Everyone go and buy Kraft Whipped Peanut Butter right now.  If you don’t, there’s a possibility that the product might not be seen as the triumph it clearly is, and it will disappear to live on the Island of Lost Snacks, with the Orange McDonald’s shakes and all those children’s cereals that were made entirely of small cookies.

Nobody is paying me to say this, I didn’t get any free samples sent to our house (NOTE:  I would love it if someone sent me free samples of this product to our house — I promise that it is fairly unlikely that I will hijack your Whipped Peanut Butter Delivery Truck), and there is absolutely no agenda at work here.  This is just a jar of peanut butter that you should buy, and then eat, and then spend many weeks trying to locate again.  It is that good.

It looks like this.  Study the image, because it may just save your life*:

*Note:  Not all lives may depend on eating delicious peanut butter, but maybe they should.

Now look, I’m not a Product Development person.  I cannot imagine what a day in the life of Product Developers might be like, except that ample evidence points me to a job where one spends endless hours trying to dream up new ways to package the same old stuff.  Perhaps there are also manacles involved, chaining one to a desk as a large man with a cigar roars about being more creative.

Product Developer:  Please, sir… we’ve already suggested bagels that work like Twinkies and cookies that taste like other desserts… can’t we please rest?

Boss Man:  No!  We’ve got a whole new fall line to release, and we aren’t going to do it with bagel-winkies!  Now, let’s see — what have we done with ketchup lately?

Product Developer 2:  We’ve made it spicy, added basil to it, done a light version, and put retro stickers on the bottle.  The only thing left is to do all four of those at once, but every time we try, it collapses into a black portal to a hellish otherworld.

Boss Man:  And nobody likes tainted grilled cheese, I get you.  Cheese, though, there’s something there… what have we done with that?

Product Developer:  Not a lot.  “Kiddie Brie” has been locked up ever since the government of France filed an injunction against us.

Boss Man:  I still think there’s an angle there… maybe we’ve got it wrong.  Maybe we need to be more playful.  What do kids like to play with?

Product Developer 2:  Themselves?

Boss Man:  Therapy is covered under our benefits; look into it.  No, they like fun things — animals and whatever, like cats.  They like cats… they are like cats.  Cats like string, kids like cats, kids like cheese… cheese should be like string!

Product Developer:  I genuinely do not know how you come up with these things.

Boss Man:  It’s a talent.  Now, get to work on cheese that is also string, pronto!

It’s so much easier to just retread the same old stuff with a new twist (Frank’s Red Hot, with jalapeno!  All Bran, with a different kind of fibre!  Canada Dry, with cranberry and further ginger!) that is a genuine shock to see a product that actually improves on the original — and more amazing still, an original as fundamental as peanut butter.

Stop and consider, for a moment, every variety of peanut butter out there that has been released since you were little:  the extra-crunchy, the extra-smooth, the low-fat, the no-fat, the natural, the no-salt and no-sugar… all of them sad variations on the simple goodness of a staple that has, in so many ways, been perfect since the first time you had it.  Remember that day that your parents brought home the “real” peanut butter from the bulk food store, and you didn’t know what else to do but cry rather than eat it?  That child is still inside you, weeping as though betrayed whenever you pick up the low-sodium jar, and you know it.

No, in truth the only argument you’ve ever had about peanut butter is which texture is superior:  chunky or smooth.  Indeed, outside of a peanut butter debate, the only more poisonous way to destroy a family is to seduce them into an Uno tournament… until now.

Now, there is Whipped.

Imagine smooth peanut butter, but with the following additional properties:

1. It is less dense, and therefore can be spread across any surface (i.e. bread that has not been sitting on your counter for a week, but could indeed be described as — without any charity or pity — fresh) without tearing or shredding it.
2. This includes the two slices of toast that you have worked so hard to perfect, when you craved hot toast and peanut butter just now in the middle of a movie, without mashing it into dust.
3. I really want toast and peanut butter right now, excuse me a moment.
4. Okay, what was I saying?  Oh right:  By virtue of being more spreadable, it is also infinitely more scoopable, whether by celery or Ritz cracker or breadstick or finger.
5. You can therefore imagine how it is WAY easier to bake with, especially when it comes to making icings.  Anyone who has ever attempting to work peanut butter into a batter or (ugh) a cheesecake will know what I am talking about.
6. Yet despite all of this, Kraft Whipped peanut butter has about 20% fewer calories per serving, at 70 per tablespoon compared to 90 for Kraft’s regular option.
7. And better yet, the same holds when you compare it to their healthy and abominably salt/sugar/fat free options, making it approximately 100,000 times better.

To put it simply:  What if I could offer you a peanut butter that will never ruin your efforts at a quick sandwich, will always make the perfect vehicle for dipping snacks, and is actually less bad for you than even the yucky healthy options out there?

Now, it has come to my attention that perhaps not everyone has access to this product (such as:  AMERICA).  If that is indeed the case, may I recommend the following course of action:

• Visit Canada!  We’re nice!  Toronto is pleasant between about May and August; Vancouver is sickeningly nice most of the time; Montreal tends to embarrass us both by how interesting it is.
• Buy this peanut butter, and bring it home.  It’s peanut butter!  You don’t need to put it in your carry-on.  If it leaks on your baggage, you will only have delicious clothes.
• Then:  Ration it carefully, but enjoy it thoroughly.  Is it The Best Peanut Butter?  That is a question, as noted above, not worth tearing your family and friendships apart over.  Better to enjoy good times with peanut butter that doesn’t break your crackers, right?
• Also:  Complain to Kraft that AMERICA (and perhaps other parts of the world) deserve their Whipped Peanut Butter.  Actually, disregard this step because you will have already taken it.
• Visit Canada again!  We’re nice!
• And so on!

For anyone else who does see this on the shelf, I cannot recommend more strongly that you pick it up.  At best, you will enjoy with the same reckless enthusiasm all the benefits that I have described above; at worst, you will discover the best quality diet peanut butter available today.  In either case, it is a purchase worth making, and then rambling about at length to anyone who will listen.

Rating:  Five peanuts out of five