Behold, Lunchly-the only pre-fabbed lunch that is more unappetizing than that breakroom takeout that's been sitting in the fridge for months.
Lunchly, the pre-packaged kid lunch created by some of the biggest YouTubers in the world (MrBeast, Logan Paul, and KSI) has received a lot of backlash for its controversial modern marketing. Sure, using over-excited mascots to encourage kids at school to make fun of 'lame' homemade lunches isn't exactly ethical, but it also isn't anything new. Lunchly has effectively hypnotized the elementary-aged market in the same way that 90s cereal commercials tricked us all into begging our moms to buy Honeycomb Cereal, Cap'n Crunch, or Cookie Crisp because of the food's apparent "nutritional value." It feels perplexing that these multi-billionaire YouTubers are using their video platforms to market to their largely under-18 years old audience and all people are outraged about are the marketing tactics. Concerned parents really should be more aware of how these influencers are using their mega millions to cut corners with the FDA by using trance-inducing, Fortnight-esque advertising.
Shockingly enough, Lunchly has become notorious not just because it's a pathetically obvious Lunchables knock-off and because their ads are unsettling, but because their unopened, unexpired snack packs are frequently reported to have mold. That's right, mold is growing in the Lunchly packs and all we're talking about is the creepy advertising.
Okay, but what is Lunchly? A self-proclaimed "healthier" option than your typical Lunchable, Lunchly should be every parent's nightmare. Although it's simple enough to stock up on 25 of the same meal for your kid's lunch, surely it's still obvious that a few slices of cold cuts paired with shredded cheese, bland chocolate, and a strange energy drink aren't a nutritionally balanced meal. While Lunchly boasts about being a "healthy" option, it's cheaply made and has managed to skate past every loophole in the FDA, according to Men's Journal author Stacey Ritzen. But it's not the food safety that parents are griping about, it's the marketing.
Destiny Moody, a pediatric nutritionist, criticizes the YouTuber trio saying, "[They] are acutely aware of the massive influence they have over young people on social media and are now angling to use this influence to circumvent their responsibility to build the quality product they claim to promote." Lunchly's marketing is heavily targeted towards kids, but that's nothing groundbreaking, right? The difference is that the folks creating the food product are also completely in control of the platform that advertises. That would be like, if Kellogg's owned every show on MTV and only played cereal ads for billions (yeah, with a 'B') of viewers everyday. One of the biggest YouTubers in the world, MrBeast himself, has raved over his own product, sprinkling Lunchly elitism into every video, claiming that his lunches are "hype" and a homemade lunch is considerably lamer.
Parents may even be questioning the ethics of encouraging Lord of the Flies-esque behavior on the school playground, because if your hero MrBeast tells you your lunch is lame, it must be pretty lame. According to Dani Di Placido, a trending reporter for Forbes, other YouTubers like DanDTM are slamming Lunchly for "selling cr*p to kids who don't know better than to trust the people who are selling it to them."
Frankly, it's not just the Lunchly ads that make kids cruel to each other and tease homemade-lunch kids for their sensible PB&Js. Exasperating this sort of feral child energy isn't a unique marketing technique. Remember the 90s? Now that was an era of insanely targeted advertising that nearly forced parents to buy their kiddo's sugary breakfast cereals for fear that they may become like the jittery, wide-eyed cereal mascots of yore-like the Honeycomb furball.
It's nothing new that marketing is targeted towards kids. Honeycomb Cereal, Apple Jacks, or Cocoa Pebbles (to name a few), are blatantly geared towards the desires of a child. Ads are loud, punchy, and borderline annoying. So while kids memorize the ad's jingle, parents loathe the day their kid will spot the box in the grocery store -- because, at that point, they'll be powerless to stop the force of their child's tantrum in aisle 10.
And classic products like RedBull, Pepsi, and Gatorade have been using celebrity spokespeople and professional athletes to market on behalf of their product for years. So when YouTuber's are backing their own food sale, it doesn't come as a shock. Except, there's a crucial difference between a YouTuber and an enormous international food company: Food safety.
Parental fear about the marketing tactics of Lunchly has blinded consumers to the nutritional failures of this "food product." Lunchly has barely squeezed by every rule in the FDA, resulting in several completely valid complaints about food safety and proving that Youtubes have no business being in the food industry.
You're a video creator for goodness sake-stay in your lane!
So while parents are worried about their kid getting bullied at school for having a homemade lunch, kids are scarfing down these Lunchly meals without really knowing or caring what's in there. Apart from allegedly "real" cheese and a sad excuse for lunch meat, the only thing Lunchly is consistently delivering is mold. You read that right-Lunchly is full of mold.
Perhaps it's all of this "health" food being stored in a recklessly assembled plastic box, but the biggest controversy surrounding this kid's snack is mold. The startling amount of reports of unexpired packs of moldy Lunchly kits is so shocking that it's actually memeified itself.
Like the Golden Ticket in Willy Wonka, other content creators are using this controversy to ride the coattails of MrBeast, Logan Paul, and KSI's colossal failure. However, in the skirmish to buy case upon case of Lunchly, their sales have skyrocketed. Inadvertently, this mold incident has actually improved the company's standing instead of ruining their reputation. According to Dani Di Placito, a reporter for Forbes, "the health hazard has become a meme," as countless streamers, unboxers, and other online influencers are trying to cash in on seemingly spontaneous virality.
Via u/au38a
It's been proven for centuries that "any press is good press"-but when it comes to the health and safety of millions of kids, it's safe to say that these YouTube celebs are the real enemy here. Nobody should be eating mold on something that says it's not expired, especially children.
YouTube celebrities are some of the richest and most famous people in the world. Forbes author, Abram Brown, reported that these days, your average big-time Youtuber is making around $20M annually. And according to the financial journal, The Street, MrBeast projected earlier this year that he'd be earning close to $700M by the end of 2024. So why dip the toe into the food market? It's a shameless cash-grab, of course. They're taking advantage of their wealth to cut corners with the FDA, using their platform to promote their own products, and they're ultimately creating their own monopoly system at the expense of elementary school, middle school, and high school students. So while we can argue that everyone has the free will to avoid these heinously inedible products, the fact that it's even legal to have them on the market is the real issue. Perhaps, like we do with other food products, we simply need to look at the source of our snacks to know whether or not we'll be poisoned.