Chobani Watermelon Blend: A Yogurt Review

I know, right?

There are as many brands of yogurt as there are stars in the sky. There are as many flavors within each brand as there are grains of sand on the beach. We are living in a yogurt boom. In no other time in history have we had so many yogurt options. You can drink it from a bottle or squirt it from a tube. Some yogurts even come with separate compartments filled with wondrous sprinkles and grains to dump into your cup of yogurt. I could go on for [Time=(SandxStars)^Ramble].

(I just put that equation into Wolfram Alpha and it was unable to solve).

Well despite the multitudinous array of yogurt, I automatically disregard those yogurts with either high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners. Even with HFCS, yogurt tastes like yogurt and not ice cream or candy. If I'm going to put concentrated sugar into my body it will come in the form of actual candy. And I just don't like the taste of Splenda, Stevia, Aspartame, Phenelelnilyeyonnoneutronics, etc. Plus, you know, cancer in pigs. So I look for things like real sugar or honey as the sweetener. Chobani is a brand that I like.

Chobani yogurt is in the style of Greek, which basically means it is thicker because the whey has been strained. Greek yogurt is all the rage these days. You can do independent research to find a reason why and pros/cons of standard yogurt vs. greek, etc.

This particular afternoon I was looking for a bottle of drinkable yogurt. But because Giant Eagle sucks and is the worst not-poor-people-slash-dollar-store-surplus-or-whatever grocery store in America, because of this there wasn't drinkable yogurt. And so I was just going to skip the yogurt until I saw this WATERMELON YOGURT. In addition, the package is marked LIMITED BATCH!

I literally have to have this. What if they never make this again? Have you ever stood up really quick after lying and you get dizzy and faint from the blood rush? That's what happens to my brain when my raging FOMO courses through my body. They also had a limited batch plum flavor, but I don't care about plums. I mean, I like fresh plums and all--I just can't help but to think of them as pre-prunes and then directly equate that with old people having bowel issues.

Cost: $1.25 for 5.3 ounces. That's approaching $.24/oz. (0.2358490566037736). To put that in perspective, the price of gold has been hovering around $1,125/oz. A single ounce of gold can buy you 900 yogurts. Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr pre-tax. Assuming deductions of about 18%, the take-home hourly wage drops to $5.95/hr. This cup of yogurt is equivalent to 13 minutes of minimum wage labor. You would have to work 195 hours to buy as many yogurts as 1 ounce of gold could buy. That's almost 25 days of 8hr/day minimum wage labor! That's over a month of 40hr/wk full time labor.

With a normal expiration date of about 2 weeks, you would have to eat 64 yogurts a day to finish all of your yogurt before it went bad. That's a yogurt every 15 minutes for 16 hours a day. Talk about power hour. So if you doubled your hours and got a small raise, you could conceivably eat 1800 yogurts a month and also have no left-over money!

Okay so let's eat this yogurt. Watermelon is not normally a flavor that one might correlate with yogurt. And so with no preconceptions and a little apprehension I open up the watermelon yogurt.

...uhhhhhh...

Ummmm, uhhhh. The first thing I notice is that the yogurt is a pale pink-almost-white. Not bright red/pink like watermelon flesh (and the label), not bright green like watermelon shell (and the label) and not a fun swirl of bright green and red like you might see in a kids' yogurt. Pretty gross looking, TBH.

When I think of watermelon I think: fun, bright, fresh, crispy, juicy, summer, messy, chill, sweet. The appearance of this yogurt visually represents none of these things. Though, in the yogurt's favor, it looks a lot like yogurt and not a weird artificial toxic sludge masquerading as yogurt. (I hope somebody's marketing dept. is reading this)

Now I've had a good watermelon or two in my day so I know how a watermelon should taste. I've gotta tell you, I'm a person who eats yogurt from time to time so I know how yogurt should taste. Now I'm a person who loves artificial watermelon flavor too, so I know how a good false watermelon should taste. (I once tasted a handsoap that smelled so deliciously of false watermelon that I could not resist. It tasted like soap. Talk about disappointment).

Hey speaking of disappointment, see also: this yogurt. This was not like eating 5.3 ounces of creamy watermelon candy. If you had blindfolded me and then told me I was eating a plain yogurt I might have believed you and commented "hmmm, it's got kind of a watermelony aftertaste." That is where I believe the exact verbiage on the label comes into play. "Watermelon Blended." They are not claiming a watermelon yogurt, but a blend. And so the blend ratio leans hard toward yogurt flavor.

It tastes of watermelon a bit, sure. The yogurt is very sour/tangy and not at all sweet. So it was more like Jolly Rancher watermelon. Yeah that's exactly what it was. A faint watermelon Jolly Rancher yogurt.

Great in Zima, not in yogurt.

This yogurt is not a refreshing summer treat. It's fine, overall, I guess. But when you put the watermelon label on something I have expectations. This watermelo-failed to water-meet my watermel-expectations. It is a gimmick. It is made in a special small batch for a reason. That reason is because they will/should never make it again. Chobani is good yogurt and they make a lot of good flavors--I suggest you buy one of those instead.

Chobani Watermelon Blend Yogurt

Value: 5/10 (premium yogurt premium price)
Appearance: 1/10 (really gross looking for "watermelon")
Flavor: 3/10 (not a good flavor for yogurt)
Mouthfeel: 8/10 (would be better with seeds/sprinkles)
Overall: 4/10

I would eat another one if someone else packed my lunch. I would not buy this flavor again of my own volition, despite my love of watermelon.