Category Archives: Junk Food

Junk Food

Limited Winter Edition Cheetos Puffs Winter White Cheddar

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Limited Winter Edition Cheetos Puffs Winter White Cheddar apparently really wants you to know that it’s winter. I’m sure those of you who live in the Northeast are already well aware of that. Nevertheless, Cheetos wants a reason for the season. Actually, they want a reason to make limited edition Puffs. Winter is often white, because of snow. White cheddar is (somewhat) white! Boom. I’m disappointed they didn’t make the Puffs in the form of snowflakes. Perhaps that technology is not yet available.

Cheetos already makes White Cheddar Puffs, but they’re only available in their Natural line of products. This means that instead of organic corn meal, cheddar cheese and sour cream, Winter White Cheddar Puffs contain enriched corn meal, cheese seasoning, and MSG. But Chester Cheetah is riding a Puff like it’s a snowboard! The back of the bag says “Strap on your gear because you’re in for a ride.”

I’m assuming by “gear” he means your obesity-necessitated sleep apnea machine and by “ride” he means the ambulance ride you’ll take when you forget to take your insulin. I’m just saying.

I just read on Frito-Lay’s Snack Chat blog that Winter White Cheddar Puffs were only available through the end of December. I guess that shows you how long I’ve had them (in my defense they have not reached their expiration date yet) and also that you will not be able to eat them. I’m sorry. Egg on my face, eh?

Snack Chat also brought to me this interesting sentence: “The packaging even features Cheester Cheetah snowboarding, and they’re made with real cheese.” The “even” makes me feel like they’re a little desperate. Wait, didn’t I already explore this joke three paragraphs ago? It’s disturbing to think that I’ve started mind-melding with Frito-Lay’s marketing department.

The sentence is also worded in such a way that it reads like the two have something to do with each other. Snowboarding and cheese, together at last. Oh, and I just realized Frito-Lay blog writer “Katherine” spelled Chester’s name wrong! With quality writers like Katherine, how am I not writing for Snack Chat already? Oh, it’s probably because of unnecessarily scathing criticisms like these. Hm.

While the white cheddar on the Puffs is rather white, apparently they couldn’t take a step further and bleach the enriched corn meal. This means the Puffs themselves are yellow, and they couldn’t drench them in enough cheese seasoning to hide that fact. So the Winter White is more like Summer Sunset Pale Yellow. Ah well, at least you can still use them as a snowboard.

I’ve never had Cheetos Puffs before. I was surprised at how big they are. Any one of them could have replaced my index finger, if I wanted my index finger to always be crooked and Cheetos were medically approved to be used as finger transplants. One day, technology will catch up.

Cheetos Puffs are fluffy, crunchy and somewhat dense at the same time. They remind me a little bit of Planters Cheez Balls. The corn meal taste of Cheetos is definitely present, and the white cheddar powder compliments that flavor. I found myself going from “eat for review” to “see how I can fit a Puff into my mouth like I have a retainer” to “mindlessly munching while watching TV instead of writing review”. At worst, that makes them inoffensive. At best, I seem to enjoy shoving giant Cheetos into my mouth.

Limited Winter Edition Cheetos Puffs Winter White Cheddar stands on a pretty weak gimmick, especially considering there’s already a version of Cheetos White Cheddar Puffs out there with (allegedly) healthier and more “real” ingredients, but I like them anyway. I’m a sucker for limited edition products, even more so when they’re trying to tie themselves to a holiday or season. Plus, you know, Chester Cheetah riding a Puff like a snowboard. You could pick up pretty much any white cheddar-flavored snack food and get the same flavor powder, but hey, why not have it on a Winter Puff? Oh, right, because they no longer exist. The texture of the Puff is interesting, although I wish they hadn’t made them the size of my entire jaw. Will I Winter Puff again? Well, no, because I’m an asshole and waited too long to write this review, so now we all can’t. But I may try the Natural White Cheddar Puffs just to see if the better ingredients add up to better flavor.

  • Score: 3.5 out of 5 Cheeeeeesters
  • Price: $1.29
  • Size: 3 1/4 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Circle K
  • Nutritional Quirks: With the same serving size, Winter White Cheddar Puffs and Natural White Cheddar Puffs have the exact same amount of calories.  Natural has one less gram of fat.  Winter actually has 70 mg less sodium. So much for natural meaning healthier!
Junk Food

Limited Edition Ghirardelli Chocolate Squares Holiday Chocolate Assortment

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Aaaand we’re back. Just in time, too, since I have a holiday-sensitive item to review today.

I found this package of Limited Edition Ghirardelli Chocolate Squares Holiday Chocolate Assortment at a Borders book store while waiting for a cashier to appear so that I could pay for a birthday present. I guess they’ve got a solid business model going – make someone wait ten minutes to pay for a dying form of media, and eventually they’ll grab an impulse buy. Good job, Borders – literature may be dead, but chocolate and coffee bars will live on forever.

It helped that the package was shiny and full of holiday cheer, with red and gold and snowflakes and ornaments and promises of chocolates that taste like eggnog. I’m not a huge fan of chocolate, but Ghirardelli makes some tasty sweets.

They make some heavy promises on the back of the package: “This season, take time to slow down and feel yourself melt with each bite. Savor the complex symphony of intense velvety chocolate combined with delicious seasonal favorites – festive peppermint, creamy eggnog, and rich chocolate pecan pie. Let the rich flavors surround your senses. Enjoy as the chocolate pleasure lingers.”

I feel like I just had sex with the back of a pack of chocolates. Goddamn, son. Money well spent on whatever marketing team Ghirardelli paid to come up with that description of their chocolate. I’m sure millions have been spent on the study of how people react to words that are bolded. Apparently I need to slow down and melt while experiencing intense chocolate that surrounds my senses. That all seems kind of contradictory. Nothing left to do but see if these chocolates will make me…quietly orgasm, or something.

Eggnog

I had a minor autistic freakout when I pulled these out of the bag, because the front just said “Limited Edition Chocolate”. I thought I had been ripped off. Fortunately, it did indicate on the back that these were, indeed, Eggnog. I don’t know why this one said it on the back while the other two proclaim their flavors on the front, but whatever. Eggnog was the flavor I was most looking forward to, so I was glad that they were there.

Unfortunately, my renewed excitement quickly faded away when I actually tried the chocolate. I couldn’t find any eggnog flavor anywhere. No nutmeg, no cinnamon, no distinctive eggnog taste. The chocolate was creamy, but that’s what I’d expect from any Ghirardelli product. In fact, if it hadn’t said Eggnog on the back of the wrapper, I would have thought it was white chocolate, but even a little more muted than regular white chocolate. I would have never guessed that it was supposed to be eggnog.

Saddened that I had been robbed of the experience of tasting delicious eggnog chocolate, I moved on.

Pecan Pie

Ghirardelli actually did a pretty good job of making a chocolate that tasted like pecan pie. The pecans were plentiful and added a nice crunch. It’s sort of like a Mr. Goodbar on steroids – the chocolate is smooth and tasty, the pecans tasted delicious, and the chocolate had a very prominent taste and aroma of what seemed like a mixture of toffee, molasses, and maybe even some bourbon.  Mmmm, chocolate booze.

I have to say, the Pecan Pie square was one of the most complex chocolates I’ve ever had. The depth of flavor is really quality and everything plays together well. Nothing gets overwhelmed. The delicious milk chocolate, the pecans, the complex mixture of flavors that make up pecan pie filling, they were all perfectly married into that one chocolate square. While I was expecting to love the Eggnog and go “eh” at Pecan Pie, quite the opposite has occurred. I don’t crave chocolate often, but this would be one of my top picks to reach for if I was in the mood for chocolate. Good job, Ghirardelli.

Peppermint Bark

This is definitely the most Christmasy of the three candies. When you open the wrapper, you’re hit with that strong candy cane peppermint smell that screams presents and blinky lights and ornaments. It looks fun, too. The little pink flecks let you know that there’s really candy canes inside! My inner child hops up and down.

What I wasn’t expecting, but was a pleasant surprise, is that Peppermint Bark has a milk chocolate base. Let’s face it, it’s hard not to nail mint and chocolate. They go together like buffalo wings and ranch sauce. I think Ghirardelli steps it up with the crushed candy canes inside, though. They add a fun crunch and intensify the peppermint flavor. Peppermint Bark tastes a lot like an upgraded version of Andes Crème de Menthe chocolates – you know, the ones with the green stuff sandwiched in between two layers of chocolate. But Ghirardelli’s chocolate is of a higher quality and the peppermint is more intense and tastes more like real candy cane than just simulated mint. I realize that candy canes themselves are made out of artificial mint flavoring, but it’s…different. It’s candy cane!

Well, two out of three ain’t bad. I’m sad that I didn’t get to taste eggnog in chocolate form, but the Pecan Pie really surprised me and the Peppermint Bark was nothing but Christmas fun. I would put these out beside the homemade chocolate chip cookies and the bowl of red-and-green M&Ms. I’d just cross the “Eggnog” off the wrappers and write “Snowflake” or something instead. Then people would just think it was white chocolate and not be all disappointed like I was. Snowflakes and white chocolate don’t really have anything to do with each other, but that’s okay. It’s keeping with the Christmas theme. Limited Edition Ghirardelli Chocolate Squares Holiday Chocolate Assortment are a solid addition to your holiday festivities.

Oh, and by the way – Merry Christmas!

Limited Edition Ghirardelli Chocolate Squares Holiday Chocolate Assortment

  • Eggnog Score: 2 out of 5 disappointed elves
  • Pecan Pie Score: 4.5 out of 5 happy chocolate-loving reindeer
  • Peppermint Bark Score: 4 out of 5 minty fresh snowmen
  • Price: $8.99
  • Size: 7.03 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Borders Books and Music #0069
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains corn flakes.  Wait, what?
Junk Food

Herr’s Baby Back Ribs Potato Chips

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Today’s little gem comes from a young lady in Indiana. I’m not sure if she loves me or hates me, based on this “gift” she shipped to my mailbox. Herr’s doesn’t distribute in my neck of the woods, so I never would have had the chance to…experience these chips without outside help. I wouldn’t have even known they existed. According to my source, she spotted these in the vending machine at her work, and thought I might “enjoy” them. First of all, I want to see where someone works when they have Baby Back Ribs potato chips in their vending machines. Out of all the places I’ve worked, I’ve never seen anything that interesting in a vending machine. I’d be lucky to spot some Chili Cheese Fritos or Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles. Most of the rest was all blandsville, all the time. I probably would have had an autistic freakout if I’d ever seen Baby Back Ribs in a machine. My fingers wouldn’t have been able to fumble a dollar bill into the slot fast enough.

As if the flavor itself wasn’t enough, look at that package! Crazy font! Barbeque sauce splurts everywhere! Wait, that doesn’t look like barbeque sauce, that looks like…BLOOD! And what’s this now…

Finger Lickin’ Rib Flavor Apron! As my friend/chip donor commented, this is quickly turning from an innocent little bag of chips into some sort of serial killer crime scene. I imagine Dexter Morgan putting up plastic tarp all around a dark shack in the middle of nowhere, wearing this apron as he does his dirty work. Blood spatters everywhere as he hacks up his latest victim. Those ribs on the package look sort of ominous, too. More sickly than inviting. If Dexter were a cannibal, I think he’d be disappointed with this rack of human.

My cat and I have differing levels of desire to eat these chips.

After my last adventure with things that should not be meat, in addition to my previous experience with rib chips, I’m more than a little trepidatious about Herr’s Baby Back Rib Potato Chips. But, there’s nothing left to do but dive in. Let’s see if I need to take a little trip east to visit my friend, armed with an apron, a butcher knife, and a copy of How to Serve Man.

Upon opening the bag, the smell is encouraging. And by that I mean, it doesn’t smell at all like an animal died and was sealed in a foil pouch. It smells mostly like pretty much any other barbecue-flavored chip on the market. The chips are ridged, a little less tightly than Ruffles, with a light coating of red flavor powder. I noticed that these seem to be much less intensely powdered than a typical Frito-Lay chip.

I took a quick break (one might call it a stalling mechanism, but hey) to visit Herr’s website. From the looks of it, all, or at least most, of Herr’s chips are ridged. That’s a boring fact. Here’s a less boring fact: Herr’s is just as awesomely batshit with their flavors as Frito-Lay is. Creamy Dill Pickle! (Really? Creamy dill pickle?) Kansas City Prime Steak! Old Bay! An entire line of “Snack Friez”! That’s it, I’m moving to Indiana. I’m uprooting my entire life to move somewhere that sells Herr’s potato chips. The actions of a responsible adult, to be sure.

While I’d love to get my greasy little hands on all those flavors, what I have in my possession are Baby Back Rib potato chips. Which, oddly, are not listed on Herr’s website as a flavor they produce. The logical conclusion is that my friend has a magical vending machine at her work that is producing its own flavors of Herr’s chips. More updates as events warrant.

Enough stalling, let’s eat these chips.

I have to say, I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or relieved that I could not detect any creepy meat flavor in these chips. A little bit of both? I guess Herr’s hasn’t discovered whatever dark secret Doritos has that has given them the ability to make chips taste like meat. That said, Herr’s Baby Back Ribs didn’t exactly taste like a typical barbeque chip, either. They did have properties of a typical barbeque chip, including that little bit of sweetness they all seem to have, but they also had an extra depth of flavor. They seemed a little more smoky than your typical BBQ chip, and they also had a garlicky undertone that was quite tasty. They were also super salty, which I loved. The chips themselves were the perfect thickness and texture.

What started as dread quickly turned into enjoyment while I was eating Herr’s Baby Back Ribs Potato Chips. While Herr’s failed to actually make their chips taste like ribs, they totally succeeded in creating a barbecue-flavored chip that stands out in a world already stuffed with chips of that flavor. The smokey undertone, the garlic, the extra salt and the texture of the chip all worked together to make this one of the best BBQ chips I’ve had so far. If you’re going have a cartoon apron telling the world your chips taste like ribs, and they actually don’t, that’s a marketing fail. That said, the taste of these chips is a total win. I guess my serial killing spree through Indiana will have to wait.

  • Score: 4 out of 5 bloody aprons
  • Price: Free, or probably about 75 cents from your local vending machine that makes its own flavors
  • Size: 1 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: My mailbox via someone’s work vending machine
  • Nutritional Quirks: The first ingredient listed is “choice” potatoes. To think of all the un-choice potato chips I’ve eaten…
Junk Food

Boo Berry Cereal

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Happy Halloween! I chose Boo Berry to represent on this day because, while he’s an old standby, I’ve also never tried Boo Berry Cereal. I also refrained from using its true title, “Boo Berry Artificial Berry Flavored Frosted Cereal with Spooky-Fun Marshmallows”. I figured y’all had gotten the picture by this point. I do like the bold statement of “spooky-fun”, however. I’m holding you to that, Boo Berry.

A little history lesson, largely provided by Wikipedia, which is my primary healthcare physician, attorney, and monster-themed cereal expert: Boo Berry was introduced in 1973 and was supposedly the first blueberry-flavored cereal. Ambitious! Resting on its laurels, these days Boo Berry claims to be only berry-flavored, but I’m still okay with that. After 37 years, a ghost can sit back and take a break. From the look of it on the front of the cereal box, a ghost can also make creepy, eyebrow-raised facial expressions and grabby postures that look less like he’s going to steal your soul and more like he’s going to do something to your children that would cause Elliot Stabler to punch him in the face.

The back of the box delivers more innocent fun. I tried to capture images of the whole thing, but the text would have been too small to read, so I’ll spell it out for you: Count Chocula and Frankenberry are playing a racing game that looks like it was made in 1986. “One more lap and I choc up another Monster Truck Racer WIN!” Says Count Chocula, who is presumably hanging upside-down, which would make his win even more impressive until you realize Frankenberry is probably just mashing the buttons with his nerveless, pieced-together thumbs. “Not so fast, Count! I’m a turbo boost away from TASTING SWEET VICTORY.” Apparently they are playing a very shitty video game based on the 2008 television remake of Knight Rider.

Boo Berry then shows up out of nowhere and says, “Argue all you want, fiends, but when we’re talking cereal, my BOO BERRY ALWAYS WINS!” They were not talking cereal, and you are being an asshole for interrupting them with your cereal talk, Boo Berry.

Apparently they don’t mind, however, because they immediately stop playing to have a Monster Cereal SHOWDOWN! This involves a “scare-off”, wherein the scariest face wins. Frankenberry’s all like “MMMRRRRR!” with a face that looks more developmentally disabled than scary, Count Chocula goes “Blah-Ha-Ha-Ha!” looking more like he just ate something gross (I’m guessing Kroger Jelly Belly Pudding) than anything resembling scary.

Finally, Boo Berry says the traditional “BOO!” which is not in and of itself scary, but…HE’S WEARING A MASK THAT LOOKS LIKE WHAT MONSTERS APPARENTLY THINK HUMAN CHILDREN LOOK LIKE!!!!! Frankenberry jumps into Count Chocula’s arms and they both shit themselves out of sheer terror. Boo takes his mask off, flashing his classic pedo smile in victory, which is actually more scary than the mask of a child’s face with the expression of someone who just snorted about six lines of meth. Boo wins this round, but I’m sure the other guys get their own moments to shine on the back of their own cereal boxes. I wish I’d looked at the store.

Here’s the cereal! Yes, there’s actual food inside the box! Here’s your players:

From top to bottom:

  • A Pac-Man ghost in eatable form Boo Berry himself, presumably, more purple than blue, but an impressive purple nonetheless. I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten something this color. I approve of both the shape and the color.
  • Purple bat guys. Or gals, whichever. Suitable for the season and the cereal.
  • Blue blobs. I think they’re supposed to be skulls? Poor execution, but skulls are cool. When’s the last time you ate a skull? That’s right. Don’t be so judgmental.
  • Pink Cthulhu and baby pink Cthulhu. I honestly don’t actually know what those are really supposed to be, but Cthulhu was the first thing that came to mind, and I’m going with it. Eldritch gods are spooky fun.
  • Apostrophe marks White ghosts. Two ghosts in one box! These are just generic ghosts, though. I assume they are Boo’s minions. I like eating minions.

The cereal itself has a subtle berry flavor that doesn’t really taste like any specific berry. It’s sweet, but not cloyingly so. It also has a definite “whole grain” aftertaste that I don’t remember from eating sugary cereals in my childhood. It’s been forever since I’ve had any kind of cereal, let alone corn-grain-and-marshmallow cereal, but I seem to remember them being way sweeter and less whole-grainy. I’m assuming the whole child obesity epidemic has pressured cereals into making them less sugary and more healthy than they were in 1989. Boo Berry cereal is chock full of vitamins and minerals, and has only 12 grams of sugar per 1 cup of cereal. I have no idea if that is any different than Boo Berry circa 1989, but I’m sure someone does. Feel free to comment.

The marshmallow pieces taste just like I remember them from olden times, which is basically like sugar and more sugar. They’re still firm yet tacky, and melt in your mouth in a delightful way. Marshmallows make any cereal better.

Boo Berry Cereal gets the honor of showing up on Halloween because it’s a classic. I don’t know how I never had any of the monster cereals before now, but I definitely remember loving their presence in commercials around Halloween when I was a kid. I’ve heard from friends that Boo Berry was always the hardest to find (excluding the short-lived Fruit Brute and his later equally short-lived and stupidly named incarnation, Fruity Yummy Mummy), so that makes him extra special. The cereal itself is your typical whole-grain with marshmallows fare, but the shapes are wonderfully Halloweeny and the box offers lots of fun for kids and adults like me who act like kids, even more so around this time of year. Boo Berry gets two thumbs up, even though he looks like a creepy pedo.

  • Score: 4 out of 5 spooky-fun pink marshmallow Cthulhus
  • Price: $2.50
  • Size: 9.6 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains 8 vitamins and minerals that have 25% of your daily value in one cup of cereal.  I now consider Boo Berry Cereal health food.
Junk Food

Genuine Midnight Oil Broomstick Fuel

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Food blogging during the Halloween season can often bring you to strange, sometimes harrowing avenues of the American retail cosmology. Obscure, almost shady, niche companies crawl out of the woodwork every September and start hurling a dizzying array of novelty candies and tchotchkes in a shotgun pattern at hungry children who, really, will make you buy just about anything.

Bloomsberry & Co., however, really take this thing to a whole new level. Before encountering Genuine Midnight Oil Broomstick Fuel, I was entirely unaware of their existence. However – and I know this will surprise you, too – there apparently exists a company who’s sole purpose is to repackage two types of chocolate bar and resell them in an entirely unnecessary variety of nonsensical, sometimes bewildering assortment of labels. That’s it. Milk chocolate and dark chocolate. In literally dozens of presentations.

Upon first spying the bars at a local Target, the Junk Food Betty Product Acquisition Task Force originally believed the product to be in a dilapidated state – a sign of dubious quality and subsequent high hilarity. Closer examination, however, revealed the weather look of the product to be an intentional conceit of the design. Why, we asked ourselves. Who deliberately makes their product look like it could be found on the dusty back shelves of some degenerate bodega, moldering forlornly under the uncaring watch of a lazy, apathetic staff? Who would conceive of such a baffling, non sequitur product presentation?

And it occurred to me: hipsters. Hipsters pull this shit.

This is a candy company run by tragically bored goddamned graphic designers.

Enjoy with PBR and a smug sense of self-satisfaction.

This all being the case, I didn’t have high hopes. To compound the problem, the product claims to be dark chocolate with 55% cocoa. Now, I’m not a big chocolate guy. However, when I do reach for it, I’m one of those smug bastards who goes for the hardest, darkest stuff he can find. The kind who eats the 80% cocoa bars that give you Whiskey Face and then goes on a delighted tirade about the interplay of the sweet and the bitter until you’re ready to stomp him into the dirt. I am That Guy, and this hipster chocolate bar be frontin’ on the dark chocolate.

In all fairness, the product is of pretty decent quality. It’s got a smooth consistency, without being soft and mushy, and they don’t fool around with their ingredients. Their milk chocolate is probably pretty good. But if this bar is 55% cocoa liquor, I’ll eat my acrid, chocolate hat. In fact, looking at the ingredients list, sugar is listed before chocolate, making that an impossibility, as here in the US, ingredients are listed in order of amount contained. That’s definitely reflected in the flavor, which is too much sweet, too little bitter for dark chocolate.

I’d like to dispute the claim on the front of the package that Genuine Midnight Oil Broomstick Fuel that reads “suits all makes and models”. I know they’re trying to wring blood out of that incomprehensible witch… thing, I don’t even know. Look, this is a stupid gimmick and a stupid dark chocolate bar and I hate it and I hate you. Call me when your palate grows up, Bloomsberry & Co.

  • Score: 2 out of 5 unparseable gimmicks
  • Price: $1.99
  • Size: 3.5 oz. bar
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Lies, damned lies, and ingredient lists.
Junk Food

Pop-Tarts Limited Edition Choc-o-Lantern Frosted Chocolate Fudge Toaster Pastries

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Pop-Tarts didn’t just put out Pumpkin Pie as a seasonal offering – they also created Choc-o-Lantern Frosted Chocolate Fudge! Okay, so it’s not a new flavor – Pop-Tarts already has a chocolate fudge toaster pastry – but this one has orange frosting and bat and ghost sprinkles! Other companies should take note – all you have to do to get love and adoration from Halloween fans is turn your product orange and black (or a vague approximation of black) and toss on some sprinkles and you’ve got it.

“Choc-o-Lantern” is a little weak, especially considering there’s nothing pumpkin-shaped on the actual Pop-Tarts, but they threw a picture of a chocolate pumpkin on the box to make it more acceptable. As with many re-purposed holiday foodstuffs, it’s the appearance that makes the product. Pop-Tarts delivers on the box, with spoooooky trees, bats, and little cartoon eyes that look suitably frightened by the toaster pastries. There’s also a splattering of slime in the corner, telling you the quantity of toaster pastries because, hey. Slime. Halloween!

The fun continues on the back of the box. Pop-Tarts urges you to “dig” into their “graveyard”! Halloween is the one holiday that I accept, even welcome, cheesy puns. The graveyard consists mainly of an unhealthy amount of chocolate pudding, some candy corn, and some Pop-Tarts, but I like the setup. I especially like the ghost lollipop in the background, frowning very emphatically and making an “I dunno, whaddaya gonna do?” gesture with his ghost arms. I assume he is unhappy with the pudding graveyard and also making the hands-up shrugging gesture to show that he takes no responsibility for its creation. I don’t blame you, ghost lollipop. I blame the obviously shitfaced Jack-o-Lantern candy bowl behind you.

I love Ghost Lollipop and Shitfaced Jack-o-Lantern Candy Bowl, but my heart really belongs to Seriously Bored and Somewhat Indignant Vampire Toaster. He resides on Pop-Tart’s website, and his facial expression seriously contradicts the assertion that the fact he is delivering to you is “super fun”. While I find the fact useless, since I will never plant a pumpkin, I think Vampire Toaster is being a little melodramatic. You have a job to do, Vampire Toaster, and you’re doing it. Try to muster up a little enthusiasm. After all, you are a toaster AND a vampire, and while that makes you the coolest toaster ever, you’re still not above dispensing pumpkin-growing facts.

My Choc-o-Lantern Pop-Tarts didn’t exactly have the plentiful and uniformly-arranged bat and ghost sprinkles like the ones on the box, but we all know that marketing doesn’t equal reality. I was just happy that some of them slightly resembled bats and ghosts and weren’t just black and white blobs. The orange frosting was sufficiently bright and seasonal. As for the taste, I was surprised to find I rather enjoyed them. I’m not a big chocolate fan, but the fudge filling was quite acceptably fudgy and rich, especially decadent when warm. It made me wish I had a glass of eggnog and it was about 30 degrees cooler outside.

I also found the chocolate pastry to be softer than other Pop-Tarts I’ve had. Usually, the edges are hard, and I would just nibble them to the edges of the filling and throw the rest away. These were soft all the way through, and tasted very similar to chocolate graham crackers. The icing and the sprinkles added a little extra crunch and sweetness.

Once again, Pop-Tarts Limited Edition Choc-o-Lantern Frosted Chocolate Fudge is just an already-existing flavor with a bit of Halloween flair, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t rock. The warm fudge is like comfort food, the soft pastry reminds me of chocolate graham crackers from my childhood, and the bright orange frosting and admittedly haphazard sprinkles complete the Halloween package. After eating just one, I feel like I’ve gotten my chocolate fix for the next three months, but I think chocolate and Halloween lovers alike will enjoy these Pop-Tarts.

  • Score: 4 out of 5 bored vampire toasters
  • Price: $2.69
  • Size: 22 oz. box containing 12 toaster pastries
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: One pastry contains 10% of seven different vitamins and minerals.  I now consider Pop-Tarts health food.
Junk Food

Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce

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It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been in a drugstore. I’m not sure why; I guess since I shop like I’m British and all the grocery stores I frequent have pharmacies, I never really have the need to visit them. However, after a recent trip to the bank went wrong (after almost three decades of life you’d think I’d have learned that banks are closed on national holidays), I noticed that the new Walgreen’s across the street had opened. I also remembered that drugstores often have the best Halloween sections.

As you can see, I was NOT disappointed. There were so many gems that I wanted to bring home with me, but my cupboards are already so full of Halloween crap that if I brought home another armful, I’d have to put the Cheez-Its out on the streets, and that would have been immoral. Everybody knows Cheez-Its got no street smarts. They wouldn’t last a day out there. They’d be eaten alive. MUAHAHAHA BAD PUN HALLOWEEN TIE-IN.

I stood in that aisle for a good five minutes, taking everything in and trying to decide what I would pick. The store was almost empty and strangely silent. I felt exposed and conspicuous. No grown woman should spend that much time looking at novelty Halloween items. Which is not to say I picked Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce out of panic or embarrassment. (Not that that hasn’t happened before.) No, I think the picture and the name say it all. I mean, c’mon. Miniature Chinese take-out box? Fake noodles with eyeballs and sauce? Tiny plastic chopsticks?! I think the chopsticks were what ultimately won me over.

One of the hazards that a food reviewer has to navigate through is the Embarrassing Cashier Moment. Much like how a grown woman shouldn’t spend five minutes looking at novelties, a grown woman also shouldn’t walk up to the cashier with nothing but a fake take-out box containing gummy noodles. I considered buying a few other items, like maybe a box of suppositories and a can of nuts, in an attempt to look like I hadn’t just come in for bizarre candy. In the end I decided to man up and walked to the counter with my silly, lonely purchase. Lucky for me, the teenager who rang me up had dead zombie eyes and couldn’t have cared less what I was buying. It was so anticlimactic that I felt mildly disappointed.

While arranging my Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce for its Glamour Shot, I became unreasonably grossed out. Maybe it was the plastic smell of the gummies. Maybe it was the squishy, elastic texture. Maybe it was the fact that I knew I was going to have to eat it. Whatever it was, dread filled my stomach, and I came to realize that this was a good thing. I was being grossed out by a gross-out Halloween candy! My body became confused with revulsion and joy. ‘Tis the reason for the season. I fell even more in love with my take-out candy.

Turns out, my fears were largely unfounded. I bit into an eyeball, squinting my eyes closed, and…it was a gummy eyeball. It was squishy and tasted like high-fructose corn syrup. That was it. I had that feeling you get when you exit a Halloween maze – you’ve just been tormented by normal people playing crazy psychos and werewolves, you screamed like a little baby, but now that it’s over, you just laugh at yourself. That wasn’t so bad! I tried a noodle and it tasted exactly like the eyeball. Also, kudos to the noodles for looking like earthworms. It’s the kid-friendly version of Fear Factor. That show ended four years ago. My pop culture references are always so timely and relevant.

More props to Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce for putting some extra care into the Candy Sauce packet. That is one evil-looking green apple, right there. The sauce itself is more like a super-thick syrup; I had to coax it out of the packet and somehow managed to get it all over my hands. I hate sticky hands. The syrup calls itself “sweet”, but never believe an evil green apple. It will lie to you. The syrup was actually sour green apple. Very sour. Delightfully so. I took a bite of earthworm noodle coated in it, and my lips were puckered for thirty minutes afterward. I approve.

Really though, who gives a shit about how Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce tastes. It’s all about appearance, and this candy delivers in spades. From the box to the chopsticks with convenient eyeball holder to the earthworm noodles to the evil apple sauce packet, this novelty Halloween candy is the best. One box of TOGFN&ECS could make the centerpiece of your whole Halloween party. Evil Green Apple for President 2012.

  • Score: 4 out of 5 earthworm gummy fried noodles
  • Price: $1.99
  • Size: 5.19 oz. fake take-out Chinese food box
  • Purchased at: Walgreens
  • Nutritional Quirks: Eyeballs do not actually taste like eyeballs. Halloween!
Junk Food

Candy Corn Dots

3 Comments

Dots has three different Halloween-themed gumdrops: Bat Dots, which are blood orange-flavored, Ghost Dots, which look like they glow in the dark and come in assorted flavors so you never know what you’re going to get, and Candy Corn Dots, which is what I was stuck with since that’s all they had at my Target. I feel cheated.

Crushing disappointment aside, Candy Corn Dots are full of Halloween fun. Well, at least on the outside. Fall leaves, candy corn, and all the colors of the season.

And then there’s this guy up at the top here who is super happy to be on a box of Dots. Look at him, struggling valiantly to keep his floppy, hay-filled glove aloft so as to say hi and tell you that he’s really happy to see you. Scarecrow don’t get enough play on Halloween. It’s always about, well, bats and ghosts.

I believe that my box of Candy Corn Dots is cursed. I had to retake the pictures because the first time, everything came out impossibly dark. The second time, I took about 30 pictures of the box and had to play the “pick where you want your glare spot to be” game. I chose to sacrifice the Dot down at the bottom, because he was obviously trying to hog the spotlight and I wanted to make sure Scarecrow didn’t get blotted out, thus ruining one of his rare moments to shine.

The Dots themselves also proved difficult, but at this point whatever spirit was haunting my camera and/or Dots had exhausted me, so I just gave up and went with it. You win, Dots spirit. And you deserve to – you are the reason for the season!

On the left you see an example of a normal Candy Corn Dot, dome-shaped with orange being the dominating color and a yellow making up the base. I have to ask, where’s the white tip? Candy corns are pretty simple in their construction, and the white tip is pretty key. You’d think they could have just dropped a blob on the top or something.

On the right, you see the Candy Corn Dots equivalent of Quasimodo – deformed, mutated, and awesome. I commend him for managing to slip by whatever Quality Control protocols they have at the Tootsie factory. I ate him second, out of respect.

Candy corns have had their share of controversy, at least amongst the people with which I associate. You either like them or you hate them. We all know how Lewis Black feels about them. I personally find nothing distasteful about candy corn. It’s mostly just a colored triangle of sugar that crumbles in your mouth and rots your teeth. That said, when I would dump out my pillowcase after a long night of trick-or-treating, candy corn was never in the top tier pile. They weren’t vanquished to the pile of tiny boxes of raisins and Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses, but they wouldn’t be hanging out with bite size Snickers any time soon.

Despite the relative simplicity of candy corn, Dots manages to miss the spot. I haven’t had a Dot since…well, probably since I was young enough to trick-or-treat without anyone raising an eyebrow at my age, so I don’t have a Dot control subject. I stuck my nose in the box for a first whiff, and it smelled like plastic and chemicals, with a generic sweet undertone. I thought this was an anomaly, possibly coming from the box itself, but no, the candy itself tasted about the same way. Candy corn doesn’t have that strong of a flavor beyond sugar, and yet you could blindfold almost anyone and give them a piece and they would know that flavor. I had to really look, and possibly wish, for that flavor. It was mostly generically sweet with some plastic and candy corn undertones.

I was pretty disappointed by Candy Corn Dots. Perhaps I set the bar too high. After all, it’s just candy corn. But still, I feel that the missing white tip and the underwhelming replication of that distinct flavor were critical missteps. However, kudos to Dots for putting out a trio of very Halloweeny candy instead of just resting on their tiny-sized regular boxes that are a staple in any trick-or-treater’s bag. Also, Mr. Scarecrow looks so happy on that box. It would break my heart to see him frown.

(Candy Blog and The Surfing Pizza also reviewed these AND the two other varieties.)

  • Score: 2.5 out of 5 spoooooky candy-haunting spirits
  • Price: $0.99
  • Size: 7 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains titanium dioxide, also found in paints and sunscreen. Yum!
Junk Food

Limited Edition Cheetos Mighty Zingers CRAZY Cheddar and WICKED Picante Flavored Snacks

11 Comments

I’m stupid.

Okay, maybe I’m not completely stupid. But I am overzealous. When I read this in Frito-Lay’s Snack Chat blog, I got to “a limited-time snack with a special Halloween twist” and my brain went YAY! So much yay, in fact, that I didn’t put it together that CRAZY cheddar and WICKED picante actually meant sharp cheddar and salsa picante, a flavor of Mighty Zingers that I already reviewed here. It even explicitly states this in the next sentence, but I paid no attention. You put the words “limited edition” and “Halloween” together, and I lose all sense of control or logic.

So I picked these up at the store and soon realized my folly. You’d think I would have just given up there, but NO! This is Halloween, dammit, and if Frito-Lay is going to repackage an already-existing flavor for the holiday and trick me into buying it, then I’m going to review it, even if it means I have to photograph yet another incredibly shiny foil bag that turns every shot into an all-out glare-fest. Seriously, Cheetos, stop it. I only know how to do three things in GIMP, and removing glare is not one of them.

There are three things of note about this product, however. First of all, I bought a “Hungry Grab”, which is a bag size I’ve never seen before. It’s about the same width as a “Big Grab” bag that you usually find in a convenience store, but longer. I believe you would have to be rather hungry to finish off one of these bags in one sitting. It contains quite a few grabs.

Second, while re-purposing a flavor for Halloween is kind of weak, at least they tried to give a little backstory on the back of the bag: “Chester’s lab experiment went haywire causing Cheetos Mighty Zingers snacks to make a transformation”. I’ve seen Chester’s lab, and the idea of one of his experiments going haywire is very plausible. This brings me to my third point:

GREEN CHIPS! Or “snacks”, to be more precise. This is not the first time Cheetos has gone green. It may not even be the second or third, I gave up looking after a two-second Google search. Doesn’t matter. Green Cheetos are awesome.

If you want to know more about the actual flavor of these Cheetos, I refuse to repeat myself, so go read the article linked above. I will say, however, that it’s delightfully disconcerting to eat Flamin’ Hot Cheetos leftover bits that are green instead of fire-truck red. One might even call it…MADNESS! MUAHAHAHAHA!

On a final note, I now demand Christmas Flamin’ Hot Cheetos with red and green in the same bag. I will throw a candy cane-induced temper tantrum if this does not happen.

  • Score: 3 out of 5 hungry grabs
  • Price: $1.29
  • Size: 3 1/4 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
  • Nutritional Quirks: Green Cheetos.  ‘Nuff said.
Junk Food

Ring Pop Halloween Screaming Berry Pop

5 Comments

I haven’t had a Ring Pop in forever, so when I found these Halloween Screaming Berry pops, I thought they looked appropriately festive and picked them up. Nice font use on the package, cute little bat thrown in there. And the Ring Pops themselves, if advertised correctly, are black and orange! I have no idea what berry flavoring has to do with anything, but at least they made the berries scream while they were being transformed into Ring Pops. That’s pretty hardcore Halloween.

The pops themselves totally deliver on the Halloweenosity, alternating between jet black and spooooooky orange. I thought they seemed smaller than the last Ring Pop I’d been in a room with, but my husband explained to me that no, I had just grown bigger. Fortunately, my fingers are dainty, so I was still able to wear the Ring Pop as it was properly intended.

Even though berry isn’t the scariest flavor in the world, it is one of my favorites. Although wearing a black and orange costume, I know it’s blue raspberry underneath, and blue raspberry rocks. The only thing better than sucking on a blue ring is sucking on a black-and-orange ring that tastes blue. My Screaming Berry Ring Pop lasted a satisfyingly long time, too.

I know this is a short review, but really, there’s not a whole lot to say. It’s a Halloween Ring Pop. It’s awesome! And it comes in packs of two, so after my lips un-shrivel from the sourness of the blue raspberry, I can have another one! Halloween is awesome because I can wear candy rings and get away with it.

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 berries screaming in terror
  • Price: $0.99
  • Size: 2 0.5 oz. pops
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: No real quirks, but I like the idea of Blue Raspberry wearing a costume. Trick or treat!