When it comes one poultry company setting its poultry products apart from those of its competitors, a little creativity and innovation is a must.
The new product from Pilgrim’s Pride is most certainly creative. Introducing the new Pilgrim’s Ultimate Nuggets Smash Cake Kit.
For those of you who don’t know what a smash cake is, it’s a birthday cake specifically made for a child as he or she has that first birthday. Since one-year-olds generally don’t have the abilities to use utensils as older people would, they usually dig right in, often, “smashing” the cake.
Sounds pretty fun, right?
Upon reading the press release about the new cake kit from Pilgrim’s, the company described it as a wait as a way to “knock the boredom out of traditional smash cakes, helping parents celebrate their little ‘nugget’s’ big day in an unexpected way.”
With a new grandchild who arrived earlier this month, this did catch my attention as something to consider for next August. But I had my doubts. You are probably thinking the same thing I was: Cake and chicken nuggets together? And with frosting?
The picture that I saw of the finished product made me think just that. The idea of meats and sweets brought me to the memory of a “Friends” episode, when Rachel was making an English trifle for dessert, but the pages of her cookbook stuck together, so it was half English trifle, half shepherd’s pie. Everyone was struggling to eat her dessert, except for Joey, who famously said: What’s not to like? Custard, good. Jam, good. Beef, goooood.
Now for the big reveal: the smash cake isn’t cake as you know it. The cake kit from Pilgrim’s includes Pilgrim’s Ultimate Nuggets, creamy Idahoan mashed potatoes to be used to give the appearance of frosting, and a fun birthday candle, along with other accessories. It also includes step-by-step assembly instructions.
“Pilgrim’s is shaking up the smash cake celebration just like we did the chicken nugget game, so only the unexpected will do,” Chelsea Parker, Pilgrim’s US senior director of brand marketing said in the release. “The Ultimate Nuggets Smash Cake Kit lets parents create a memorable and delicious moment worthy of the ultimate celebration.”
Unexpected is right.
I think this is a neat idea, but I do have some skepticism. I mean, what’s a birthday celebration without a cake that is, well, cake. But then again, I’m sure there are those who look for cake alternatives.
Pilgrim’s was forward-thinking enough to only release 100 of these smash cake kits and not have a bunch of surplus. Starting today, the company will have those 100 available for purchase for $7.99. Parents and chicken nugget fans can go online to claim a kit while supplies last.
But maybe it will be a big “smash” and the product will be more than just a promotion.
It has happened before. For example, in 2020, Perdue Farms introduced ThanksNuggets, a limited-edition package of fun-shaped turkey nuggets in which, like with the Pilgrim’s Ultimate Nuggets Smash Cake Kit, only 100 of them were offered and only online. That product sold out in less than three minutes, so a more widespread rollout in major grocery chains followed in 2021.
So, if history repeats itself in this sense, the smash cake kits could already all spoken for.
If you were able to obtain one of those 100 kits, please let me know what you thought.
