Baby Carrots Are All Cheese-Puffed Up.

No telling how Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food” advertising campaign will boost sales of baby carrots.

But according to the Associated Press, the goal is to double the current $1 billion baby-carrot market within two to three years.

That’s a lot of carrots.

You can bet your beta-carotene that in the business of brand makeovers, it all depends on what consumers identify as smoke and mirrors.

Let’s admit it: The American carrot has some ancestral baggage – as in canned peas and carrots, beef stew with mushy carrots, and the ever-popular carrot-and-raisin salad – a mainstay of cafeteria lines because it can be conveniently served with an ice-cream scoop.

But you gotta give it to CP+B, because the whole goal here is to convince students that when they reach for a bag of baby carrots from their high-school vending machines, they'll forget they’re reaching for a bag of cheese puffs and instead think they’re eating a nutritional vegetable while getting their “junk-food fix.”

At the risk of sounding like I have a salty chip on my shoulder, I submit that a carrot by any other name is still a carrot.

Still, Harlequin Cat thinks CP+B’s campaign has some serious crunch to it and will be watching. But in the mean time, I couldn’t resist inviting you to visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vly7hDDHMsM

Some of us just love eating carrots naturally.