Soylent is pulling its meal-replacement powder from the market in light of trickling reports of customer illnesses. -snip–
In an online blog post Soylent said:
For the past several weeks, we have worked aggressively to uncover why people were having these negative experiences. This has included product testing, an exhaustive industry search, and discussions with many of our suppliers. Our tests all came back negative for food pathogens, toxins or outside contamination… Interestingly, we didn’t see similar complaints during the 1.5 formulation. This possible connection allows us to narrow the field considerably given there are only a few ingredients that are specific to only our bars and Powder 1.6.
Ars reached out to Soylent to ask what those ingredients are, but we haven’t received a response yet.
Well, I guess I just don’t go to stores that sell that sort of thing, because I’d never seen it. Now I’m not the target demographic in all likelihood, but I guarantee that I’d never, ever be able to bring myself to buy a product with that name.
To make things worse, according to wiki they actually named it after the food product in Make Room! Make Room!/Soylent Green.
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First time I saw an ad for this product I thought it was a parody. I wonder what marketing super genius thought Soylent would be a good brand name.
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I’d have to know whether they’re turning a profit, in order to know if they were right.
Can’t say I was interested in buying, even before the reported ‘negative experiences,’ but I can’t fathom the mind of a hipster on my best days.
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I saw the article here and had to go wiki it to make sure it wasn’t a parody. The ad genius is probably the same one who used to do the Mitsubishi ads from 20 years ago where some guy is screaming “Zero! Zero! Zero!” because of the zero down zero interest for the first year, zero payments for x months sale. My father heard that and pointed out that it sounded a lot like “Tora! Tora! Tora!” which the pilots of the Mitsubishi zeros were screaming as they attacked us in WWII. We were never able to decide if the ad guys were clueless themselves, or figured most of the buying public were so they’d have a little fun at said public’s expense.
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I had to double-check against a parody, too. Ars Technical has never spoofed me yet, but I made sure it was late October, not early April.
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I’ve got a case because I wanted to try it. Followed the developers blog while he was working it up. I thought it was an intriguing idea. The name is a natural for this product. Got the liquid version. Tastes dull which is understandable but will feed you. Looks to be good for emergency stockpile.
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