Miscellaneous

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Junk Food Betty!

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Okay, so it’s like, two weeks late, but I just wanted to say that JFB turned one year old on July 13th!  Hooray!  I know I haven’t been posting a lot lately, but I’ve got some good stuff backlogged (stuffed in my cupboard), and I’m hoping to rev up a little more soon.  I’ve really enjoyed seeing my baby grow, from milestones like my first flame war to having the honor to write for The Impulsive Buy.

Thanks to everyone who has read my blog, especially those who left comments. I love getting comments, whether they be funny, informative, or just telling me I’m a horrible writer. I hope to be informing the Internet about horrible and/or wacky junk food for years to come. Cheers!

Beverages

Kool-Aid Fun Fizz Drink Drops Partyin’ Punch

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I’d love to lie to you and say that I picked up Kool-Aid Fun Fizz Drink Drops Partyin’ Punch strictly for review purposes, but honestly, the exact opposite is true. As you might be able to tell from the picture, the pouch has already been opened. Sometimes JFB contributor Bob picked these up on a whim. The truth is, we are both people inching perilously close to the age of 30, and we still make Kool-Aid. No, there are no children in this household. Just two semi-responsible adults who make Kool-Aid.

I should have seen the potential for a review right off the bat, but it wasn’t until Bob tried these Drink Drops that I realized they would be perfect for a review. It’s a fucking Alka-Seltzer that makes Kool-Aid! What’s not to love? Or mock?

The tablets come individually wrapped in their own little packets, which I wasn’t expecting, but makes sense for those who want their Kool-Aid on-the-go.  As you can see, on the back of the packet, the tablet has a little smiley face on it, much resembling the Kool-Aid Man’s perpetual grin.  Wouldn’t it be great if that was what the tablets actually looked like?

OH YEAAHH!

OH MY GOD I GET TO DROWN THE KOOL-AID MAN!  …Which is kind of weird, since he’s already filled with nothing but liquid, but…whatever.  Give me my right to pretend I’m drowning a beloved mascot and I’m down.

When he made his cup of Fun Fizz, Bob just dropped one of the tablets into a random amount of water. He then complained that it was too…well, watery. I advised him that maybe he should follow the directions on the back of the pouch, which read, “Put 1 drink drop into 8 fl oz glass of water and watch it fizz. OR Put 2 drink drops into 16 fl oz bottle of water.” However, don’t ever, ever drop 2 drink drops into a 16 oz glass of water, or else you threaten to open a wormhole that leads to a bizarro world, where chicken replaces bread on all sandwiches.

This time I made sure I had exactly eight ounces of water, as the back of the package demands. I dropped in our little Kool-Aid Man tablet and watched the excitement unfold!

I wasn’t timing it, but it took about three or four minutes for the Drink Drop to dissolve completely. It was kind of fun watching all the bubbles come up as it dissolved. My favorite part was when the tab went from sitting at the bottom of the glass to slowly floating up to the surface, where it turned into a frothy blob before dissolving completely. I likened it to watching a dead body writhe free of the chains that had been holding it to the bottom of a lake, slowly and ominously drifting up to the surface, ready to traumatize a group of carefree prepubescents for life when they discover it. Except this time, the body dissolves completely in under five minutes. The perfect crime.

OH NOOOO!

The taste of it was distinctly fruit punch, but it had an interesting fizzy texture that went with it, unlike regular Kool-Aid. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it carbonated; it was more like a brief pop on the tongue before I swallowed the liquid. Almost like when you have a mouthful of Pop Rocks and you get that one last, faint pop out of one of the little guys before they completely dissolve. I am probably the only person under the age of 16 who actually remembers that feeling, because I’m the only person nearing the age of 30 who has had Pop Rocks within in the last decade. I’m also drinking fizzy Kool-Aid. What do you want.

While the drink does have a nice, distinct tropical punch flavor, the sweetness of it is absolutely cloying. The nice thing about making your own Kool-Aid is that you can add as much sugar as you want to it. I tend to lean towards the less sugary side, to the point where the Kool-Aid is almost tart. Looking at the ingredient list is like looking at the chemicals needed to produce…I don’t know, something really sciency, and aspartame is included in that list, which explains the mouth-coating, long-lasting, not very pleasant oversweetness.

Kool-Aid Fun Fizz Drink Drops is an interesting concept that’s fun to watch and I’m sure will make kids clap their hands together like a bus full of autistic children heading off to “special” summer camp. And I’m sure that was the point, so Kool-Aid has succeeded nicely on that front. Kids might also like the overwhelming sweetness, but I’m not sure how they’ll feel about the aspartame aftertaste. Then again, children are forgiving, so watching the Kool-Aid man slowly dissolve to his doom might make them forget about all that. I suppose the portability makes it useful, but Kool-Aid already makes a product called Singles that fills that niche well enough.  For me, I’ll just stick to making Kool-Aid the old-fashioned way, like a normal, responsible adult.

  • Score: 2.5 out of 5 bloated corpses and traumatized children
  • Price: $1.99
  • Size: 1 bag of 8 Drink Drops (0.53 oz.)
  • Purchased at: Safeway #1717
  • Nutritional Quirks: Citric acid, sorbitol, potassium and sodium bicarbonate, aspartame.  Contains less than 2% of natural and artificial flavor, ascorbic acid, sucralose, acesulfame potassium, potassium and sodium carbonate, magnesium oxide, soy lecithin, red 40, blue 1, sodium benzoate and BHA.  Oh, sorry, that’s actually just the entire ingredient list.
Fast Food

Junk Food Freebie: Chick-fil-A Meal(?)

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Hooray, today is Cow Appreciation Day! Or Appresheeation. Whatever. The whole gimmick is retarded. But if you want to dress up like a cow, use terrible grammar, and get…something for free at Chick-fil-A, today is your day. Straight from the stupid cow’s mouth:

“It’s become a holiday for Chick-fil-A fans. Just come to any one of our 1,400+ restaurants today fully dressed like a cow (you know, to prove that you’re no chicken), and we’ll give you a FREE Chick-fil-A meal! And bring the kids, because calves get free meals too!”

Nowhere on their website could I actually find what the definition of a “meal” is. So I encourage you to wear your stupid cow costume down to your nearest Chick-fil-A and demand one of everything on the menu. You deserve it, because you’re dressed like a fucking cow. To get free chicken.

Oh, and I almost forgot: if you’re not creative enough to figure out how to make your own cow costume, Chick-fil-A has generously provided a starter kit for you here. How kind of them.

Fast Food

Sonic Drive-In Ched R Pepper SuperSONIC Cheeseburger

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I’m going to murder whoever designed Sonic’s website and hunt down every last relative of that person with a Bowie knife clenched between my perpetually gnashing teeth.

Perhaps that’s not the best way to start out a review, but it’s how I feel right now, after having attempted to do the bare minimum research on the product about which I will be talking. If I’m lucky, after ten minutes the home page for Sonic Drive-In’s website will load. If I’m unlucky, I get a server error page. I’m unlucky more than I’m lucky. C’mon, people, you’re a national fast food chain. Make a fucking website that works, for Christ’s sake.

Nerd rage aside, I was finally able to struggle through the steaming, fetid bog of Sonic’s site to find the information I needed. First, I wanted to write a statement along the lines of “I never saw a Sonic before I moved to Arizona; apparently, my home turf of Orange County thought itself too good to allow them.” I figured I’d fact check that last part before dozens of angry, well-tanned OC residents left outraged comments. It turns out that while my former comment remains true, there was a Sonic within two miles of the house I spent the first 22 years of my life living in. Apparently, I’m just a clueless, unobservant fuck.

That aside, I’ve now lived within THREE miles of a Sonic for the last six years of my life, and the only thing I’ve ever ordered from there was a SuperSONIC Breakfast Burrito (the only breakfast burrito I’ve ever found that could support itself as a decent food item when you order it without eggs) and a blue Powerade Slush. Both are great for hangovers, by the way. I’m sure the flavor of the slush is not actually “blue”, but really, you all know what I mean. Nobody actually identifies sports drinks by flavor. Yellow, blue, purple, orange. These are your choices.

All this blathering about NOT going to Sonic has a vague purpose, in that I’ve never actually had a Sonic burger. Until NOW. Sonic recently released a limited edition burger called the Ched R Pepper SuperSONIC Cheeseburger. I’d seen the commercial for them a few times and gave it a dismissive wave of the hand, figuring Sonic thinks they’ve reinvented the wheel by adding a little more cheese and maybe some jalapeños to whatever regular goddamn burger they’ve got on the menu. But then I saw the commercial again one day and something caught my eye, so much so that I had to rewind my DVR and pause it at this moment:

Holy shit, they put jalapeño poppers on a burger! More specifically, “Ched R Peppers”, which I didn’t even know were on Sonic’s menu, since they’re not listed on the website. First of all, what a fucking terrible name. Ched R Peppers? Really? Not even gonna, you know, maybe throw an apostrophe in there? Fuck Ched R Peppers. I reserve the right to call them poppers throughout the rest of this review.

Furthermore, on their official YouTube video of the commercial, they call it a “Cheddar Pepper Burger” several times. Even Sonic itself is embarrassed.

I was repulsed and intrigued at the same time. On the one hand, putting random snack food inside a burger is ridiculous. On the other hand, putting random snack food inside a burger is awesome, and I love ridiculous. So, I knew I had to try one.

First of all, the burger is MASSIVE. It’s also probably the messiest burger I’ve ever eaten, due, in part, to the bottom bun falling apart in my hands. Poor bottom bun, it just couldn’t handle the responsibility of two giant patties, AND a ridiculous amount of cheese, AND two Ched R Peppers. It was doomed from the start. Actually, I think the real problem there is that they put all the lettuce, tomatoes, dressing, and everything else underneath the meat and poppers. There’s probably a reason they’re usually on top.

Aw, look! There they are!

Epic battle with sliding toppings and chipotle mayo-covered hands aside, I quite liked the burger. The meat was superior to McDonald’s but probably wouldn’t hold up to In-N-Out’s standards. I’d give it a medium on the scale of rat meat patties to hand-grilled burgers at a barbeque. The cheese, well, the cheese was plentiful. Between the two thick slices on the burger and the cheese inside the poppers, ooey gooey goodness was everywhere. The chipotle mayo added a muted flavor and was pretty abundant, which was nice, except I think I licked more of it off of my hands than I actually ate inside the burger, once again due to the bottom bun rolling a crit fail. Bottom bun is Black Leaf.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the poppers played with the burger. The deep-fried breading on the poppers gave it a nice crunch, sort of like the way onion rings would, except on most burgers I’ve had with rings, the rings are so soggy that they deliver no crunch at all. Maybe that’s why the condiments were all on the bottom of this burger. Keeping the poppers dry preserved that crunch. So, both a good call and a bad call on Sonic’s part. You can’t win them all.

Actually, I just realized that there’s a burger on top already protecting the poppers, so putting the condiments on top wouldn’t have made a difference. It makes no sense. Ched R Peppers.

The jalapeños add their delicious flavor and a little bit of heat, but not as much as if you’d put a bunch of jalapeño slices on the burger. This could be because the fat in the cheese binds to the capsaicin molecules in the pepper, thus reducing their potency. SCIENCE!

Or it could be because Sonic buys milder jalapeños, because all fast food chains think Americans can’t handle actual spicy food. Whatever.

Sonic wins points for the Ched R Pepper SuperSONIC Cheeseburger being insa- uh, creative, but loses points for being poorly constructed, resulting in a burger you should never, ever eat in your car, on your way to an important interview. Then again, if you’re eating a cheeseburger on your way to an interview, you’re probably applying at Sonic Drive-In, so have at. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the poppers played with the burger, and I also liked how plentiful and complimentary the chipotle mayo was. The meat and the abundant cheese were also satisfying. Putting jalapeño poppers on a burger may seem ridiculous, but consider that they’ve been doing it in New Jersey for about 40 years, so maybe it isn’t so crazy, after all. As a matter of fact, I’d like other fast food chains to start stepping up their game and stuffing their burgers full of various kinds of bar food. It’d keep me in business for months!

  • Score: 3.5 out of 5 Fat Kokos (Don’t know what that means?  You’re the jerk who doesn’t click the links!)
  • Price: $4.69
  • Size: 1 burger (418 grams)
  • Purchased at: Sonic #3517
  • Nutritional Quirks: 1,899 milligrams of sodium.  Suck it, Double Down!
Junk Food

Cheetos Mighty Zingers Sharp Cheddar & Salsa Picante Snacks

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Cheetos, widely known as being the favorite snack of nerds, has been on a roll these past few years, releasing several different twists on their traditional gnarled, neon orange, dust-covered “snacks”. They’ve gone giant, they’ve gone white, and now, they’ve gone tiny and, uh, zinged.

Earlier this year, Frito-Lay introduced Cheetos Mighty Zingers. There are two flavors: Ragin’ Cajun & Tangy Ranch and Sharp Cheddar & Salsa Picante. Their press release states that “Cheetos lovers are in for the ultimate treat, because Chester Cheetah is today unleashing a new cheesy innovation called Cheetos Mighty Zingers – the tiniest Cheetos snacks ever made and marketed.”

I’m sorry, are you looking for a gold star or maybe a smiley-face sticker? Congratulations, you made Cheetos that are smaller than normal Cheetos. Holy shit, alert the press! Wait, that’s actually exactly what they’re doing. You’re already annoying me, Cheetos.

Mighty Zingers’ gimmick is one that seems to be gaining popularity: take two differently-flavored products of the same type and pack them into one bag. The general idea seems to be to have one spicy flavor and one cooling flavor, like the classic buffalo wings and ranch combo. Nobody’s ever sat me down and explained it to me, but I’m assuming you’re supposed to shove them both into your mouth at the same time to achieve the spicy-then-soothing effect. Your results may vary. The idea here seems to be more in the category of complimentary flavors. Who doesn’t love salsa con queso? Communists, that’s who. Don’t be a pinko; eat the fucking chips. Er, snacks.

One thing I love about these snacks right off the bat is that they have taken an age-old snacking problem and finally found a solution for it. The problem: I want to get as much processed food into my mouth as fast as I can, but when I tip back the bag and start pouring them into my giant, unhinged maw, chips start flying everywhere and I get flavor dust in my eyes! The solution? Well, again, I think Cheetos’ press release says it best: “There’s even a playful perforated ‘pouring tab’ up top, making it easier than ever to pop a delicious handful of Mighty Zingers straight into your mouth.”

I think we all know that they don’t intend for you to ever be touching these Cheetos with your hands. That bag, with its “playful pouring tab”, is going straight to your lips. I assume this is why they have made these the tiniest Cheetos ever(!) Easier to pour them into your mouth. Who has time for things like reaching into a bag? There’s a motherfucking raid going on with my guild over here, folks! Of course, this does eliminate the need to suck sticky flavor dust off your fingers. So maybe they are on to something, here.

Somebody on the Cheetos marketing team thinks they’re Charles fucking Dickens, because there’s a goddamn novel written on the back of the bag. Since the picture is probably too small and probably blurry (thanks again, metallic bag), I’ll write it all out for you:

DON’T CALL THEM SMALL.

These tiny Cheetos Snacks are mighty in taste.

THE SHARP CHEDDAR WILL MAKE YOUR TASTE BUDS TAKE NOTICE, AND THE SALSA PICANTE IS TOO ROWDY TO RESIST.

Together these Cheetos Snacks create a cheesy flavor that’ll shove your tongue around.

Their numbers will amaze you. Their tastes will astound you.

There are endless ways to enjoy this mixture of mightiness. Sort them, combine them,

BUT DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF CHEETOS MIGHTY ZINGERS SNACKS.

I can’t tell if Mighty Zingers are going to delight my palate or come out of the bag and kick my ass like Guido coming to collect on an outstanding loan.

I expected the playful pour tab to rip down the entire side of the bag, creating a giant mess, but it tore almost exactly on the perforation, creating just the right hole to pour these little choking hazards right down your gullet. The cheddar does indeed look sharp, and the salsa, picante, so they got the colors right, at least. Let’s check the flavors.

I tried them individually at first, of course, because I’m such a rebel. I had a hard time distinguishing Sharp Cheddar from regular-flavored Cheetos, but I guess that makes sense. Regular Cheetos are already neon cheese-flavored, so why go through the trouble of making up a new flavor? I did detect a little bit of spice, but I think that’s from getting intimate with Salsa Picante in the bag. I could see little red dots on the Sharp Cheddar pieces where the powder had rubbed off onto them. This is why you shouldn’t put two flavors together in one bag; you don’t know what’s going on once you’ve vacuum sealed those two edges together. Cheetos be gettin’ freaky on the store shelves. This is making “sticky Cheeto fingers” even more unappealing.

Uh oh. I should have seen this coming. I should have known. I should have chosen Ragin’ Cajun & Tangy Ranch. I have chosen…unwisely.

SALSA PICANTE IS FLAMIN’ HOT CHEETOS! (Spoiler alert.) It’s not like I haven’t run into this before; Doritos has repackaged its Cool Ranch as just about every flavor under the sun. But usually they at least try to make something about one of the flavors a little bit different. Not so here. You know what Cheetos Mighty Zingers Sharp Cheddar & Salsa Picante Snacks really are? Cheetos All the Little Pieces You Find at the Bottom of the Bag That You Wind Up Throwing Away Cheese & Flamin’ Hot Cheese-Flavored Snacks.

I am outraged.

Maybe I shouldn’t be, but there are several factors here. First and most obvious is the recycling of the flavors. Then there’s the gimmick that “oh we made them small!”, when, seriously, these could just be leftover broken pieces from the factory for all I fucking know. The real coup de grace is that, unless you literally are pouring these directly from bag to mouth, they are practically impossible to eat. I’ve been snacking on the ones I poured out in the picture, and even my tiny, delicate, feminine fingers can’t manage to pick up more than one at once without Cheetos flying everywhere half the time. So I’m supposed to pour them into my hand, eh? Oh okay, let’s do that. Then I can lick the flavor powder off my palm like I’m cosplaying Chester fucking Cheetah grooming himself at a fucking furry convention. Okay, yes, I will stand in my kitchen with no pants on and pour these little fucking choking hazards that I could have gotten by buying two bags of differently-flavored Cheetos straight into my mouth, but you know what I won’t do? You know where this person, this person who has eaten AN ENTIRE SMOTHERED MEAT PATTY, draws the line? Licking my hand after eating handfuls of broken-up Cheetos, and then looking down to see my cat performing the same action. I just can’t go there. My cat also licks his own ass.

One more little factoid you should probably know about Cheetos Mighty Zingers Sharp Cheddar & Salsa Picante Snacks – Flamin’ Hot Cheetos turn your fingers red. For like, the rest of the fucking day. I don’t care how many times you wash your hands, your fingers tell the world, “I ate an inappropriate amount of an unhealthy spicy junk food.” Hence, if you eat these Mighty Zingers in handfuls, you’ll literally be caught red-handed. JUST LIKE I CAUGHT YOU RED-HANDED IN A WEB OF DECEIT, CHEETOS.

  • Score: 2 out of 5 broken bits of boring old Cheeto flavors in a stupid metallic bag
  • Price: $2.99
  • Size: 9 1/2 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
  • Nutritional Quirks: I dunno, just go read a regular bag of Cheetos and account for a “broken-up handful” serving size, I guess.
Fast Food

Junk Food Freebie: Jack in the Box French Fries

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Jack in the Box French Fries

Today, Friday, April 16, 2010, you can go to Jack in the box and get a free small fry!  It’s Free fry Fryday!  GET IT?  I knew you would.

Why the random free fry giveaway, besides the obvious opportunity for what I would call a low-level pun?  Apparently JitB has gone and modified, they might say “improved”, their fry recipe.  I haven’t had JitB fries in quite a while, but I seem to remember them being pretty good, so I’m interested in what “improvements” have been made.  Don’t fuck it up, JitB.

You can watch the commercial right on their website.  It has a puppy in it!  Jack is smart.  He knows nobody can resist puppies.

So go get your fry on today.  Fryday.  And let me know what you think about Jack’s new fries!

Fast Food

KFC Double Down Sandwich

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KFC Double Down SandwichWell, it’s finally here.  I’ve been waiting for seven months for this day.  HAPPY DOUBLE DOWN DAY, EVERYBODY!

That’s right, the Double Down is finally here.  Ever since it was announced in test markets in August last year, the Internet has been abuzz with anticipation about when those of us not living in Nebraska or Rhode Island would get to taste this wondrous beast.  On April 1st, KFC announced that the Double Down would be released nationwide today.  A clever marketing move, making the media wonder, is this real, or just a cruel April Fool’s joke?

No joke, my friends.  KFC even created a countdown page on its website.  KFC knows what they’re doing.  If you do a Google search for KFC Double Down Sandwich, you’ll find a plethora of news articles – 223 as of about 11am this morning, in fact.  I even saw my local news channel run a story on it, right as I was taking my pictures of the sandwich.

Why so much media coverage?  With the Double Down comes much controversy.  Some decry it, calling it a culinary monstrosity that will instantly clog your arteries and kill you on the spot.  Others revel in its ridiculousness, seeing it as the goofy, gimmicky thing it is.  It’s like the blogosphere has gone to war over this sandwich.  And that just makes me all the more happy.

There’s even one blog reporting that some lady from some committee is “urging the chain not to advertise the Double Down to children”.  If you go to KFC’s Double Down page, you can watch the commercial.  It’s actually rather bland, and not at all directed towards children.  Won’t somebody please think of the children?!  Obviously, this woman is, but KFC doesn’t really give a damn about them either way.  I love reactionaries.

I, obviously, don’t give a fuck how many calories, sodium, cyanide, whatever are in the Double Down.  I love the Double Down.  It’s the very epitome of the reason I started this website, and as long as it doesn’t taste like shit, I’ll defend its honor, even when I start seeing local lawyer commercials saying, “Have you or someone you know been injured or even killed by the Double Down?  If so, please call us.  We can help you get the money you deserve for your pain and suffering.”  Eating a Double Down is like drinking alcohol – oh sure, it will kill you eventually, but until then, you’re having a blast!

So, controversy aside, let’s start the tale of my journey to get the Double Down.  It started at about 9:30am, when I left to drop my husband off at work.  This had all been carefully planned, as there is a KFC right across the street from where he works.  Unfortunately, KFC doesn’t open until 10am.  Instead of pressing my face against the glass door of the KFC until they opened, I chose to loiter around the Fresh and Easy right next door.  I found it rather amusing, since I was hanging out in a grocery store that sells almost exclusively organic and all-natural products, waiting to go buy what may be the most maligned fast food product in history.

After I felt I had wasted enough time looking at tofu and hummus, I wandered over to the KFC.  I decided to actually go into the restaurant instead of hitting the drive-thru, and I’m glad I did.  I was inundated with posters and giant cut-outs of the Double Down.  It only served to heighten my excitement.

There was a dude in front of me in line, and I couldn’t hide a small, probably creepy-looking smile as he ordered a Double Down.  He was a stocky guy in his mid-20s, wearing a polo shirt and sporting a mild neckbeard.  I thought I’d found a soulmate.

After I placed my order, we were both hanging around the drink dispenser, waiting for our orders.  I’m generally a socially shy person who would rather stick my hand in a fryolator than strike up a conversation with a total stranger, but I felt compelled to say something.
“So, you’re here for the Double Down, eh?”  I said, flashing what I hoped was a friendly but conspiratorial smile.
“Yeah,” he replied.
I should have noticed the dead look in his eyes, the half-open mouth, but I was blinded by chicken.  “Were you just sort of lurking around, waiting for them to open so you could get one, like I was?”  I continued, stupidly.
“No.”  There was no change in his facial expression.  I was talking to a wall.  A neckbearded wall.

I stood in red-faced silence until he got his order and beat a hasty retreat out the door.  In order to mitigate my embarrassment, I concentrated all my attention on how the Double Down was being constructed.

KFC describes the Double Down as “two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel’s Sauce.”  You see, there’s two of everything.  Double!  The sandwich’s motto is, “This product is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun!”  I love it.  So brazen.  Just a big “fuck you” to both bread and people who want to live past 30.

KFC Double Down Sandwich Boxed

My sandwich lived up to KFC’s description, at least in construction.  The masterful artist behind the counter, who looked kind of like Edward James Olmos, pulled two chicken filets out of a drawer, set them down on a metal counter, drizzled one with the Colonel’s Sauce, pulled out one of each of the cheese slices from a chill chest, set them both on the sauced filet, took two pieces of bacon on top of the cheese, and slapped the other filet down on top of it all.  I thought there would be a further cooking process, but he just wrapped it right up and stuck it in a chicken sandwich box.  He didn’t even bother trying to close the box all the way, because it was obvious that that wasn’t going to happen.  The Double Down cannot be contained by any ordinary sandwich box.

Perhaps hoping to make me feel better about my earlier awkward conversation, or just being friendly, as Edward James Olmos put my box in a bag he smiled warmly and said to me, “This will really fill you up, mang.”  Or he could have said “ma’am” instead of “mang”, I’m not really sure.  I’m at an age where it really could have gone either way.

I smiled back and said, “I’m sure it will.  I’ve been waiting for this for a while, that’s why I’m here on the day it came out.”
“Actually, it came out yesterday,” he replied.  “We just haven’t had a lot of people come in yet because they haven’t seen the commercial.”
“Oh really?”  I said, surprised, since every website in the world had told me it came out on the 12th.  I wasn’t going to argue with the man who’d just made my Double Down, though, so I just said, “Well, I’ve been waiting since August, anyway.”
“Dang, mang, you known about it before I did!”  He said, chuckling.
“Oh yeah, it’s been all over the Internet,” I replied.  He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who watched for new fast foods on the Internet.  Edward James Olmos was completely oblivious regarding the controversy surrounding the sandwich he had just made for me.  I found it endearing.

We said our pleasantries and I tried not to run out of the KFC to my car, because that would look weird, and I didn’t want to look weird, especially not after buying a giant chicken sandwich at 10:09am.  I impatiently fumed at the entrance to my apartment complex, waiting for an elderly couple to sloooowly make their way across the sidewalk in front of the entrance.  It was like they’d been placed there by the gods of situational comedy.  I considered just running them over, but figured that might put a kink in my day, so I just waited.  In hindsight, I should have just run them over.  The Double Down waits for no man.  Especially not an old one.

But fuck Internet buzz and neckbeards Edward James Olmos, right?  How does it taste?

KFC Double Down Sandwich Naked

DELICIOUS.

My first couple of bites were mostly just chicken, but the chicken was tender and juicy.  I don’t think I’ve ever shoved that much KFC chicken in my mouth at once.  It felt voluptuous, decadent, overindulgent.  I was transformed into a Cyrenaic.  And I loved it.

Then I hit the cheese and the Colonel’s Sauce all at once, and it was madness. The cheese was melty and creamy, which I was concerned about after seeing the process of making the Double Down.  I figured the whole sandwich would need a little more heat, but apparently they keep the chicken screaming hot, because the cheese was perfect and the sandwich was perfectly hot.  The sauce was zippy, tangy.  Combined with the juicy chicken and the Colonel’s 11 secret herbs and spices, it was so wrong, but so very right.  Screw grapes, I want hot scantily clad chicks hand-feeding me Double Downs all day, as I lounge on my gilded bed with shirtless dudes fanning me with palm fronds.

KFC Double Down Sandwich Open

While I’d like to say the Double Down was perfect, I do have a few quibbles about it.  The bacon was largely swallowed up by the massive chicken filets.  It fell victim to the classic fast food problem: limp bacon that lacks flavor and crispness.  I got a little bit of crunch and a little flavor, but, and I hate to even admit this, I actually wished there was more bacon on the sandwich.  More bacon or better bacon, whichever would make the bacon a little more prominent.

I would have liked a little more Colonel’s Sauce on my Double Down, but I do tend to like my burgers and sandwiches sauced up to a point that most people probably wouldn’t enjoy.  Since I’ve already shamed myself pretty thoroughly in this review, I’ll go ahead and admit that at one point I actually opened the sandwich up, like a delicious book, and  licked the sauce right off the chicken, so I could get a purer sense of what it tasted like.  A woman, in her late 20s, not wearing pants, fending off two cats who REALLY wanted to eat my Double Down, licking sauce off the inside of a sandwich that uses chicken filets for buns.  I do this for you, dear readers.

Colonel’s Sauce tastes like a zippy southwestern sauce.  Probably mayonnaise mixed with something mildly spicy.  A light Google search and KFC’s website itself offer no clues, but I’m comfortable with that.  I like a little mystery in my food.  That’s probably not something a person with all their faculties intact would ever say.

I couldn’t finish my entire sandwich.  I am no match for the Double Down.  Edward James Olmos was right; it will, indeed, fill you up.  Mang.  I felt logy afterward; this is a sandwich made to be eaten when you’ve cleared your plans for the rest of the day.  But my excitement to write about my Double Down experience got me through this review.  And I will give the health nut Double-Down naysayers this: damn son, this bitch be salty.  The medium iced tea I got with it was sucked dry, and I still felt like Lot’s wife.  But that’s okay with me.  I used to eat salt straight out of the shaker.  I can handle a little sodium in my sandwich.  And by a little, I mean 1,380 milligrams of it.

Don’t look at me like that.

So, was it all worth it?  The hype, the waiting, the controversy, the awkward conversation, the food coma, the excessively long, boring review?  Absolutely.  I loved it.  It’s like splurging on a really expensive meal at a fancy, overpriced restaurant – you know you’re being naughty, but you sure do enjoy yourself while you’re doing it.  You’re obviously not going to do it every day, but every once in a while, it’s fun to throw responsibility to the wind and just go wild.

Eating a Double Down probably does qualify as throwing responsibility to the wind, but I loved every minute of it.

Oh, and there’s also a grilled version of the Double Down, but I recommend you at least try the original first.  And if you think the grilled version is healthier, consider this – it actually has 500 more milligrams of sodium than the original version.  Ha!

By the way, this is what my napkin looked like at the end of the meal:

KFC Double Down Sandwich Napkin

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 neckbeards
  • Price: $4.99
  • Size: 1 sandwich
  • Purchased at: KFC #Y303048
  • Nutritional Quirks: Where to begin?  You know what, you just figure this one out for yourself.
Junk Food

Stride Mega Mystery Gum

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Stride Mega Mystery GumWell now, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I apologize for that. But we’re back! And with a review of a junk food genre I haven’t written about thus far!

“Mystery flavor” food items are always a fun gimmick. Off the top of my head, the only mystery flavor junk foods that have come out are the Airheads “White Mystery”, which, if I recall correctly, came out sometime in the early 90s, and, of course, Doritos’ Quest and X-13D, which were Mountain Dew and hamburger flavored, respectively. However, Google’s delightful autofill dropdown feature also reminds me that there’s another other mystery flavored junk food: Dum Dums, which have a mystery flavor for an interesting and utilitarian reason. Writing this website has given me access to countless pieces of information that I will never actually need to know, until I watch an episode of Jeopardy that contains a junk food category. I will kick ass when that happens.

The newest mystery flavor on the block is Stride’s Mega Mystery Gum. Stride is one of the newer kids on the block when it comes to chewing gum; the brand launched in 2006, going up against heavy-hitters like Trident, Extra and Juicy Fruit, which have been well-known for decades. Stride’s marketing slogan, “The Ridiculously Long-Lasting Gum”, seems to have met with success, as the brand has done quite well since it was launched. I’m sure you’re all familiar with their commercials, wherein Stride executives beg you to spit out your damn gum and chew another piece already, or where people chewing the gum are tackled violently in order to get them to expel the gum. It’s a clever marketing campaign, I have to admit, and their commercial for Mega Mystery follows in the same vein. Some guy is webcamming, or vlogging, or whatever the fuck, that he knows what the mystery flavor of Mega Mystery is. Suddenly, three men wearing suits and helmets, riding ostriches, burst through the walls, ransacking the guy’s room. An ostrich pecks the terrified nerd in the chest on command, and its rider hisses at him to “zip it”. You can view the commercial on Stride’s website.

I have absolutely no idea when they are actually going to reveal what the mystery flavor is, but I’ll be sure to let you know when they finally announce it. I asked Google, but I didn’t find anything, and all the links were too spoiler-y on how the gum tastes. I need a clean palate for this. No outside influences.

Stride Mega Mystery Gum Open

I’ve never bought Stride gum before, but the package design is ingenious. Of course, all gum brands with this kind of packaging could have been doing this for forever. I haven’t bought or chewed gum in like, a decade. Anyway, the idea is, once you finish the lower section of the pack, the perforation on the seam allows you to tear that part away, and a little slit on the lower part of the top pack let’s you still close it, making for a smaller, more pocket-friendly pack. Ingenious!  Those pieces are really stuck in there, too. No chance of them falling out. You can’t tell in the picture, but I actually had to rip the wrapper to get a piece out. Speaking of the wrapper, how cute is that? I feel like I own a piece of The Riddler. Or, better yet, Matthew Lesko.

Stride Mega Mystery Gum Piece

The gum itself is white, which is standard issue for any mystery food. Wouldn’t want to give it away by coloring it pink or anything, like…hundreds of other gums of wildly varying flavors.

So, what is the goddamn mystery flavor already, you ask? I hesitate to answer. I’m not afraid of being wrong, but getting the flavor totally and completely wrong would be pretty embarrassing. Since this website is all about reviewing food and analyzing flavors and all that.  It’s obviously fruity, you can tell that just by smelling the box. I think I can detect some watermelon. It’s gotta be a combination of fruits, but it’s not as easy as you’d think, trying to tell one artificial fruit flavor from another, when you’ve got absolutely no frame of reference. Taking a wild stab, I’d guess strawberry-watermelon, but that’s not exactly the most exciting flavor combination for a mystery flavor. I feel like a mystery flavor should be something totally unexpected. Mystery flavors should BLOW MY MIND. Does Stride feel that way, though? I’m getting paranoid over gum. This is my life.

I guess I’ll stick with my strawberry-watermelon conclusion. Or maybe just strawberry-melon. Berry-melon? I’m trying to be as broad as possible to save face, in case you haven’t noticed. Regardless, we’ll find out whenever Stride reveals the flavor, sometime in the nebulous future. No matter what it is, mystery aside, it’s a pretty sold flavor for a chewing gum. Like I said, I haven’t chewed gum for years, but I’m pretty sure “generically fruity” is hard to screw up. And I got to blow bubbles, so how bad can it be? Oh, and it is sugarless, for those of you concerned about your teeth rotting out of your head. Suck down a Diet Coke, chew some Mega Mystery gum, and enjoy the aspartame!

  • Score: 3 out of 5 guys in suits riding ostriches
  • Price: $1.39
  • Size: 1 pack of 14 sticks of gum
  • Purchased at: Circle K #2821
  • Nutritional Quirks: The back of the pack says “Calorie content of this size piece has been reduced from 5 to 3 1/2 calories.  In the nutrition facts area, the calories are listed as <5.  That’s…odd.
Junk Food

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Baked Graham Snacks S’mores Adventures

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Goldfish S'mores Adventures Bag FrontI know it’s hard to believe, but I remember a time, way back in my youth, even before I knew what the Internet was, when Goldfish Crackers were simple: you had your iconic cheddar, maybe the plain kind (but really, who eats those), and I seem to vaguely remember seeing a pretzel variety, although I don’t know when they arrived on the team. Everybody ate cheddar Goldfish; it was a brown paper bag lunch staple.

However, Pepperidge Farm is not immune to the contagious madness that continues to spread amongst big name snack manufacturers. As I grew older, Goldfish crackers slowly faded out of my life. For this reason, I was generally unaware that Pepperidge Farms had succumbed to the madness, until I was walking down the cracker aisle one day. I stopped in my tracks, mesmerized and somewhat horrified. A rather generous section of shelves, from top to bottom, was filled with all kinds of crazy Goldfish flavors. “Flavor Blasted”? “Xplosive Pizza”? “Blazin’ Buffalo Wings”? What the fuck is going on here? I expect it out of Doritos, or even Mountain Dew, but you, Pepperidge Farm? I respected you. You make Milanos.

Now would be a good time to start mocking their website, but let’s face it – Goldfish, whether classic or XTREME, are made for kids, and thus, their website is designed to be silly and ridiculous. I mean, come on, it’s got a whole section devoted to assuring parents that it’s a safe site for their kids to play on, and even goes so far as to create “Ad Nooze”, which warns kids that there’s an ad that’s designed to sell you something. I can’t mock something that disgustingly wholesome.

Goldfish S'mores Adventures Go Play

I will say though, that after I’d had the site open but dormant for a little while, going about my business elsewhere, some basketball player named Dwayne Wade suddenly popped up on the screen, scaring the shit out of me by yelling at me to stop clicking around on the Goldfish website and go outside and play, goddammit. He didn’t say goddammit, of course, but he was pretty serious. I almost ran out of my apartment, frantic to find the nearest basketball court. But then I remembered I have no pants on. And I don’t own a basketball. Sorry, Dwayne Wade; it’s too late to save me. Good luck with the kids, though.

He also told me to “put down the remote”, which makes me wonder what kind of crazy gadgets professional basketball players use to navigate the Internet.

With so many strange flavors to choose from, you may be wondering when I’ll stop blathering and actually tell you what I’m reviewing. Well, that makes you stupid, because it’s in the title of the fucking article. Good friggin’ gravy, try to keep up, here. Anyways, today I’ll be talking about Goldfish S’mores Adventures, which is not a cracker at all, but rather a baked graham snack. You know, like Teddy Grahams. Except fish. If everything I’ve learned from Animal Planet is accurate, you should definitely keep your graham bears and your graham fish separated. Trust me, it wouldn’t end well for Finn and his friends. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, some of the different flavors are characters. I won’t even bother going into that right now.

Goldfish S'mores Adventures Bag Side

I chose S’mores Adventures, a seemingly tame flavor in comparison to some other options, a.) because the bag said “new” on it (unlike the stock photo up top), although it seems they came out maybe mid-2009, and b.) because Bob, sometimes JFB contributor, reacted to the idea of Goldfish s’mores snacks like they were an abomination, and affront to nature, something that should be put down like a rabid dog. I’m not really sure why this is – they’re graham, chocolate, and marshmallow crackers. What could go wrong?

Goldfish S'mores Adventures Graham Crackers

Awww, they look…kind of weird, actually. The graham Goldfish look just like a regular Goldfish cracker, smiling, always cheerful. I hadn’t really given any thought to how the marshmallow part of s’mores was going to fit in here. A red light should have gone off in my head when I wrote the words “marshmallow crackers”. That is not a phrase that should exist. Now that I see them, they look like they belong in a box of bizarre Lucky Charms. They’re about 50% smaller than the graham fishies, and their faces are blank; emotionless. I’m a little more trepidatious now. Trepidatious is not a word.

Never one to disobey the bag, I tried all three at once, which is obviously the point of the snack. It’s called “S’mores Adventures”, not “Graham and Chocolate Crackers with Strange White Things Adventures”.

True to my above comment, the marshmallow fish disintegrated immediately and tastelessly upon impact with my molars, just like Lucky Charms marshmallows do. I don’t feel the need to go any further about that, since I believe every person ever born has tried eating a dry Lucky Charms marshmallow. It is just something that happens. Human nature.

With marshmallow out of the picture, honey and chocolate duel it out for flavor dominance in my mouth. Chocolate wins, but just barely. The two flavors marry nicely. Imaging shoving a honey and a chocolate graham cracker into your mouth at the same time. That is what it tastes like, and that is exactly what I did. Goldfish S’mores Adventures has liberated me by telling me I can shove two different flavored graham crackers in my mouth at the same time. The underground double-flavor-graham-cracker eaters out there can come out of hiding. It’s okay now. Pepperidge Farms says so.

But hey, we’re not done yet – we haven’t looked at the back of the bag!

Goldfish S'mores Adventures Bag Back

EVEN CAMPING?! HOLY SHIT! Fuck all those faeries and unicorns and pirates and buried treasure and astronauts and shit, your imagination can take you CAMPING! Just imagine, camping…your dad can’t figure out how to put the tent up, so he takes it out on your mom, who starts crying…the hard, hard ground, every rock sticking into you through your inadequately insulated sleeping bag that leaves you shivering all night long…all the insects, mosquito bites, strange, ominous sounds…walking through poison ivy so you can take a dump leaning against a tree covered in fire ants…CAMPING!

Oh yeah, and I guess sometimes you make s’mores when you’re camping, too. Adventures!

Here’s some of the characters I mentioned earlier, trying to emulate Abbott and Costello and instead sounding like retards. Finn gets special mention and a hat, because he’s cheddar, and everybody knows that cheddar Goldfish rule, Flavor Blasted be damned. Pretzel guy on the left is called Gilbert. I don’t know what he does, or why he is named Gil- oh wait, I just got the joke. Awwww. Good one, Pepperidge Farm. You got me.

Now that I’ve wised up to they’re tricks, I’ll introduce you to Brooke, the parmesan cheese Goldfish on the right. You can tell she’s a girl because she has eyelashes. Little know fact: female goldfish have eyelashes, but the males lack them. Isn’t nature amazing? I don’t know what parmesan cheese has to do with femininity. Probably just figured they’d throw in a chick to get feminists off their backs.

Lastly, there’s X-Treme, who doesn’t get a pun in his name, because he is TOO XTREME. Obviously, he represents the Flavor Blasteds. More like Flavor Bastards, am I right? I don’t know which weird-ass flavor he actually is, but he appears to be raising his non-existent eyebrow suggestively. I find it X-Tremely unsettling.

Down at the bottom ya gotcha fake fire. Remember, this is imaginary camping. No real fire allowed. Around the fake bonfire, there appears to be several magical orbs, indicating that the Goldfish are about to engage in some sort of ritual. Possibly Wiccan, possibly Satanic. I’m not sticking around to find out.

I think Goldfish S’mores Adventures is actually a pretty clever idea. At the very least, it’s something original in concept, and the idea of taking different flavors of Goldfish and putting them in your mouth all at once must appeal to kids. Kids eat that shit up, no pun intended. If you can make a food product change color, be a color it’s not supposed to be, or come with simple instructions, it’s guaranteed that kids are going to have to have it. While the idea is solid, the execution falls apart pretty quickly. Obviously, they’ve addressed all of the ingredients of a s’more, but two graham crackers and a Lucky Charms marshmallow do not a s’more make. There’s no way you can give Goldfish the flavor of gooey melted chocolate and marshmallow. I don’t think anything pre-packaged could accomplish that task. But Goldfish tried, and while they failed, they still got two flavored graham crackers and a marshmallow…thing that makes me reminisce about eating all the dry Lucky Charms marshmallows first and then being disappointed by a cereal bowl full of oat pieces. So, there is that.

Note: If you want to see a little bit of weird, check out Goldfish’s Wikipedia page.  It’s a wonderful, sloppy mess.

  • Score: 2 out of 5 Dwayne Wades yelling at me
  • Price: $2.39
  • Size: 6.6 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Albertsons #980
  • Nutritional Quirks: What the hell are those little dry marshmallows made out of? I’m too scared to find out.
Fast Food

Burger King Steakhouse XT Burger

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The King has gone mad. The source of his torment is as-yet unknown, but with the aristocracy, there’s a usual way these things happen.

There’s a new commercial circulating the airwaves. In it, the Burger King – stoic, expressionless – charges wildly through an otherwise banal office setting, startling erstwhile staff. Deep in a violent fugue, he attacks former friends and co-workers, body-checking them into walls, desks, and expensive office equipment. After some struggle, he is forcibly restrained, and a defiant soul cries out, “He’s insane! He’s only charging $3.99 for the Steakhouse XT Burger!” Though the rest of the narrative is cut short to shill said burger, I’m pretty sure we all know where this is going. But where did it begin? Looking back, the signs are all there.

Bacon Cheeseburger to scale.
Bacon Cheeseburger to scale.

Recently, Burger King has announced that their restaurants are now featuring elaborate new equipment, state-of-the-art broiling systems that will, according to this press release, bring rain to replenish dying crops, cure the common cold, and save your marriage. The new broilers will allow not only sweeping new paradigms of Burger King products, but will supposedly enhance the flavor of existing burgers. And that brings us to the new Steakhouse XT Burger.

The Burger in question is the apparently the biggest single-patty burger yet from the Burger King franchise. It’s celebrated as 30% larger than McDonald’s third-pounder Angus Burgers, for those that celebrate these things. Indeed, at 7 whopping (ha!) ounces, it encourages new vistas of fast food gluttony.

Behold my burger, ye mighty, and despair!
Behold my burger, ye mighty, and despair!

On the face of it, the Steakhouse XT looks like a mighty tasty burger. The patty is significantly more substantial than something you’d typically see in a fast food offering. I don’t know if it was because it was release night for the product, but the toppings I received on the burger, normally a tragedy, were quite good. The lettuce was crisp, the tomato fresh and cool, and the onions… well, okay, the onions appeared have been sitting out awhile. No one’s perfect. And contrary to venerable fast-food worker practice, no one immersed my sandwich in a condiment bath. The Junk Food Betty Product Acquisition Team did, however, have to endure a significant amount of delay, cast out from the drive-thru line to the side parking lot, to receive our purchase. But was it worth the wait?

Since this product is a demonstration of Burger King’s new magical cooking apparatus, this sandwich is all about the beef. The ample girth of the patty ensures that every bite showcases the flavor of Burger King’s flame-broiled burgers. As an ardent fan of the Whopper, I was deeply appreciative of the focus of this sandwich, highlighting BK’s meat ascendancy over McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s. The toppings, as I mentioned, were high quality and complimented the burger well. The cornmeal-dusted bun rounded out the texture of each bite perfectly. Had I reviewed this sandwich without reading the previously-linked press release, I would’ve been completely satisfied.

Turns out, it's a sandwich.
Turns out, it's a sandwich.

Unfortunately, I read it beforehand. The Steakhouse XT Burger’s patty tastes identical to the BK patty you enjoy in any given BK product, it’s just larger. Sure, it’s more prevalent due to size, which is tasty, but where’s the glamour? It’s not bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s the flame-broiled Burger King flavor we all know and love, but I expected more from a broiling system as highly touted as this. The burger is also available with A1 sauce, and smokey BBQ sauce and cheddar, which may mask the status quo.

  • Score: 4 little boots out of 5
  • Price: $3.99
  • Size: 7 oz. burger with fixin’s.
  • Purchased at: Burger King #17145
  • Nutritional Quirks: May cause Huguenot Syndrome

Junk food and fast food reviews from a leftist perspective. We eat it so you don't have to!