This week, my mother and I decided to give your "real fruit" smoothies a try. We visited between 2-4 to take advantage of your half-price offer. We had also printed $1 off coupons from the Jack-in-the-Box website.

When we first presented the manager with the coupon, she rudely informed us that she would not take our coupons because we had made copies of them ourselves. We explained that they had been printed off the website, that they had not been copied from a newspaper ad or mailer. I could tell that she did not believe us, and she then replied that she would not take the coupon because we were already using the "half-off" coupon. No coupon is required to take advantage of the promotion between 2-4, and the small print on the coupons was completely illegible, but I conceded that it might, in theory, say "Not valid with any other offer" on there someplace. The issue was not so much that she would not accept the coupon, but the tone of voice in which she handled the situation.

We went ahead and ordered our smoothies anyway. We were in the drive-thru, so we were able to watch while they were being made. A male employee ran out of orange syrup while making one smoothie and went ahead and added the yogurt and blended it anyway. We pointed that out to the manager, and she did volunteer to remake it for us.

When our smoothies were finally ready, we were very disappointed with the end result. I had not truly been expecting Jack-in-the-Box to put fresh fruit ingredients in their drinks, but I was appalled by the syrup that is being passed off as "real fruit." I don't doubt that there is some percentage of fruit juice in the mix, but the main ingredient would appear to be corn syrup. I have used a mixed fruit concentrate to make smoothies at home, but it has a consistency much more similar to fruit preserves than to Kool-Aid. I ordered the Strawberry Banana smoothie and my mother ordered the orange. Neither drink had a particularly distinctive flavor; we let each other try both drinks just to make sure. My drink was creepily similar to Pepto Bismal in both color and flavor, and had about as much "real fruit" taste as Pez.

I would strongly suggest that Jack in the Box reconsider the ingredients that are going into the "real fruit" smoothies, or rethink the viability of a smoothie as a fast-food menu item. Coincidentally, I saw a Jack-in-the-Box smoothie that had been abandoned on a shelf in a department store yesterday, so it would seem that other members of the general public find them as distasteful as I do.