G is for Grapple?

I eat some weird food. Bacon donuts. Shaved beef tendon salad. Andouillette. But none of that is somehow as weird as what John just brought home for me to taste. The Grapple. Pronounced "GRAPE-l" and capitalized because it is a registered brand name for a new grapey-apple product.

Judging from the website's 1950s-looking graphics and the references to combating childhood obesity, it seems that the Grapple is being marketed as a way to get your fat kids to eat more fruit. This is consistent with what I experienced in tasting my first Grapple: looks like an apple, smells like a Jolly Rancher!! The Grapple looks, feels, and tastes like a normal apple. But the aroma coming off it was precisely the same as grape flavored candy. Pretty sneaky trick, but it won't fool your kid more than once because, guess what? The Grapple just tastes like a boring old Fuji apple. In fact, after all that grape-smelling-good-ness, the apple is pretty much of a letdown.

Wikipedia tells me that the Grapple is not the result of some cool hybrid, but instead a patent-pending liquid infusion process in which grape juice concentrate is pushed into the flesh. Well, forcing grape into an apple does not create the "sweet distinctive flavor of Concord grapes combined with the crispness of a fresh, juicy Washington Extra Fancy apple." Ain't no grape anywhere in that apple, except for the Jolly Rancher scent!