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Thursday, June 5, 2008

My Fruit Roll Ups

When I was in first grade, a little girl named Jenna O. brought a wicker basket of Fruit Roll Ups to school for a birthday treat. Since then, at least throughout my childhood, it was one of my favorite treats. It does not surprise me that my sons feel the same now.

Because of this, I was excited when The Parent Bloggers Network announced they were looking for people to review My Fruit Roll Ups. What makes them special? Get this, you get to design them yourself! I was surprised when some of my friends were even more excited than I was. Then I learned that they thought I was designing my own flavor. Let me just clarify...you get to choose a picture and message to be stamped on the Fruit Roll up. They come in sets of 30. I immediately logged into the site to order them. Since my younger son's (YS) birthday is this month, I thought it would be fun to design fruit roll ups to be given out as party favors.

There are basically three steps to designing your fruit roll up. First you pick the design. They have a ton of choices, including several birthday designs. There is even a specific design for turning two that reads "Look Who's 2!"

The next step is to pick a message to be written on the fruit roll up. Of course I had a childhood flashback thinking about how cool it would be to have a fruit roll up with my very own name on it! Of course my name wouldn't go well on my son's birthday party favors. I therefore left my name off. I realized that even though the favors were for YS, I couldn't leave my older son (OS) off. If I did, I would hear about it for the rest of my life. In fact I'm pretty sure there would be at least one future family counseling session about it. I ended up writing "Happy B-Day YS, Love OS." Problem solved. I also got pick out the layout, fonts, and color of the design and message. The last step is to place your order.

Unfortunately I hit a snafu. I was very surprised to receive a phone message from the company. I called back and spoke with a nice woman who told me that when reviewing my order it appeared that I had not selected a design or a message. I was pleased that she called me rather than just shipping out 30 blank fruit roll ups. However, when I went on-line, I could see my saved order, including the design and message. The person helping me canceled my order, and I resubmitted it. Except that the same thing happened again. When she called again, she decided to hand-enter the info.

There are two pieces of good news here. The first is that you are unlikely to experience the same problem that I faced. None of the other reviewers had this issue, and the person who helped me said that she had never encountered this problem before. More importantly, if something does go wrong, there customer service is fabulous. And no, I didn't get special service because I was reviewing the product. The person helping me did not know that I was a reviewer until the call was almost over, and I mentioned that I thought I needed a new "reviewer code" to put in the reorder.

I would definitely recommend that you check out the site and click on the demo. It's really quick, and it runs you through all your ordering options. I have not actually received my fruit roll ups yet because the process takes 3 weeks, but I am already planning on making some for party favors for OS's birthday in September.

Interested in winning your own set of personalized fruit roll ups? Leave a comment on this post telling me which design you would choose if you won, and I will use random.org next Friday to pick one lucky winner. That's right, The Parent Bloggers Network and My Fruit Roll Ups are giving away one free order of personalized Fruit Roll Ups. Just make sure that your email address is listed on your blog or Blogger account For those of you who don't have blogs or Blogger accounts, you can still leave a comment. Just make sure to leave your email address as well so that I have some way of contacting you if you win. This contest is valid in the US only.

posted by Alex Elliot @ 9:00 PM 9 comments

9 Comments:

At June 6, 2008 8:34 PM, Sally HP said…

Hi Alex,

How exciting! Well, due to all the recent changes at the knitty household, I went on the site and decided that I would do a 3-piece design with the zebra, giraffe and 'Big Brother H' in the message section. These are super cute, and would be a fun surprise for him...hope I win!
At June 6, 2008 11:31 PM, Jessica said…

I noticed that the choices of pictures included a bee and a lamb, so I think I'd get those with a message of the girls' names. They'd get a huge kick out of that. I like the idea of using them for birthday favors too.
At June 7, 2008 2:23 PM, kim said…

Perhaps I would choose the ballet slippers, since we have just had our first recital for our prima ballerina. I think she would love the message to be to her from her brothers.
At June 7, 2008 11:29 PM, Ginny said…

I would love to do these with the ballet shoe for my daughters competition team. She'd get a kick out of bring that treat in to dance!
At June 8, 2008 8:06 PM, Anonymous said…

Knowing how much my son loves candy, I would choose a Halloween themed picture with "3 is out the door, I'm 4!" and pass it out at his party.
At June 9, 2008 8:40 AM, Suzanne said…

Mmmmm... Fruit Roll Ups. I am a huge fan. Do you remember when the company rolled out Fruit Bars a few years after Fruit Roll Ups became big? The theme song was, "Fruit Bars/So good and ugly/Fruit Bars/So good/And UGLY. Oh, those were the days.

And I hope I win customized Fruit Roll Ups for my book party. That would rock the house. Lots of kids will be there to enjoy them, young and old like me.
At June 9, 2008 11:12 AM, Anonymous said…

I would have mine say some fun message for the lunch box, like "Property of John ____, delivered by Mom"

Lorraine
At June 12, 2008 7:33 PM, Stacey Moore said…

would love to get some with baaseballs for my son's baseball team!
thanks!
moore.g at insideconnect.net
At June 13, 2008 3:39 AM, tAnYeTTa said…

the baseball designs please! My son is in tball he loves it!

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 4 year old and a 1 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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