Does anybody know where the Doritos Headquarters is? I think it’s high time that we get a mob together and go knock some sense into those “flavor experts” of theirs…

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a long-standing beef with this company for the same reason that I find myself having beefs with most food companies these days, in that they have this extraordinarily obnoxious habit of introducing new and delicious products that I become instantly addicted to, only to find roughly six months later that they’ve decided to discontinue said deliciousness in order to pave the way for their latest and greatest offering…which consequently ends up tasting like dirt.

You may recall that last summer I had a similar problem, in which I was fanatically captivated by a scrumptious flavor called Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ after it surprisingly won in a sudden-death slugfest against a spunky Wild White Nacho. Doritos told us all that whichever flavor was more popular would end up remaining on the shelves of our local grocery stores for all to enjoy, but as you might expect, even after whooping Wild White Nacho’s tortilla-shaped butt something fierce, it wasn’t too long before both flavors had been banished from the shelves to make space for the company’s latest gimmick, Doritos X-13D – the mystery flavor!

* pause for dramatic effect *

The trick was that we were all going to blindly purchase these mystery chips off the shelves in troves, then flock to the Doritos website to place our guesses as to what this new and exciting mystery flavor actually was! Well, me being of the marketing group that food producers like to call Suckers, I picked up a bag myself and promptly proceeded to throw that very same bag into the nearest garbage after eating only three chips. Doritos later unveiled X-13D to be Crap-Flavored Doritos … well, technically the press release actually said that the mystery flavor was supposed to be Cheeseburger-Flavored, but I’ve never tasted a cheeseburger that was that grotesque, and I’ve eaten at Hardees, for what that’s worth.

When I found a similar black bag of what used to be my favorite nacho chips on the shelf the other week and opened them to find that some genius had decided that fruit-flavored Doritos was obviously the best way to go (they were quickly unveiled as Mountain Dew-flavored Doritos, as if that helps somehow…), I couldn’t help but cry just a little inside. In my eyes, Doritos are quickly becoming the Bertie Botts’s Every Flavor Beans of the potato chip industry, and while that reference just soared right over the heads of all you folks who claimed that the Harry Potter books were just for kids, the rest of us can certainly vouch that this isn’t exactly the best position for America’s favorite potato chip manufacturer to be in … that is, unless there’s some sort of underground market for grub or worm-flavored tortilla chips that the rest of us aren’t aware of.

It seems like a fairly simple task – create an awesome flavor of chips, then sell it to people. There are really only two steps in the process, and if they’d like, I’d even be happy to put it into some sort of PowerPoint presentation to further explain the concept. And I understand the whole concept of these companies labeling all of their latest offerings as Limited Editions in order to drive up sales, but at the same time, maybe they need to take a step back and consider the experience from the perspective of us customers. At the end of the day, we don’t want to guess what new product your flavor scientists have concocted in the Doritos Labs for us – we just want a delicious potato chip that we can enjoy without the underlying thought that we might need to go rent storage space and stock up on these things in the event that lightning hits Doritos HQ and we find ourselves faced with yet another FrankenDorito.

The truth of the matter is that I really like Doritos – they’ve been a vital part of my snacking lifestyle ever since my teenage years and they’ve given me some memories that I’ll cherish until the day that I die, but in that same light, I shouldn’t have to wait until I die and go on to Doritos Heaven before I taste those delicious flavors that I fell in love with oh so long ago once again. Taco, Extreme Chilli, even Pizza Cravers – all deliciously perfect in their own unique ways, with their only flaws being that they couldn’t remain new and hip forever…

These days I find myself enjoying the purple bag Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos, which while they aren’t Smokin’ Cheddar BBQ or any of my historic favorites, they still manage to hold their own both alongside a nice ham sandwich and even by themselves as a tasty treat…but I try not to get too attached. I know they say that when you enjoy a food, you need to open yourself up and give it everything you’ve got, but over the years I’ve just gotten hurt too many times that way and at this point I’m not sure if I’m ready to love a new flavor of Doritos again. The thought of losing another delicious flavor just hurts too much.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twenty or thirty times with a myriad of repulsive flavors that no man, woman, or child would willingly consume, shame on me…