Kids love Burger King's Green Apple Slime

Kids love Burger King's Apple Green Slime dipping sauce

This week I reached out for some Apple Green Slime dipping sauce, available for a limited time only at Burger King.

Calories: 80. Fat grams: 0. Price: free (as long as you buy an order of Chicken Tenders to dip into the Green Slime).

"Slime" isn't exactly a mouthwatering name for a food product. Most adults will shy away from eating slime, unless they have the 3 a.m. munchies and they're shoulder-deep into the refrigerator rummaging through long-forgotten leftovers.

"I'm pretty sure this is turkey, but from which Thanksgiving?"

Green Apple Slime is for children. It's part of Burger King's "back to school" promotion with the Nickelodeon cable network. Throughout September, Burger King will sneakily give away school supplies disguised as toys in their Kids Club and Big Kids Meals.

Where does Green Slime fit into this? If you've never watched Nickelodeon, Green Slime is the equivalent of a pie in the face on a show called "You Can't Do That On Television."

On Nickelodeon, Green Slime is a sloppy mixture of flour and green food coloring.

At Burger King, Green Slime is super-sweet apple jelly. It tastes like pure melted Jolly Rancher candy.

Remember the old hair-care product your mother used to use, Dippity-Do? Green Slime sauce has the same squishy consistency, only it tastes better on chicken.

Regular barbecue sauce has 35 calories per serving. Green Slime has 80.

You might as well dip your Chicken Tenders into Hershey's chocolate syrup. Actually, that would be less fattening. Hershey's syrup has about 70 calories for the same-size serving.

Whenever I review a drive-thru treat targeted for children, I pack along a couple of real backseat eaters: my 2-year-old son Andrew and his little buddy from down the street, Patrick Rivera.

Andrew is a "good eater." His favorite food is anything with ketchup on it. He would put ketchup on ice cream if I let him.

During dinner, when he thinks I'm not looking, he dips his fingers straight into the ketchup and licks them clean.

So I didn't count on Andrew liking Green Slime. It's not ketchup. It's not even the right color.

I didn't figure Patrick would like it, either. He doesn't like anything. His parents practically have to beg him to eat.

Andrew and Patrick loved Green Slime! Andrew was hitting the sauce pretty hard, dipping everything (chicken, fries, his hands) into the Slime.

Then he picked up the packet of Slime and slurped it like he was eating raw oysters. There was green guck all over him, my seats and the windows. It looked like Kermit the Frog exploded in my car.

Patrick was dunking his Chicken Tenders into the Green Slime and licking off the candy-sweet sauce. Then he put the chicken back in the bag. But, hey, it's a start. He was almost eating.

-- Distributed by King Features