Hurts Donut features Tide Pod doughnut to raise awareness

Lizzie Bell, Photo Editor

Hurts Donut will continue to sell the tide pod donuts over the weekend. The new meme based treat is a raised doughnut with icing and a filling of your choice.

For many years Tide Pods have been thrown into washers and used to make our clothes clean. Recently a new social media challenge has been taking over all mainstream social media. The challenge involves people taking the laundry detergent pods and digesting them, which leads to numerous health issues.

There are many companies using ways to give a public service announcement on why it is a bad idea to partake in this challenge. One of these businesses includes Hurts Donuts, who has decided to make a tide pod doughnut to serve to the public.

“We wanted to put out our own little PSA. Eat this, not that”, said Trista Patterson, an owner of Hurts Donuts.

The pastry is a raised donut with white, blue and orange icing, with an optional filling of your choice. Since Hurts began making the ‘Tide Pod’ doughnuts, they have noticed an increase in sales.

“People have been buying them since we posted that [the advertisement] a couple of days ago,” said Patterson. “People are pre-ordering them by the dozen.”

Junior Tara Herrington tried one of these doughnuts and said it’s a harmless marketing method that teens think is funny.

“I’m 100 percent sure people are taking it too seriously,” said Herrington. “They’re just a business doing regular marketing.”

Though Herrington enjoyed the donut version of the Tide Pods, she said the challenge itself is an issue.

“The videos also come with the issue of children seeing them and thinking that that’s a way to become more popular online,” said Herrington.

The doughnuts will be sold for the rest of the weekend at Hurts Donuts.