I'd Rather Be Sick Than Eat Progresso Soup Drops Ever Again

The canned soup brand, Progresso, has released a limited-time and somewhat incredulous product today, right in the middle of cold and flu season: Soup Drops. Soup Drops are, well, a suckable form of chicken noodle soup (sans chunks) in cough drop format. No, the company did not somehow decide to speed up the clock and flip the calendar to April Fools' Day, and also no, I'm not making this up. I know this, because I'm sitting here with a container of them on my countertop.

"How did I end up here?" you may ask. Well, I've been at The Takeout for a long time, and I've developed a certain tolerance for eating questionable food (see this Clam-O-Naise for example). As soon as we found out about these Soup Drops, I volunteered myself for the taste test. Eating the entire Decades Menu at Taco Bell is one thing, but I do appreciate a varied diet, one that also consists of packaged goods whose very existence I've questioned in the past, such as Hidden Valley Ranch ice cream and Arby's Vodka.

Progresso sent me a media preview kit which included a package of them, and despite getting freebies for my job now and then, I'm not one whose opinion can be bought, unless it's for maybe like, five bucks in change and a ride to Arby's. But I couldn't quite get my mind wrapped around this idea of a savory cough drop. Would it be more sweet than salty, and just mildly flavored with chicken noodle soup aromatics? Or would this herald in a new era of salty hard cold relief drops that would change the lozenge game forever?

Upon first glance, this packaging is actually genius — it looks like a miniature can of soup. It even has a tabbed pop-top to gain access to the 20 lozenges inside. The tagline, "Soup you can suck on," is hilarious too. I hate to admit it, but the entire thing is pretty cute, and the team that worked on this project clearly had a lot of fun. This is like a can of soup you'd present to your teddy bear if you were playing "pretend lunch date." Not that uh, a 43-year-old man would be caught doing something like that.

And even when I opened the lid, one of my cats came sprinting over because she was convinced it was time to eat wet food. Sorry, Sub-Zero (sister of Scorpion) — I had to inform her that it was not. It was actually time for daddy to eat solid soup for his job that eventually pays for the wet food. In terms of what was inside, each lozenge was individually wrapped as promised, and for a mere $2.49 (more on how you can buy them in a bit), that price is fair for a novelty item. Provided it's good, at least.

I unwrapped a Progresso Soup Drop to take a closer look at it, and also because that's what a human typically does before eating an individually wrapped treat. It was an appetizing shade of light brown, with a shiny shellacked surface just like a bowling ball. Upon popping the savory lozenge right in my mouth, I almost immediately ejected it. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting that. 

The Soup Drop had an instant unappealing acridness to it, sort of like artificial bacon flavoring but without the fake smokiness. I held on for a few more seconds and that initial shock and chemical overtone faded a little, giving way to a genuinely salty lozenge that had a distinct chicken bouillon flavor to it. I had to hand it to Progresso — the company didn't hold back on that part, because it did mostly taste like chicken soup with the same infrastructure as a regular hard candy, except the sweetness played a very tiny role in all of this.

The main ingredient in these drops is isomalt, which is a type of sugar substitute that's made from sugar alcohol — so it's not actually sugar. That means it's a keto-friendly ingredient, if you can believe it. What's interesting is that isomalt's not as sweet as real sugar, but creates the same kind of glassy vehicle that sugar would in hard candy. The drops also contain monosodium glutamate, actual chicken meat powder, natural and artificial flavor, chicken fat, and all sorts of flavor enhancers I probably don't want to think about. This Soup Drop would be pretty interesting if it just weren't for that awful artificial meat flavoring that tastes like sulfur.

As part of the media kit, Progresso sent along a can of its chicken noodle soup, the soup that the Soup Drops are based off of. Desperate to get the aftertaste of the Soup Drop out of my mouth (which I ate in its entirety), I thought I'd see how similar the drop's flavor was compared to its inspiration. The answer is, they're not much alike at all. Progresso's actual soup version is a lot more delicate and doesn't clobber you over the head with its flavor density.

The wallop in flavor from the drops makes sense, since they're meant to have a concentrated "soupness" to them, but the drops simply have a much different profile than the soup. And nowhere in the canned soup version is there even a hint of that rough artificial flavoring. If you're not feeling well, just eat soup, everyone. It won't necessarily speed up the recovery process, but it'll make you feel like you're doing something nourishing for yourself. The Soup Drops will make you feel like you're deliberately trying to make yourself sick for longer.

Progresso's Soup Drops go on sale starting today, January 16, at progressosoupdrops.com. A limited batch will drop each Thursday until the end of the month for $2.49 each plus shipping. I've already gone over the fact that they are, in fact, gross, and you won't want to try more than one. But the thing is, if you buy a container, you can bring it to your friends and family and say, "Hey, want to try a salty drop that's supposed to taste like chicken noodle soup? They're gross." I guarantee people will try them, you'll have a good laugh about it, and they'll probably be gone in an instant. Or, more likely, you'll end up throwing them away.