Dear Nestle,

After weeks of enjoying your enticing billboards around Austin, I purchased my first box of the BREAKTHROUGH TASTE SENSATION TANDEM. You can imagine my delight when I opened the first bar and enjoyed the fabulous culinary rollercoaster ride that is Tandem. This is the perfect ice cream bar for people who can't make up their minds. Now, instead of buying an ice cream sandwich AND a Klondike bar, I could enjoy both treats in one. Always a fan of cookie-based treats, I was especially impressed with the inclusion of cookie bits in the chocolate side. Pure genius!

Morsel consumed just as I realized my thumb was pressing into bare ice cream on the other side of the bar. Broken cookie chunk: a slap in the face! Cookie crumbs: on obvious show of disdain. Extreme displacement of bottom cookie. As you can imagine, there was an equal gap of naked ice cream on the opposite side.

However, my excitement quickly turned to dismay when I opened the second bar of the package. The sandwich side lacked a top! Not only did this spoil the aesthetic quality of the snack, but it also made it nearly impossible to consume without getting a melty mess all over my fingers. I had to grip the edges of the bottom cookie precariously to avoid complete mayhem. I was certain that this defective bar must be an anomaly—a factory error bound to occur with the introduction of a new product.

The third bar added insult to injury. This one was not completely bare on the cookie side. Instead, there were hideously crumbled and smashed cookie pieces, as if some evil ice cream snack purist had destroyed the cookie lid in a cruel show of contempt for my gluttony! The culprit had left small bits of cookie—and even mocking crumbs!—on top of the sandwich. Please examine Exhibit A for a detail of this sandwich's problems.

The fourth bar was defective as well! As I opened it, I thought, this isn't happening, this isn't happening. Once again, the delicious sandwich side was stripped of its cookie top. I was disgusted. Who wants an open-faced ice cream sandwich? Not me! In all my years of buying ice cream sandwiches, I have NEVER encountered a SINGLE topless treat. This is worse than poor quality control: this is ice cream pornography!

So I appeal to you, Nestle USA. Do not mock your eager consumers with defective frozen treats. Do not promise a BREAKTHROUGH TASTE SENSATION and deliver a crippled and broken snack. I could have purchased a six-pack of Klondike bars AND a six-pack of Bluebell Ice Cream Sandwiches for the same amount as one overpriced 4-pack of Nestle TANDEM. But did I? No. I had faith in the promise of TWO TREATS IN ONE!

I pray that you will find a way to soothe my ice-cream gobbling soul before the heat of the summer causes me to forsake forever the lure of your delicious multiple-treat ice cream bar TANDEM in favor of less innovative but more dependable selections.

Sincerely,

Nikol Lohr