Shrimp Tail Cinnamon Toast Crunch Saga Churns Stomachs And More

LOS ANGELES, CA — Digging through the cereal box to get the surprise at the bottom used to be a rite of passage for kids everywhere, but when Jensen Karp found shrimp tails at the bottom of his Cinnamon Toast Crunch, it wasn’t nostalgia he was feeling.

And the only thing more surprising than the handful of debris in his cereal was the firestorm it’s since ignited. It began with a tweet Monday morning.

“Ummmm @CTCSquares - why are there shrimp tails in my cereal? (This is not a bit),” he asked with a picture of cinnamony shrimp tails.

Karp, a Los Angeles comedian and writer married to actress Danielle Fishel Karp, who played Topanga Lawrence-Matthews on “Boy Meets World,” reached out to cereal giant General Mills with his troubling findings.

“I get really grossed out, and I’m medicated for O.C.D., so this is a total nightmare for me,” Karp explained to the New York Times.

The company offered him a replacement box of cereal and quickly issued a public statement insisting Karp was mistaken.

“After further investigation with our team that closely examined the image, it appears to be an accumulation of the cinnamon sugar that sometimes can occur when ingredients aren’t thoroughly blended,” the company tweeted. “We assure you that there’s no possibility of cross contamination with shrimp.”

Both tweets went viral, and everyone from the New York Times to TMZ sought an interview.
Karp joked about his unlikely brush with fame, tweeting, “I’m the new Gorilla Glue Girl, aren’t I?”

Still, frustrated with the cereal maker’s response, he said he had sent the shrimp tails and other debris to a lab for DNA testing. Along with the shrimp tails, he said mysterious small brown chunks had been cooked onto the cereal, making it unlikely the product had been tampered with after it left the factory.

Worried that it could be rat feces, Karp said he is waiting to hear back from the lab before deciding whether to take legal action.

“I’m not considering legal action. Obviously, if I ate rat poop, we’re gonna have to readdress that.”

Karp has received an outpouring of support as well as a storm of criticism from strangers accusing him of perpetrating a hoax along with former co-workers attacking his character and ex-girlfriends accusing him of emotional abuse.

For his part, Karp said he just wanted a simple apology.

“All you have to do is say, ‘This is such a bummer, we’re going to look into it. We’re going to recall the ones from your Costco.’ Like, it’s such an easy PR thing to do,” he told the New York Times. “But instead, they wanted to basically gaslight me.”