Lunacy! Luna Pops and their wrongful Cookies and Cream come-on.

I’m an ice cream kind of gal. But since I don’t want to be consuming a pint of Talenti Pistachio, Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, or Barts any flavor on a regular (i.e., daily basis), I tend to keep less calorie-laden frozen confections around. Among my favorites are the Luna Pops – Raspberry Chocolate Chip, Sea Salt Caramel, and – my favorite – Cookies & Cream. Remember the ads in which some guy claimed he’d “walk a mile for a Camel” cigarette? Well, I’ve been known to walk more than a mile to the further-away Whole Foods when my local (half-mile away) store is out of Cookies & Cream.

The company recently brought out some new packaging. But it’s what’s in the new packaging for Cookies & Cream that’s got me calling them out.

Here’s the scoop (or, rather, frozen confection on a stick).

The delighter in the original version of the Cookies & Cream Luna Pop was that each pop contained an entire cookie. Pretty much as pictured, here on the front of the box of their new and improved packaging. Now, I didn’t give a hoot that the “cream” was a no-taste whitish frozen slurp of some sort. What I liked about these treats was that whole cookie in there. What kind of cookie was it? I’m not sure whether it was an Oreo or a Faux-reo like a Hydrox Cookie. But it definitely made the eating event.

Anyway, I didn’t think twice when the new packaging showed up. After all, what was depicted on the box was exactly what I’d been so avidly munching on for the past year or so. But then I opened the box and ate one. Well, ‘meh’ is too kind a description of what’s in the new and improved packaging. Forget an entire cookie. There aren’t even cookie pieces in there. Just some pulverized cookie crumbs about the size of no-see-ums.

After a disappointing experience with Box 1 of the new and improved packaging, I gave things another try. After all, the full cookie was still depicted on the box. Perhaps I had gotten a dud.

Hah, I say, hah, hah.

Box Two was more of the same: nary a whole cookie in sight or taste.

For whatever reason, Luna Pops has decided to take the cookie out of its Cookies & Cream product, while continuing to use a now deceptive picture on the packaging.

Why the change?

Maybe I was the only one who actually liked the Cookies & Cream Luna Pops.

Maybe it’s cheaper to make the version with pulverized cookie stuff – easier on the machines, lower cost as far as ingredients go.

Maybe a focus group tested them out and really, really, really liked them better than they did the original. (If this is the case, I’d like to verify that the focus group didn’t contain the person who came up with the new recipe, any members of their family, or members of the Luna Pop bean-counting staff.)

If there are any number of compelling reasons to change the Cookies & Cream recipe, there’s really NO EXCUSE for the misleading picture that they’re still using.

In fact, as of this writing (07.09.17), they’re on their web site claiming that the pop contains “a whole sandwich cookie, immersed in decadent cookies and cream.  Proof that it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” Accompanied, of course, by a photo of a couple of these whole sandwich cookie studded pops nestled in a gaggle of whole sandwich cookies.

I don’t need a Luna Pop Cookies & Cream pop to give me a never-too-late happy childhood. Despite the fact that my mother never bought Oreos and, instead, got Hydrox (which sounds like the name of a hair-dye or a no-see-um bug spray), which were nowhere near as good as Oreos, my childhood was just fine, thanks.

But by continuing to depict a whole cookie experience when that’s not the case means that Luna really doesn’t give a Fig Newton about happy childhoods. What child – even an adult child – wants to go from seeing that entire cookie on the packaging to the ‘meh’ reality of the pulverized crumbs inside?

They’re either playing fast and loose with the truth, or they’ve completely lost control of Quality Control and are producing a substandard product.

So, deceptive marketing or lax standards? Which one is it?