Largest Fortune-Cookie Maker Nixes Romantic Slips

The planet's top fortune cookie maker doesn't want its products to be the source of even a little unhappiness—so it's changing its romantic messages over parents' concerns. Parents "said they didn’t want their kids reading them," says a VP at NYC-based Wonton Food; a second exec amazingly adds that fortunes that receive just two or three complaints are screened (this in the face of the 5 million cookies it makes a day).

Indeed, "messages have to be rated G," says the VP, and these were among those apparently deemed PG or worse: "One who admires you greatly is hidden before your eyes" and "The evening promises romantic interest." In their place? Not-exactly-fortunes like "You make every day special" and "No one on Earth is as beautiful as you." As "fortune cookie expert" Jennifer 8. Lee tells the New York Post, "'You will meet a tall, dark stranger' means one thing to a 20-year-old fashionista and another to a 6-year-old kid." And as the VP explains, "We want to put messages inside our cookies that don’t upset a single person." (More fortune cookie stories.)