This Famous Writer and Producer Found Shrimp Tails Inside Their Cinnamon Toast Crunch Box

Picture this: You're craving a bowl of cereal and decide you're in the mood for the fan-favorite, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. You grab a bowl and then get the box of cereal, and then you proceed to pour some into your bowl. 

You expect to see little squares of sugary, cinnamon goodness fill your container. While you're so excited to eat your sweet treat, out of nowhere, while you're still pouring cereal into your bowl, a... shrimp tail falls in too. Cue the heart drop.

This seems like a one-in-a-million case that you'd think would never happen, right? Well, unfortunately, this was the reality for someone quite recently (a famous person might we add.) Yup, someone legitimately found shrimp tails in their Cinnamon Toast Crunch box and called them out on social media. 

That might have been the worst of it, but, it wasn't the only disturbing thing they came across in what they thought was just any old box of cereal. Keep on reading to find out the shocking details. 

In late March 2021, Jensen Karp, a writer, producer, and podcast host took to Twitter to comment on the fact that he found shrimp tails in his Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal box. He took a picture of the evidence and tagged the General Mills-owned brand in his tweet. He said: "Ummmm @CTCSquares — why are there shrimp tails in my cereal? (This is not a bit)."

After no response, he quote-tweeted his initial tweet and tagged General Mills to try to get a conversation going.

Just an hour or so after he tweeted to the official Cinnamon Toast Crunch account, they ended up replying saying, "We’re sorry to see what you found! We would like to report this to our quality team and replace the box. Can you please send us a DM to collect more details? Thanks!"

Jensen proceeded to reply with: "GUYS — I am not sure I’m ready for another box!!!" Fair!

It didn't stop there though. The cereal brand clearly still wanted to let Jensen know that they were taking this matter seriously and assured him that they were looking into the issue. 

"We understand your concern. We promise you that our team will look into this and get to the bottom of it – but in the meantime, we want to do everything we can to make this right. We'll need further details to research," they said in another reply tweet.

At this point, you can probably assume what came next. The company apologized to Jensen but denied that shrimp was in their product, even though there were photos. Sure, it's bizarre that part of an ocean creature somehow ended up in a cereal box. But it did happen.

They wouldn't admit that, though. They said that had "closely examined the image" and could confirm Jensen's findings were not shrimp tails but "an accumulation of the cinnamon sugar."

The two proceeded to take the discussion to Twitter direct message, where Cinnamon Toast Crunch offered Jensen vouchers for free or discounted products. Jensen wasn't really up for it and still continued to call them out for how he found shrimp tails in his cereal box and it wasn't just bunches of sugar stuck together.

Because of these messages, Jensen kept on tweeting about his experience.

Since discovering the alleged shrimp tails was so terrifying, he felt inclined to investigate the rest of the box to see if there were other strange and unusual things inside. And low and behold, there were. He detected a "weird little string," "black things" inside some of the cinnamon squares, and red dye on some of them too.

The evidence he presented doesn't look too good on Cinnamon Toast Crunch's end.

He has updated that he feels fine — there was a worry that the black pieces were rat or mouse feces — and that he will be approaching Costco about the alarming things he found because that's where he had purchased the product. Jensen also mentioned on Twitter that he wouldn't have taken the problem this far if Cinnamon Toast Crunch had responded differently to his complaint.

Jensen and Danielle got married in November 2018. They share a son named Adler Lawrence Karp in June 2019.

Danielle also got involved in the Cinnamon Toast Crunch scandal, not just by association. They had purchased a family pack of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that came with several boxes, so Danielle searched one of the other boxes and found that one of the bags was "taped up" and allegedly had dental floss mixed in with the contents.  

Hoping this doesn't happen to anybody else! And while this investigation is under way, it might be best to, um, check your cereal.