by: Protoclown

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is offering a special promotion this year to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Ghostbusters, with two special Ghostbusters donuts and a Ghostbusters bedecked bucket full of donut holes (or anything else you might wish to put in a small plastic bucket with a maximum carrying weight of about five pounds). As with previous years, I decided I must go forth and try these confectionary delights myself! There's a new Krispy Kreme that opened up not too far from where I work, so I thought I'd swing by on my way home and pick up some of these donuts.

I walked into the Krispy Kreme and approached the glass donut display case, eager to check them out for myself, only to find... NOTHING! Nothing at all! Well, they had donuts in the display case, but not the Ghostbusters ones I sought. So I waited patiently as the woman in front of me ordered one of everything in the store in a drawl so painfully slow I was certain she was trolling everyone there before I finally had my chance to ask if they actually had the donuts in their possession or not. The girl behind the counter stared at me in confusion, as if she had never heard of these donuts before, despite there being promotions and ads for them all over the windows and countertop. She went back to ask another forger of donuts if they indeed had this donut of whispered myth and legend, and I was answered with an appraising stare and finally, a slow and knowing nod. She had seen my geeky t-shirt, and I knew then that I had passed the test. I could enter their secret donut society and know the taste of Slimer's ectoplasmic filling. Except, upon looking down at my t-shirt, I realized I was not in fact wearing one of my various Ghostbusters themed t-shirts, but rather a shirt with Darth Vader on it. But my luck held out, as she must have been one of those people who hadn't seen a Star Wars film past 1983 and still thought Darth Vader was cool.

Apparently the donuts in question were all in the back, in some sort of ghostly donut containment unit, no doubt, not the kind of thing that you can just walk into the building with a court order and demand that they release on a whim. Nay, these donuts required careful handling, with wax paper, so as not to get sticky glaze (or "ectoplasm") all over one's hands. Soon enough I walked out of the building with a box of them, along with a bucket of donut holes.

I really do like the packaging for the Ghostbusters donuts, however, the green slime dripping off the logo might get your hopes up that some of the donuts contain green slimy jelly. I am here to tell you not to get your hopes up on that count, friend, for you will be disappointed indeed. You may even die of disappointment and become a ghost yourself! Scary!

Here's a picture of my donut haul. I got half Ghostbusters donuts, a couple other Halloween ones, and then some regular ones. You may recognize the other Halloween donuts from previous years. They actually had the old spider web one in the display case as well, but they wouldn't sell them to me for some unknown reason. Despite having a dozen or so in the case, they were "display only" and they wouldn't sell them. But all of the other donuts I asked for came straight from the case. The only plausible explanation I can think of for why they wouldn't sell them to me is that they were regular plain donuts that an actual spider must have climbed on and spun webs all over, and they only looked like the spidery Halloween donuts from the previous years. They should've sold one to me. It's not like they're selling you food that's good for your health either way.

Here's an uncomfortably intimate close-up of the two new Ghostbusters donuts. You may now relish in the invasion of their personal space. Both donuts were filled with the same white, sugary cream filling, though the Stay Puft donut seemed to have a slightly marshmallow fluff flavor to it. It was so subtle I honestly couldn't tell if it was an actual thing or if it was imagined because of what I expected it to taste like. Was this donut playing tricks on my mind? Even though I'm the Keymaster, I couldn't be sure.

These are clearly hand-made aside from the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man's hat and the Ghostbusters logo, which are little sugary candy pieces they must pull from a box and slap on. Those parts tasted much like shriveled, desiccated corpses (I have to appreciate their strict adherence to the theme), or drywall, but the rest of the donut tasted just fine. Though I really would have been much happier if green slime had oozed out of the Ghostbusters logo donut when I bit into it instead of truck stop juice. Can you imagine the experience of biting into a slime-filled donuts! Don't get me wrong, they're still tasty, but green slime would've taken these donuts to a new level where I would have no choice but to ask them ,"Are you a god?"

The collectible bucket for the donut holes is a simple but pleasant design, and can be had by its lonesome for $3 or full of 24 donut holes (okay, who are we kidding, it was like not even half full) for $6. The green slime oozing down the sides and covering the Krispy Kreme logo is a nice touch, but once again, actual green slime was noticeably absent upon opening the bucket and inspecting the contents. There's no photo of said contents, because we've all seen donut holes before, and there was nothing unique about them.

I'd love to tell you that each hole had the likeness of one of the four Ghostbusters painstakingly etched into its surface in an icing medium, but I'd be lying, and then nobody would eat them. They would want to put the holes on display as conversation pieces, and then people would have all kinds of bugs infesting their houses, drawn to the sweet, sweet, sugary donuts, and then Krispy Kreme would probably go out of business because they'd be remembered as the place that brought forth all the cockroaches, so they just released regular donut holes instead, because of that.

Another thing worth mentioning is the lid to the bucket has a pretty nice image of Slimer, and it looks almost lenticular from the photo, but it's not. It doesn't really do anything special, except fly around and haunt your house in the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep. Yeah, I checked the fine print so you don't have to. Turns out the thing is haunted. Or cursed. Something like that. And Krispy Kreme is not liable for any damage this focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm may do to your home. A class 5 full roaming vapor is gonna do what a class 5 full roaming vapor's gonna do.

So those are the long-awaited Ghostbusters 30th Anniversary donuts! They're only available for a limited time, so if you have a Krispy Kreme in your area, you should definitely go out and grab some before you choose your destructor!

Have any questions or comments about this piece?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE READER COMMENTS SECTION BELOW!