech companies are now scrambling to fight the “digital sewage” now flooding their own platforms. The irony being that these are the same companies whose own tools made the slop possible.
Ah yes, the old arsonist who started the fire is also in charge of firefighting and the hoses. Perfect.
But what if you really like the AI slop? Don’t worry, Roku launched Fairground AI, a 24/7 streaming channel of nothing but AI-generated films all funded by AI-generated ads.
“The channel doesn’t so much offer shows as a drifting dreamscape of bad ideas rendered as horribly as possible with no thought paid to scheduling,” writes Stuart Heritage in the Guardian. “At one point on Wednesday, a shrill high-frequency anime gave way to a long and staid German-language short about Nazi bureaucracy. After that came a sort of Gladiator ripoff that had all the dynamism of an exhibit you’d see at the fourth-best museum on a poorly planned family holiday.”
What could possibly go wrong with a 24/7 firehose of AI slop?
MEAT PROXIES ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM
A great phrase was making the rounds this week.
Meat proxy (n): a person who forwards AI-generated output without reading, understanding or validating it. Acts only as a relay between the AI and the intended recipient.
And just like the people passing AI work back and forth with each other, we’ve slipped the bonds of the Facebook-uncle slop problem. It’s now happening everywhere.
In deli menu boards where shrimp scampi seems to be more like glazed donuts on ramen noodles. I’d rather question why we don’t have genetically modified non-tailed circular shrimp? Isn’t that the whole point of AI?
At a Mets-Brewers game, we see the lineup graphics in the visiting clubhouse at Citi Field where the teams were greeted with a Street Fighter AI welcome screen. The Mets beat writer called it “pretty awesome” but Mark Lazerus described it as “the AI slop has broken Facebook containment.”
At St. Louis Bar & Grill they just unleashed paid social ads with very AI-looking scenes of patrons clinking beers. So this stuff is being approved and then pushed by a paid media campaign too. When it comes to slop in every aspect of life, we turn to human-cyborg relations expert C-3PO who once said, “There’ll be no escape for the princess this time.”
Besides we all know that this is what AI was meant for.
MEANWHILE, X FOUND OLD ANNUAL REPORTS
In a completely different corner of the internet the feed was discovering and sharing vintage annual report covers like they were baseball cards.
An incredible treasure trove of real design. Bold colours. Minimal copy. Hand-drawn elements everywhere. Beautiful photography.
All commissioned for a shareholder document almost nobody ever reads. A reminder that even the most throwaway elements of creative and graphic design were taken completely seriously.
Nobody was going to buy more of a company like General Dynamics because the annual report was pretty. It was a company saying, on paper, once a year, whether or not you opened it: we take ourselves seriously enough to get this right.
Turns out, that General Dynamics has a secret weapon. Swiss designer Erik Nitsche. He took the creative brief and turned them into cinematic books vs. brochures. If a defense contractor can do it, any brand can.
The freakazoid scampi says the opposite. So does the clubhouse line up screen. There is nothing wrong with using as much AI as you can in everything you do. But the key is ensuring you take yourself seriously enough to stand by it.
COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: THE CONTRABAND BUZZBALL POP-TART
Since the real thing is stuck at the border, I’ve got a homemade counterfeit that might be a little dangerous.
Before we get to that, we turn back to Heublin who last week we talked about buying Smirnoff’s rights in America. But the company was making pre-mixed cocktails for hotels and restaurants as far back as 1892.
They took a giant order to make pre-mixed martinis and Manhattans for the annual picnic of the Governor’s Foot Guard. Rain would cancel the event. The restaurant staff were told to dump the leftovers. But they’d found they’d survived shelf storage and started selling them in the restaurant and eventually built a distillery. By the 1950s they were selling 1.5 million cases a year.
In the 1970s the brand invented a WWII spy, a bar in Macao and coaster cipher to sell a bottled screwdriver. And that inspired the Beastie Boys song Brass Monkey.
The Contraband BuzzBall Pop-Tart
1 1/2 oz bourbon
1/2 oz crème de cacao
1/2 oz maple syrup
1 oz cream
Shake hard with ice, strain over fresh ice into the roundest glass you can find. If you want to get really fancy, torch a marshmallow and set it on top. Add a graham cracker rim and serve with a Pop-Tart if you’re really committed to the bit.
Why have we not resurrected Miss Maple Leaf? I might be more chill about the bourbon if we had this spokesperson instead of Doug Ford or David Ebi.
The Drink Cart is the newsletter version of sitting at a really good bar with someone who thinks too much about advertising and won’t shut up about it. Subscribe to get it on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Fun newsletter this week! Where have Palm Bay Rainbow Twist Pouches been all my life?