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Junk Food

Limited Edition Gingerbread Oreo

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Nabisco’s been spitting out new Oreo flavors like hotcakes recently. I’d like to think that this is the reason their Limited Edition Gingerbread Oreo package is so goddamn boring.

I mean, look at that thing. Yellow – one of the classic Christmas colors, of course. An Oreo. And a gingerbread man that looks like he was decorated by the most unimaginative person on earth. Nary a Santa hat, tree ornament, or even a snowflake in sight.

Ah well, at least the gingerbread man looks happy. I’m assuming because he’s got the spotlight all to himself.

Can I stress all to himself? Because there’s not even a gingerbread man imprint on the cookie. In fact, if not for the scent that wafted out after I opened the package, just looking at the cookie itself, it just looks like a Golden Oreo. My heart just shrunk a size.

If the gingerbread man knew that his friends had been ground up and turned into a creamy paste, he might not be smiling so happily on the package.

Fortunately for Oreos, however, the boring packaging and cookie itself are masking a hidden treasure of gingerbread goodness. The creme does a great job of mixing the tastes of brown sugar, cinnamon, a bit of molasses, and whatever the hell else goes into making gingerbread cookies. I’m assuming one of those is ginger, but you wouldn’t know it from the ingredients list, which reads something like “sugar, sugar, flour, oil, sugar, oil, and natural and artificial flavors”.

Those last two really seem to be carrying the weight of making this cookie taste so much like actual gingerbread, and I have to admit, using the Golden Oreo as a vehicle for the creme was a good choice. The cookies add their own sweetness, but don’t interfere with the gingerbread flavor.

Well, that’s it. Shortest review ever.

Do you feel a little disappointed? I know I do. So much so, in fact, that I decided to try and eek some real Christmas spirit out of these cookies and make a Gingerbread Oreo house.

I have never made a gingerbread house. In fact, I’ve never really made anything out of food, unless you count the times I’d scrape the disgusting peanut butter out of the cheese cracker sandwiches they fed us in elementary school day care and made sculptures of noses out of it. Noses? I don’t know why, either, but it’s the only thing I remember sculpting. Maybe it had to do with the chronic sinusitis I had as a child.

Come to think of it, I have little to no knowledge or experience in architecture, structural integrity, infrastructure support, or pretty much any other subject that would help me build a house out of cookies.

This may not go well.

Many things went wrong during this experiment, as you may imagine. At first, I tried cutting the Gingerbread Oreos in half and using the flat base as a foundation, anchored by Gingerbread Oreo creme. I summoned my inner “everything I’ve learned from watching reality baking shows” and tried to roll the creme I’d carefully scraped off the cookies between my palms to act as an edible glue.

As it turns out, Oreo creme is neither fondant nor modeling chocolate, and rolling it between your palms results in…well, a bunch of delicious-smelling Oreo filling stuck to your hands. Thank god the odor of Gingerbread Oreos is quite pleasant. My hands smelled like Christmas.

Worried that this project would never even get off the ground floor, literally, I took some whole Gingerbread Oreos and just started smashing them together, because that’s the obvious next step. Surprisingly, this actually worked. I took my Oreo halves and smushed them onto the first ones, making a second layer.

I was pretty proud that I’d managed to make a second layer that didn’t immediately collapse, but soon realized I could go no further. That’s okay though, because I’d already thought of a roofing plan – White Chocolate Peppermint Pringles.

The main problem with this step is that I had no roof. I was determined to use the Pringles, however; they’ve been sitting around irritating me, and I figured this would be a safer use than chucking the canister at a random stranger, which is an urge I’d been fighting pretty much since I reviewed them.

Looking around the kitchen for something to save my gingerbread “house”, I found the perfect roofing material: Hot Chocolate Pop-Tarts!

I probably could have stuck the Pringles onto the Pop-Tarts with some of that Oreo creme, but I already knew there was no saving this disaster, so this is the finished product. The worst gingerbread house ever.

I love it.

Nabisco made the most boring packaging ever for Gingerbread Oreos, which is a shame, but I had fun spending half an hour making a horrible abomination out of them, so there is that. Plus, they taste and smell quite like gingerbread, which is, I suppose, the salient point. Much like my gingerbread “house”, I have a feeling the remaining Limited Edition Gingerbread Oreos won’t last long, because while they may not look like Christmas, they definitely taste like it.

Limited Edition Gingerbread Oreo

  • Score: 3.5 out of 5 realizations that I will never win a Food Network Challenge
  • Price: $2.68
  • Size: 15.25 oz. package
  • Purchased at: Walmart
  • Nutritional Quirks: Zero ingredients of actual gingerbread cookies listed, and yet, tastes like gingerbread. Christmas magic.
Junk Food

Kettle Brand Potato Chips 30th Birthday Limited Batch Red Chili, Jalapeño Jack, Salsa with Mesquite and Cheddar Beer

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Happy 30th Birthday, Kettle Potato Chips! I realize I’m a little late. Consider this your belated birthday card. Pretend it says something “funny” about me being old and forgetful. Preferably with the word “fart” involved, because that’s comedy gold in the world of greeting cards.

But this is not about me. This is about Kettle. You can read a little bit about the history of the company here, but here are the salient points: busted-up van selling chips and a picture of six people that shows definitive proof that Kettle Chips did, indeed, start in 1982.

Seriously, go look at that picture. We’ve got two guys wearing all white, one that looks like a professor of Sociology who has experimented liberally with LSD while the other is rocking a badass ‘stache and probably drove a sweet ’78 Camero with an extensive Zepplin cassette library in the center console.

The lone female in this picture looks like she’s wearing a stylish cowgirl shirt. She probably makes a mean pot of chili. She’s sitting comfortably close to a man wearing a knit cap before knit caps were cool and sporting an impressive beard. The familiarity of the two in the photo suggests they’re a couple; he probably chops his own wood and shoots deer for food, not sport. Maybe he even mined for gold before mining for gold was the subject of 700 different Discovery Channel reality shows.

In the middle we have the very picture of early 1980’s youth – a magnificent mane, moppy and tow-headed, a wide smile on his face conveying optimism and a healthy work ethic. He appears to be wearing a rubber apron, which means he either shucks oysters after school to help out his family or they make him do all the chip frying because he’s the low man on the kettle totem pole. If he played his cards right, he is probably very rich now.

Last but not least, we have Cool 80’s Dude. Everything about him, from that haircut to that stylish jersey shirt to that smug smile says, “Hey ladies.” More interested in chasing tail than making chips, he was probably in charge of standing outside the van, flashing those pearly whites and using his obvious charisma to draw in sales.

I also hope their van had a kickass mural of a barbarian dude in a loincloth standing in front of a volcano, sword held high in the air, while two scantily-clad ladies cling to his massive, muscular thighs. The other side has a wizard summoning lightning from the sky while a unicorn rears up in glory.

In reality, the van probably just had a bunch of chipped avocado-colored paint and maybe the words “Kettle Chips” crookedly stenciled on the side in spray paint.

Enough picking the low-hanging fruit of mocking the way people looked in 1982. I’m lucky Kettle blessed me with that photograph, because their packaging is severely lacking in ridiculousness to make fun of. It’s clean, it’s simple, it’s classy, and it’s the same format for all four flavors. Kudos for that, Kettle, even though I’d have had more to work with if there was a panda doing an ollie over your logo or something. That’s okay; we’ve got a lot of chips to check out, here.

A little blurb from Kettle:

There’s a reason why timeless classics never go out of style, and why we’ll forever covet dad’s vintage cars and grandma’s pearls. We’re bringing back four of our favorite retired flavors to celebrate turning the big 3-0 this year: Red Chili, Jalapeño Jack, Salsa with Mesquite and Cheddar Beer. Our four limited edition flavors celebrate 30 years of what Kettle Brand® does best: coming up with innovative flavors and making great tasting products, naturally.

Well, these flavors must have gone at least a little out of style, considering they were all discontinued. And I’m not even gonna touch that “grandma’s pearls” comment. Let’s just look at the chips.

Kettle Brand Potato Chips Red Chili Limited Batch

Kettle says:

Hold on to your time machine, because it’s a blast from the past with this sweet and spicy flavor classic. Red Chili was our very first flavor produced in 1982, after Sea Salt, and marries the flavor of sriracha sauce with a sprinkle of cayenne pepper for a searing chili sensation that leaves just the right amount of heat on the tip of your tongue. We’re sure this Kettle Brand® flavor favorite will set off a symphony of fireworks in your mouth.

I love that Red Chili was the second Kettle Brand flavor ever created. Most companies would go for salt and vinegar, or maybe cheese, but not Kettle Brand. Red Chili! With sriracha, no less! I’ve seen sriracha rise in popularity in recent years, even inspiring a popcorn collaboration with The Oatmeal. I guess you know you’ve arrived on the Internet when you get your own food product. Junk Food Betty Smothered Meat Patties, anyone?

Anyways, there was no Internet to go insane about foods in 1982, so I count Kettle using sriracha as an ingredient in their chips to be way ahead of the curve. Feel free to say something like “I was eating chips with sriracha before sriracha was cool” if you actually ate these Red Chili chips back in the day.

While there’s not much to say about the nicely-designed front of the packaging of these 30th birthday chips, each bag has a cute little blurb on the back that I’d feel remiss if I didn’t include them.

You go, Jimmy. You’re an inspiration to us all.

I tried the chips before I read Kettle’s description of Red Chili, and while I guess my palate isn’t refined enough to have immediately identified the sriracha, once I knew it was there, it explained how nicely Kettle Brand managed to capture the flavor of chilis.

I’ve eaten a lot of “chili” chips in my day, and Kettle Brand Red Chili was among the best, in my opinion. Instead of just being generically spicy, there was the actual flavor of chili, not just the heat. In fact, the flavor came through even before the heat, which built nicely but didn’t overwhelm. I’m glad they didn’t actually “sear”, as Kettle’s description says.

I really was impressed by these chips, and am sad that they are a limited edition flavor. Perhaps someone will start an Internet petition and bring them back! Internet petitions always work, right? JIMMY, GET ON IT!

Kettle Brand Potato Chips Jalapeño Jack Limited Batch

From Kettle:

Who needs the cheese slice when you have this Southwestern cheesy blend on a crunchy, perfectly cooked chip? The second oldest flavor in the collection, this 1989 classic has the same creamy flavor as Jack cheese but packs a fiery punch with peppercorns and jalapeño pepper that you can actually see.

Jack is obviously an egomaniac, but I feel I’ve learned so much about him in these two little paragraphs that I really don’t have the heart to tell him that his name is also a cheese. He also must not know much about cheese.

I came into Kettle Brand’s Jalapeño Jack with the feeling that I’d be tasting something I’d tasted a hundred times before: spice + cheese. Woohoo. Furthermore, we’re talking about Jack cheese, which has a mild taste that most chips render invisible by overpowering it with spice, or add a cheese flavor that doesn’t taste anything like actual Jack cheese.

Without trying to sound overdramatic, this was possibly the first time I have ever actually tasted Jack flavor on a chip that claimed to have Jack flavor. I don’t know what kind of dark magic Kettle used to achieve this, but it was wonderful to taste.

This feat is even more impressive when you consider that Jack’s companion is jalapeño. Kettle taught jalapeño some manners – it politely let the flavor of Jack go first, and then came in soon afterwards to compliment it instead of overwhelming it. There was just the right amount of heat. I wouldn’t go so far as to never buy jalapeño jack cheese ever again – I could give about a dozen answers to the question “who needs the cheese slice” that Kettle imposed – but these were some damn hell good chips. I found myself wishing once again that these weren’t a limited edition flavor.

Kettle Brand Potato Chips Salsa with Mesquite Limited Batch

From Kettle:

We all know the chip is a vehicle for party dip, but our Salsa with Mesquite cuts out the middle man for a smoky-sweet salsa everyone can agree on! No chunks in this one-just the unmatched flavor combination of sweet tomatoes and bell pepper, with a sneaky and sultry mesquite smokiness. Launched in 1999, our fans have been pining for this zesty dip-on-chip ever since.

Much like with pepper jack cheese, I think we all know that a salsa-flavored chip could never replace actual chips and salsa. However, Kettle Brand does their best, and they do a pretty good job. I could definitely taste the tomato and onion flavors, and there was a bit of zip without really being spicy, which I guess I could attribute to the bell pepper.

The mesquite flavor was a subtle finish. I wouldn’t exactly call it “sultry” – in fact, please kick me if I ever describe a chip as “sultry” – but it was a nice touch.

Salsa with Mesquite is a solid chip, but I didn’t exactly find anything surprising or groundbreaking about it. The taste delivered, but there’s a lot of other chips out there with similar flavor profiles.

I could go without hearing the phrase “smoky two-step for your tongue” ever again. And the hips reference just made me cringe. I’d prefer to hear more about Jimmy and Jack.

Kettle Brand Potato Chips Cheddar Beer Limited Batch

Go Kettle:

Who can resist the hearty flavors of the Midwest? Robust and malty beer notes are layered on this chip with extra sharp and tangy cheese for a perfect balance that goes down smooth. Smooth as a beer we think, but we’ll let you decide. And we have to tip our hats to the fans on this one, who chose this flavor during our first People’s Choice vote in 2005.

I love that Kettle chose to use the word “partying” when they obviously mean “getting super drunk off of kegstands, hitting on your best friend’s girlfriend, and then puking over the banister”. We all know what you mean, Kettle. And I wouldn’t worry about the chips part – I don’t think anyone considers making potato chips “partying”. Then again, people build boats inside bottles for fun, so.

There’s a reason you shouldn’t let people on the Internet decide what flavor your next chip offering is going to be, and Cheddar Beer is a good example. I’m sure people saw “beer” and went “FUCK YEAH BEER CHIPS!”

There’s also a good reason these were discontinued, presumably not long after 2005. The chips started out with a pleasant although mild cheese flavor that would have made for a perfectly acceptable chip.

However, the cheese flavor soon gives way to an odd, bitter taste, that only resembles beer if you’ve been drinking some very crappy beer. I guess that keeps with the spirit of “partying”, since frat parties aren’t exactly stocked with the finest beers from the local microbrewery.

The bitterness stays long after the cheddar has disappeared, along with another, more subtle flavor, which I will blindly attribute to the ingredient “tortula yeast”, which makes me think “tortuga yeast”, which seems bad in any situation.

Kettle Brand Cheddar Beer Chips have at least taught me one thing, and that is that you should not make beer-flavored chips. This is one flavor I’d like to see kept retired.

All in all, I like that Kettle Brand Chips decided to trot out some old-timey flavors to celebrate their 30th birthday. It’s a fine gimmick, the bag design is well-executed, and I love all the little blurbs on the back that tell a little story about the flavors. It makes me feel like Kettle is still being run by six people in a shitty van and not some giant, faceless mega-corporation. Whether or not this is true, I don’t care. I had fun eating them, writing about them, and taking 700 pictures of them.

Kettle Brand Potato Chips 30th Birthday Limited Batch Red Chili, Jalapeño Jack, Salsa with Mesquite and Cheddar Beer

  • Score (Red Chili): 4.5 out of 5 “I knew sriracha before sriracha was cool” old hipsters
  • Score (Jalapeño Jack): 5 out of 5 egomaniacal security guards
  • Score (Salsa with Mesquite): 4 out of 5 unwanted honest hips
  • Score (Cheddar Beer): 2.5 out of 5  puking frat boys
  • Price: $14.99 (before shipping)
  • Size: 5 5 oz. bags (including Sea Salt; not pictured)
  • Purchased at: Kettle Brand’s website
  • Nutritional Quirks: Sriracha! Yay! Tortuga yeast. Boo.
Junk Food

Limited Time Only Pringles Cinnamon & Sugar and White Chocolate Peppermint

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In my last post about Pumpkin Pie Spice Pringles, I mentioned that Pringles went insane three times this holiday season, and that I would get to the other two at another time. Well it turns out that time is now!

Reviewing Pringles twice in a row is a bit of a challenge, since I blew my preamble wad on the last review, what with the discussion about feeling like a cheap whore after eating Pringles since they are not actually chips and what have you. A friend of mine suggested some freestyle rapping, at which point I grabbed his face, got Batman Close, and asked him if I looked like the kind of person who would freestyle rap.

After he ran away crying, I looked at the blinking cursor mocking me on my monitor and actually gave it some consideration.

Realizing that it was sad that it had come to rapping about poppin’ and not stoppin’, I decided maybe it would be best to just jump into things. Then I realized Kris Kringle rhymes with Pringle, and hit ctrl+b before I lost my shit completely. Oh my god, I can’t stop rhyming. Please help me.

Limited Time Only Pringles Cinnamon & Sugar

Sometimes I feel like the title of my posts ruins the fun. It’s a necessary evil, but it’s a total spoiler. I just want to get the elephant in the room out of the way and say that Cinnamon & Sugar Pringles are not the most exciting part of this review. Sorry guys, but it’s true.

However, in my family we had a rule on Christmas morning that you had to open your stocking before you could open your presents. So let’s wade through this metaphorical menagerie of oranges, toothbrushes, Hot Wheels and dollar bills before we get to the big-ticket item. It’s only proper.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong – cinnamon sugar flavored potato crisps are still sound weird and unnatural, even if they may seem tame in comparison to the other Pringles in this review. But then I remembered last year’s experience with Mission Sugar Cinnamon Tortilla Chips and realized that maybe I shouldn’t judge a can by its cover.

That said, let’s judge a can by its cover.

Like Pumpkin Pie Spice Pringles, Cinnamon & Sugar gets all meta with their can-on-a-can design. C&S doesn’t get anything as cool as a can-shaped pumpkin, though; instead, they get some little swirlies that don’t have much to do with cinnamon, sugar, or Christmas in general. Pft.

As if to make up for this, the metacan is stuffed to the gills with cinnamon sticks. I’ll admit that it’s probably difficult to represent sugar in any way that wouldn’t make it look like a pile of snow and/or blow (the rhyming, it haunts me), so I guess those little twinkles on top of the sticks are supposed to be sugar. That, or magic.

Trust me, it’s not magic. As I popped the top, I was met with the odor of cinnamon almost as strong as those damn pine cones they put in the front of grocery stores every Christmas that make me sneeze. I was okay with that, though; I took it as a good sign.

And indeed it was. There was a heavy dusting of both cinnamon and sugar on each potato crisp, and both flavors were pleasant and worked well with each other. Because the flavors were so strong, they blocked out most of the flavor of the actual potato crisp, which was a good thing.

Note the word “most”, though. You can’t keep a mediocre potato crisp down, so inevitably I got some Pringles flavor creeping in at the end, ruining the fun cinnamon and sugar party.

Limited Time Only Pringles Cinnamon & Sugar aren’t completely awful, they just aren’t in any way impressive. Furthermore, there’s no real reason for them to exist. Do you want Pringles? Buy some Pringles. Do you want cinnamon and sugar? Buy a coffee cake or some shit. But really, who wants Pringles and cinnamon/sugar? The answer is no one. Well, there’s probably someone out there. But not the type of person I’d want to associate with.

Limited Time Only Pringles White Chocolate Peppermint

We’ve arrived. White Chocolate fucking Peppermint fucking Pringles. Again, there is no reason for these to exist. This is a road that can only lead to bad things.

To add insult to injury, this was my White Whale. Call me Ahab. I went to two different Walmarts and two different Targets just to find these goddamn things. Like I didn’t hate the idea of eating them already, they made me go to two Walmarts. In the spirit of the Christmas season, I mangled a public domain song in their honor:
Pringle bells, oh Pringle bells
Pringle hate in my heart
Oh, how sad it is to walk
With an empty goddamn cart

Yeah, it’s no good. I should have stuck with Kris Pringle.

When I finally found these Pringles, it was a bittersweet victory, for obvious reasons. As I was checking out, the cashier rang up the can, and then looked at it, seemingly puzzled. “Huh, I’ve never seen these before,” he said, which is telling, since he worked there. I take this as proof that I was the first and only person to buy these, because they are stupid.

I should know better than to engage people in conversations when I’m buying review food. Case in point: the Double Down incident.

But I never learn my lesson, and for some reason I felt the need to explain my purchase, so I casually mentioned that I review weird foods on the internet.

Whoops.

The cashier then launched into this thing about how when he likes to try weird foods, a statement that I for some reason found unsettling from the start, he goes to the nearby Vietnamese market, where you can “try things like durian”. He was super into telling me about this place, which really had nothing to do with what I’d said, and which I already knew existed. For some reason he left the can of Pringles on the counter as he bagged the rest of my purchases.

This left me wondering if he’d just become distracted, or if he left them out like some half-drank water bottle somebody picked up while they were shopping. Did he think I would be needing them immediately? That I would have the urge to rip off the top and start munching on them in the parking lot? I have no idea. I just wanted him to stop talking. So I bagged them myself, which for some reason felt even more embarrassing than just buying them.

Also, you can’t fool me, Target cashier. I know what durian is.

The White Chocolate Peppermint Pringles can is deceivingly cute. Awww, it’s a candy cane can, with white chocolate melting out over the top, and a bunch of candy canes inside! The white chocolate also resembles the top of a Christmas stocking, or maybe snow. Or maybe it’s trying to escape, because it knows it doesn’t belong in a can of Pringles.

Even the Pringles man seems to be looking up at the candy canes with an expression that says, “Really? We’re going to do this?”

So yeah, here are these fucking White Chocolate Peppermint Pringles. They look fairly innocent. I am not fooled.

When you pop open the can, there’s a smell akin to ripping open a box with a Barbie doll inside on Christmas morning. Just vague plasticness. There’s really no peppermint or white chocolate smell at all. Is this a good sign or a bad sign?

Oddly, there were little black flecks sprinkled on most of the otherwise white dust-covered Pringles. If Pringles were chips, I’d chock that up to a little bit of burning during the frying process. But Pringles are like plyboard, and I’d never seen these flecks on any other Pringle. Why are they there? Then again, we’re talking about White Chocolate Peppermint Pringles. None of these things should be there.

I had no idea what to expect when I tasted these Pringles. There are times when I hope something will actually taste like what it says it tastes like, and then there are times when I pray that things taste nothing like what they’re supposed to taste like. In the case of White Chocolate Peppermint Pringles, I was hoping for the latter.

Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed.

These Pringles tasted exactly like how they’re supposed to, and my taste buds wanted to go to their special place and pretend this wasn’t happening. They tried desperately to pretend they were experiencing the best spinach artichoke dip in the world, or the most juicy, flavorful steak.

But try as they might, my taste buds could not deny what was happening. There was no happy place. Immediately upon hitting my tongue, there was the unmistakeable and rather strong flavor of white chocolate.

This was soon engulfed by a strong peppermint. But not just any peppermint – it really did taste like candy cane peppermint. In fact, it tasted like someone had shoved a candy cane right in my mouth. Unwillingly. The flavor powder got on my lips, so that even after I’d choked down the chip, it felt like I’d just applied a coating of holiday-themed lip gloss, complete with mild mint burning sensation. My poor lips, even they were not safe.

Should I give points to Pringles for nailing a flavor so unlikely for a potato crisp? No, because they’re gross. They’re gross and disturbing. Do you pop a mint right before you dive into a plate of nachos? Of course not. White chocolate and peppermint have their place in the Christmas flavor spectrum. They even go well together. But Limited Time Only Pringles White Chocolate Peppermint are so very wrong, and I’m sure they were created purely for the Internet hype machine that loves bizarre foods. If you don’t trust me, make a batch of instant potatoes and stir in a white chocolate candy bar and some crushed candy canes. Enjoy, you freak.

Limited Time Only Pringles Cinnamon & Sugar

  • Score: 2 out of 5 piles of blow. I mean snow. I mean sugar.
  • Price: $1.50
  • Size: 6.38 oz. can
  • Purchased at: Walmart
  • Nutritional Quirks: Both cinnamon and sugar are listed as ingredients, which makes the flavor powder on these Pringles more “real” than the crisps themselves.

Limited Time Only Pringles White Chocolate Peppermint

  • Score: 0.5 out of 5 Kris Pringles looking disgusted
  • Price: $1.52
  • Size: 6.38 oz. can
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Is it the anhydrous milk fat or the sweet cream solids that make these so magical? I can’t decide!

Dinosaur Dracula, So Good and The Impulsive Buy also braved these holiday Pringles.

Junk Food

Limited Time Only Pringles Pumpkin Pie Spice

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Happy Thanksgiving! Pumpkin Pie Pringles.

I mentioned in an earlier post that if I saw one more thing pumpkin spice-flavored for the holidays that I was going to flip out and cause an “incident” at the grocery store. My annoyance with pumpkin spice remains – adding some nutmeg and cinnamon to your frozen waffles and calling it a limited time holiday blah blah is a cheap ploy.

However, we all know there are exceptions to every rule, and this is one of them, for reasons I don’t need to explain but will anyways. These are Pringles, and they are Pumpkin Pie Spice-flavored. Yeah. No explanation needed.

Pringles aren’t really potato chips, per se. They’re dried potatoes pressed into a shape that can be used to make a duck bill-face that will amuse your three-year-old nephew for about five seconds. This shape is also convenient for stacking in their iconic cardboard tubes, which I’m sure we’ve all used as a coin bank at some point in our lives. Sour cream and onion dimes.

My friends and I butt heads about many things, mostly because arguing with each other is our #1 pastime. We seem to have come to an agreement about Pringles, however. And yes, these are the things we talk about. Pringles.

The conclusion we came to about Pringles is that we never really seek them out. I wouldn’t choose Pringles over, say, a kettle chip, or a regular chip, or…well, pretty much anything that can legally be called a chip and not a dried potato product. They are like salted tater cardboard. In fact, I actually feel a little odd eating them, like I’m eating something that should not be.

And yet, the unanimous yet guilt-ridden confession from all of us was that, if there were Pringles were placed in front of us, we would eat them. A stack of them, in fact. I don’t know why; it’s just one of those things. Maybe it’s the fact that they seem saltier than chips, which allows us to pretend that we’re eating a normal salty snack and not something that’s one step removed from instant mashed potato flakes.

The essence of Pringles themselves is not the main focus here, however. The main focus is PUMPKIN PIE SPICE PRINGLES WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE.

Pringles has gone insane. Not just one time, but three times. You’ll see more on that in later posts. Teaser alert.

So, yeah. Pumpkin Pie Spice Pringles. That’s just so fundamentally wrong. Which is probably why they created them. As long as the Internet hype machine continues to feed into batshit crazy food products, companies will continue to create them.

I’m obviously thrilled about this. Right up until the time when I realize I actually have to eat them.

I have to say, though, Pringles really committed to this flavor, and it shows in the packaging. That’s a beautiful pumpkin nestled amongst those cinnamon sticks. It’s the type of pumpkin that’s begging to have a face carved into it, but since we’re past that holiday, it’s going to be used to make a pie, which also happens to be the lovely and innocuous backdrop on the can to announce the unnatural flavor that lies inside.

Almost unnoticed but possibly the best part, there’s some can-on-can action going on! There’s a pumpkin can on the can! I’ve never seen a pumpkin shaped like that, but I love it. I want my Pringles in an actual pumpkin can. Not really a viable option, but-

Wait, what am I saying? Don’t suck me in with your strange yet adorable packaging, Pringles. Gotta keep my eye on what’s really going on, here. Dried potato crisps flavored like pumpkin pie.

I tend to give the sniff test to things that I think are going to taste gross. You’d think I’d just want to shove them in my mouth and get it over with, but I guess I’m just a masochist like that.

When I administered the sniff test to my can of Limited Time Only Pringles Pumpkin Pie Spice, I smelled…pumpkin pie. Cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg…I swear I even smelled a hint of crust.

Encouraging, right?

Taking not gagging at the smell as a good sign, I dove right in to the potato crisps. Lo and behold, they tasted like…pumpkin goddamn pie.

Well, pretty much. Again, the cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg were all present, and the essence of pumpkin pie was immediate. I found myself not repulsed, but a little creeped out. The flavor and the powder dusting were just right, in that all the flavors were there and worked together without being overpowering.

The downfall of Pumpkin Pie Spice Pringles lies in the Pringles themselves. The pie flavor recedes rather quickly, but the Pringle has more staying power, leaving you with dried potato and salt mixed with pumpkin pie. This is not a nice finish.

The ability of Limited Time Only Pringles Pumpkin Pie Spice to capture the actual flavor of pumpkin pie spice left my mouth confused. On the one hand, I wanted to praise them for their accuracy. On the other hand, I wanted to hate them…for their accuracy. As I said before, it’s just creepy.

Luckily, Pringles saved me the trouble of trying to come to terms with my feelings by being Pringles. What starts off tasty quickly turns unsettling, as pumpkin pie battles salty dried potatoes, and the potatoes win. You can put all the spices you want on the Pringles, but you can’t take the Pringles out of Pringles.

Limited Time Only Pringles Pumpkin Pie Spice

  • Score: 2 out of 5 Pringles duck bills
  • Price: $1.50
  • Size: 6.38 oz. can
  • Purchased at: Walmart (exclusive)
  • Nutritional Quirks: Pumpkin not listed as an ingredient! Shocking! Contains less than 2% of “natural flavors”! Also shocking!

Fat Guy Foodblog and The Impulsive Buy also prepared their palates for Pumpkin Pie Pringles.

Junk Food

Limited Edition Pop-Tarts Frosted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate Toaster Pastries

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It’s that time of year to break out the fleece blankets and fire up the furnace. Well, for some of you, you’ve already had your fair share of cold and disastrous weather; for me, I just turned on the heater for the first time in about nine months, releasing that disgusting but all-too-familiar odor that I can only imagine is caused by the burning of accumulated dust and pet hair. Mmmm, the smells of autumn.

Of course, no cold and dreary day curled up in your Snuggie watching that Hoarders marathon would be complete without a cup of hot chocolate. Hot chocolate does not discriminate by age; whether you’re young, old, or experiencing a mid-life crisis, you can always enjoy a cup of hot cocoa without anyone judging you.

In fact, you can even add marshmallows and nobody will bat an eye. How often do adults get to do that, minus being at a bonfire? Marshmallows in your hot chocolate? Accepted, even encouraged. Marshmallows in your cereal? Grow up, dude. You’re being immature. Or you’re an Internet food reviewer.

Of course, you can’t always have hot chocolate and marshmallows at your fingertips. …Well, actually, I suppose you can, thanks to one Swiss Miss. But Pop-Tarts wants to make sure you have it in edible form with their Limited Edition Frosted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate Toaster Pastries.

Props on the packaging, first of all. Completely holiday-neutral while still conveying a winter wonderland, which means you can enjoy these Pop-Tarts from now until Kellogg’s comes out with a Valentine’s Day Limited Edition Red Velvet Cake Pop-Tart. Man, I should be in marketing.

We’ve got a mug of hot chocolate, steaming hot and inviting as snow falls around it; quaint houses in the background with smoke rising from their chimneys while trees struggle to handle the weight of the snow on their boughs. It’s simplistic, yet idyllic, unless you find isolated cabins in the woods to be ominous, in which case – what’s really burning in those fireplaces?

The fun doesn’t stop on the front, however. On the back of the box, there’s a rebus puzzle! As I child I loved these puzzles, and I can imagine entertaining myself with this one while waiting for my Pop-Tarts to pop out of the toaster.

I’m a little rusty at these, but let’s give it a try!

“Q: Why is Pop-Tarts filling so good at math?”

Well, my first and most obvious answers would be a.) it’s not, because it’s a toaster pastry filling, or b.), because it has become sentient and its screams should be heard any second now as I unknowingly commit homicide on a sugary filling that has feelings and a knowledge of math.

But I’ll play along anyways! Let’s work it out step by step:

“A: Because it’s”

1. W+ fedora +s…okay, so first word: wfedoras. That was easy. I’m not sure what a wfedora is, but sometimes you have to solve the whole thing to get the big “aha!” moment.

2. flipper -f +s+ reluctant bride -br: lippersreluctantide. Sounds like some sort of pesticide…not sure where we’re going, here.

3. th+ crazy-eyed feline -c: thazy-eyed feline. What’s thazy? Sounds kind of like lazy, and we all know cats are lazy assholes. Thazy assholes.

4. heifer -w +u+ hive mind colony -a: Wait, there are a lot of letters here that don’t belong in the first place. That’s odd. I’ll try again. cow -w +u+ assholes -a: coussholes. Hm.

“A: Because it’s wfedoras lippersreluctantide thazy-eyed feline coussholes.”

Man, these puzzles are harder than I remember. I guess it could also be “Because it’s whats inside that counts.” Hoooooooo, boy. Watch out, Laffy Taffy; Pop-Tarts is gunning for you. Don’t be gettin’ thazy on your jokes.

Going off of looks and the box, I guess the marshmallow is supposed to be the filling and the frosting is the…hot chocolate? It’s obvious that the pastry itself is chocolate, but chocolate and hot chocolate are two different things. There’s also what appears to be an Oreo-like crumble on top of the frosting, which I am all for. I’ve always been of the opinion that unfrosted Pop-Tarts are lame, frosted Pop-Tarts are where it’s at, and frosted Pop-Tarts with some kind of extra topping are the crème de la crème of P-to-the-Ts. Sorry; I got tired of typing Pop-Tarts.

Cold P-Ts are sad, and we’re dealing with a flavor that is specifically meant to warm your mouth and your cockles, so I threw mine in the toaster oven. I don’t own an actual toaster because it turned out my last one was possessed by Satan.

The box said to toast the pastry on the lowest/lightest setting. It came out not quite as warm as I wanted, so I popped it in there for another few seconds.

I have to say, I was not expecting a whole lot from Marshmallow Hot Chocolate Pop-Tarts, but I really enjoyed these. The chocolate pastry was chocolatey without being overwhelming, the frosting really did seem to have an essence of hot chocolate, and the crumbles added just a tiny but of chocolate crunch.

The real star here was the marshmallow filling. Warm and gooey, it was spot-on marshmallow goodness. It was like Kellogg’s had found a supply of The Stuff, minus part where it takes over your brain and all that. There wasn’t so much that it overwhelmed the flavors of the pastry and the frosting, but not so little that you were left with little more than a pastry with frosting. As Goldilocks would say, it was just right.

When I was eating my Limited Edition Pop-Tarts Frosted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate Toaster Pastry, I really did feel like I was eating a warm, gooey, chocolatey winter treat. If you try these, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you eat it cold. My one complaint is that I could only eat one at a sitting, because these pastries are, unsurprisingly, very sweet.

Take that minute or two to warm it up, pour yourself a mug of coffee, settle down in your Forever Lazy, and enjoy!

Limited Edition Pop-Tarts Frosted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate Toaster Pastries

  • Score: 4 out of 5 thazy coussholes
  • Price: $2.89
  • Size: Box of 12 toaster pastries
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Got a sweet tooth and want to have not one, but two of these Pop-Tarts? Get ready for 38 grams of sugar in your face!
Junk Food

Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips Sea Salt, Cheddar and Ranch

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A little while ago, I got an email from someone named Doehne Duckworth offering to send me some free samples to review.

That was it. No product name, no pictures. Just two sentences. Mysterious.

Thankfully, Mr. Duckworth (whose name immediately invokes childhood memories of Scrooge McDuck swimming in a pile of gold coins) had an email address that Google led me to his product’s website: Deano’s Jalapeños. (Editor’s note: since the writing of this post, Deano’s Jalapeño’s website has gone down for remodeling. Consider this an archive of the beauty that it was before remodeling!)

I was met by fire gifs running down the side of the home page, which is always a sign of awesome. I was also met by the headline, “The Newest and Most UniqueSnack Food Available in the Universe”.

Fire gifs and typos. Red flags for most websites, but I’ve learned to take these things in stride when it comes to most small business’s sites, especially when it comes to the food industry. If I’d judged every local restaurant by their poorly-constructed website, I would have missed out on some of the most delicious food in my area. They’re doing the best they can, and sometimes that means asking your nephew to set up your website.

Plus, I could not ignore the brazen claim of being the newest and most unique snack food available in the universe. Not just the country, or even the world. The universe. Eat your heart out, Curiosity rover. Whatever you wind up finding on Mars, it won’t be anything like Deano’s Jalapeño Chips. Deano knows this.

I still didn’t really understand what these chips were, though. At first glance, it doesn’t sound that new or unique at all. Jalapeño chips? Welcome to the rest of the snack aisle, Mr. Duckworth.

But as I read on, I discovered that Deano was on to something different. To quote their website, “…everyone was trying to make their potato chips taste like jalapenos. Why not just use a real jalapeno!”

Why not, indeed! To explain a little further: “The award-winning flavor of Deano’s Jalapenos comes from the fact that there are no potatoes involved. Instead, this handcrafted snack is made from fresh jalapeno peppers that are sliced paper thin, kettle fried to a spicy crisp, and given a dusting of sharp cheddar, ranch or sea salt. It’s a snack that packs a late-hitting heat with a warm, salty flavor that becomes just a little addictive.”

Fresh, fried jalapeños? I was sold. And just a few days later, I had a lovely little package in my mailbox. To my delight, this included one package of each flavor. Here we go!

Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips Sea Salt

I like the package design, in terms of both aesthetics and practicality. First off, Deano has chosen to go the pouch route with a tear-off resealable top. The use of the resealable top in the snack world strikes me as fairly recent; off the top of my head, it seems most popular with things like beef jerky and…well, beef jerky is all I can think of right now.

I’ve only encountered one line of chips that employs the resealable top, and the first time I saw it, I thought, why isn’t every chip manufacturer doing this? The only answer I could think of is that they’re in with Big Chip Clip. It’s like cans that haven’t yet employed pull-tab top technology – I now get irritated any time I have to use a can opener, and it’s not just because I’m left-handed.

Deano’s is a small company, however, and they don’t kowtow to Chip Clips. Thus, the glorious resealable pouch.

Each of Deano’s three varieties of chips has a different design that ties in with the flavor. With Sea Salt, we are transported to a tropical island, complete with palm tree, waves, seagulls, and a wooden surfboard.

I want to lounge on a beach while my Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips Sea Salt are served with a Mai Tai by a hunky shirtless man who does not speak English.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened the bag. I had no idea what actual fried, sliced jalapeño chips would look like. Now that I’ve seen them? Well, they aren’t exactly pretty, but they do look pretty authentico.

Upon first glance, it was obvious that these are, indeed, real jalapeños, that have, indeed, been fried, and have also, indeed, been covered in sea salt. Truth in advertising, this is.

Deano’s Jalapeño Chips can rival any other chip in the crunch category, thanks to being fried, and they are also deliciously salty, thanks to the giant chunks of sea salt visible on each piece. Unfortunately, I had a lot less slices and a lot more broken pieces, which could have been due to shipping, but it also gave it the odd appearance of looking like fried seaweed.

While the salt and crunch were excellent, I struggled to find the true taste of the jalapeño pepper inside the chip. Oh, don’t get me wrong; Deano’s brought the heat. That part was unmistakable, and kept building as I ate, until I was wishing for that Mai Tai.

However, part of the reason I love fresh jalapeños is their flavor, and I had a hard time finding it here. Maybe it was the frying process. Maybe the heat overwhelmed it. But the true taste of the pepper got a little lost somewhere. While that was disappointing, I still found myself tossing these crunchy little critters in my mouth, even as that genuine pepper heat started to make my nose run. Snot just adds to the flavor!

Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips Cheddar

Deano’s took a mildly different turn on their Cheddar Jalapeño Chip packaging. Added are the phrases “try a slice of spice” and “made in Vermont”, which should inspire confidence, because when I think spicy peppers, I think…Vermont.

Cheddar’s packaging has the standard Deano’s logo, but varies from Sea Salt in ways I find, frankly, confusing. Gone is the surfer/beach theme, now replaced with…flames? I don’t know what cheddar has to do with flames. They’re still jalapeño chips, which means they’re all hot, right? And what’s with the generic green tattered-edge cheddar logo? That would have been a good place to stick a cheese wedge or something.

I want to be surrounded by kokopellis and  cute little gecko lizards while I eat Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips Cheddar. A man wearing a sombrero and poncho should bring me a margarita.

More slices and less broken pieces in this one. Also, a familiar friend – neon orange flavor powder!

Having eaten pretty much every one of Frito-Lay’s 2,000 “cheese plus spicy flavored” chip iterations, I was curious to see how Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips would compare. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the cheddar flavor tasted more like actual cheese than your run-of-the-mill cheese-flavored chips.

The spicy heat was present, just like with the Sea Salt variety, but I actually found more of the jalapeño pepper flavor itself present in in Cheddar chips. I have no idea why, but it was there, and it was welcome. The pepper flavor, the heat and the cheddar all worked in unison to create a delicious crunchy snack.

Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips Ranch

Let’s call Deano’s Cheddar packaging a misstep, because Ranch brings it back around. Here we have a beautiful sunset as a backdrop to some cacti and desert brush. The flavor is announced on a perfectly appropriate wooden sign that is askew, because every ranch sign should be askew. And check out that jalapeño – it’s been lassoed. Yee-haw!

I want a dude to ride up on his horse and pull me up onto the saddle as a woman in a pearl-studded cowboy shirt rings a triangle, letting us know it’s time to eat some Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips Ranch. I would also like to be served a mug shaped like a cowboy boot containing some Shiner Bock to compliment my chips.

The Ranch Jalapeño Chips looked remarkably similar to the Sea Salt variety; there was no dusting of little red and green flecks that I generally associate with ranch-flavored chips.

At first glance, I attributed this to Deano’s being a smaller company that used more “authentic” means of flavoring. Don’t ask me what authentic ranch flavor powder consists of; I was just giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, it seems that the ranch flavoring was hard to find because it wasn’t really there in the first place. I caught a bit of the familiar tanginess of typical ranch chip flavoring as an aftertaste, but for the most part, Deano’s Ranch Jalapeño Chips suffered the same problems as Sea Salt – nice heat, but little pepper flavor. At least with the Sea Salt variety you got a lot of saltiness to go with your heat; with Ranch, it was mostly just crunch and spice, through and through.

I had high hopes for Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips. In the end, there were ups and downs. If you want to compare them to regular chips that claim to be spicy, Deano’s definitely wins. They’ve also got a great crunch to them. Out of the three varieties, I enjoyed the Cheddar the most, but the other two fell short on delivering the true flavor of jalapeño, and while the Sea Salt was, indeed, salty, the Ranch chips couldn’t bring the flavor.

Despite some their shortcomings, I still found myself liking Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips in general. They are, indeed, quite the unique snack. You’re going to look way cooler eating a bag of Deano’s than a regular ol’ bag of Doritos. Even if looks like you’re eating fried seaweed while snot runs down your face.

(Editor’s Note: Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips were provided for free courtesy of Deano’s Jalapeños. Thanks, Mr. Duckworth!)

Deano’s Jalapeño Real Sliced Chips Sea Salt, Cheddar and Ranch

  • Score (Sea Salt): 3 out of 5 people who think you’re eating fried seaweed
  • Score (Cheddar): 4 out of 5 missed cheese wedge opportunities
  • Score (Ranch): 2.5 out of 5 cowbells
  • Price: Free!
  • Size: 2.25 oz. bags/pouches
  • Purchased at: Received in the mail for free, but once Deano’s Jalapeños website comes back up, you should be able to purchase them there.
  • Nutritional Quirks: Real fried jalapeño slices. Beat that, Doritos! Also, the Ranch variety contains parsley. Parsley…ranch?
Miscellaneous

Tung Toos Halloween Temporary Tongue Tattoos Fun Pack and Scary Pack

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Happy Halloween! What better way to celebrate than to tattoo your tongue?

Tung Toos are one of those things that are stuck in a display at the end of a random shopping aisle. They don’t get top billing in the Halloween aisle like pumpkin-shaped Snickers and 5000-count bags of Willy Wonka candy. Easy to overlook. But that’s what makes them special. And these are, indeed, special.

Tung Toos. Awesome name. Tung Toos. Awesome website. Seriously, I could spend hours just breaking down their website, but I’m kind of in a time crunch here, and there’s so much to get to!

As you may have guessed from the title, these are temporary tattoos…for your tongue! How is that not amazing. Kids seem to love sticking their tongues out, and now they can do it in Halloween style. As if that weren’t enough, they’re flavored! Man oh man. Let’s get right in there.

Tung Toos Halloween Temporary Tongue Tattoos Fun Pack

See, this is the spirit of Halloween. There’s no room for slick packaging in the world of obscure Halloween treats. This is Halloween vomiting all over a package, and doing it right.

Orange, black, green, purple, spider webs, a confused alien, a ghost who is either trying to lure me into his van or is about to catcall me…it’s all there, and it’s all great.

LOOK AT THESE TONGUE TATTOOS. LOOK AT THEM.

I was disappointed to get a “double” in my Fun Pack, but I used to be really into Pogs, so I’m familiar with the feeling. Let’s break this down, clockwise-style.

Happy Jack ‘o Lantern: This dude is super into being on your tongue. He also appears to be flying, and is filled with slime instead of a stupid tea candle. I have a particular fondness for his right eye, which kind of looks like a flame, but also resembles the work of someone who can’t carve in a straight line. I respect that.

Candy Corns: Boring, but a Halloween classic. Well, a Halloween classic with the wrong colors. Yellow tip whaaaaaaat? Tung Toos ain’t afraid to break from convention.

Bats, Yo: Bats. Bats good. Bats fun.

Opportunity for more flying Jack ‘O Lanterns

Crazy Pumpkin: This is a clinically insane pumpkin that has escaped from the pumpkin mental institution. He’s off his meds and off his rocker. Will he stab you, or sing you a song with incomprehensible lyrics? It’ll be a fun surprise!

Box…Monster…Guy: Okay, Box Monster Guy is definitely my favorite in the Fun Pack. Who is Box Monster? What is Box Monster? He appears to have vampire fangs, but then he’s also got a bottom fang, which is probably super useful when you’re shotgunning a beer. It’s not helping to keep his tongue in his mouth, however. Ooooo, a tongue tattoo of a tongue! That’s so meta.

Eye Totem/Poorly Constructed Cairn: I’ll be honest, I have absolutely no idea what is happening here. They seem sort of like eyes? The top and middle ones are looking at each other like they think they’re in the intro of The Brady Bunch. I have absolutely no guesses on the bottom ones. Boobs.

[Edit]: Most of you probably thought I was joking around about the Eye Totem thing. However, it took my husband rotating that particular tattoo 90 degrees for me to see that it obviously says “BOO”. I am the most unobservant person in the world. However, I like my version better, so I’m sticking with it. Besides, “boo” is just two letters short of “boobs”, so let’s just say I was on the right track.

Tung Toos Halloween Temporary Tongue Tattoos Scary Pack

Halloween is lots of fun, but Halloween is also supposed to be scary. Tung Toos knows this, and they’ve got you covered.

More Halloween vomit, and equally awesome: purple background scary trees evil oogie boogies and one smug-as-balls Frankenstein’s monster. I like to think he’s the ringleader, and all the other guys on the package are his minions. I’d be smug too, if I had a skull-and-crossbones doing my bidding.

Another double! Again, disappointing. I wonder if all the packs had doubles? I should have bought 50. Another smart move by Tung Toos. Anyone who has ever collected cards knows you gotta catch ’em all, and that means spending $500 just so you can get that ultra-rare foil card.

Well, I’ll have to make do with what I got. And what I got is pretty fabulous.

Some Kinda Zombie Dude: I love this guy. He’s obviously a zombie, but why are his brains exposed? Who cares, it rocks. I also like his facial expression. It’s less “I wanna eat you” and more “Are you seriously giving me this report at 4:30pm on a Friday?” I think that green thing hanging off his lower lip is supposed to be his tongue, but I prefer to imagine somebody ran up to him and draped a green gummy worm over his mouth. That’s why slow, stupid zombies are fun. You can totally fuck with them.

Cacklin’ Cracklin’ Alien: A classic alien, re-imagined with scary pointy teeth and really dry skin. Seriously, look at those cracks! Someone get this alien some moisturizer! He’ll probably eat you, but hey. No good deed and all that.

Evil Skull: Yep, he’s evil. And seems to be disintegrating around the edges, for some reason. But still evil.

Black Cat Missing Some Toes: Another Halloween classic, the pissed off black cat. A simple yet effective design.

Cyclops Monster Having a Really Bad Day: Again, no idea what this is supposed to be, but my favorite in the Scary Pack. I dunno what happened to this guy, but he obviously sustained a head injury, and I’m guessing he can’t afford medical insurance, since he apparently went to some sketchy back-alley Dr. Killjoy who wrapped his head but ignored the giant gaping wound on his cheek. He’s also ruptured some blood vessels in his eye. Take care of that eye, buddy. It’s the only one you’ve got.

Irresponsible Vampire Ghost: Tied for second place favorite with Some Kinda Zombie Dude, this Vampire Ghost obviously lives with his mom, and she’s sick of doing his laundry. He’s a total slob, letting his ghost sheet get all bloody and dingy like that. He also has that open-mouthed, cow-eyed stare that just screams “I live in my parents’ basement and don’t have time to look for a job because I’m too busy organizing raids”. Video game raids, not ghostly vampire raids. Vampire Ghost Mom really wishes he’d make something of himself.

Repeats Boo Blah Blah: Blah. Wish I’d gotten two Injured Cyclops and Dirty Ghosts instead.

Now that we know all the players, let’s get to the point of them, which is sticking them on your tongue.

If you’ve ever used a temporary tattoo, you’re familiar with how this works. Just in case, however, Tung Toos offers some helpful instructions. Step 1: “Stick out tongue.” Genius.

Steps 2-4: Slap that bitch on your tongue for a couple seconds, don’t fuck with it, and then take the paper off. I’m obviously paraphrasing here; I think some parents might object to such language on a temporary tattoo wrapper.

I did find Step 5 problematic: “Stick out tongue at nearest friend.”

Hmmm…

I’ve heard you’re supposed to be your own best friend. And so I was. Turns out taking a picture of your own tongue in the mirror is harder than it would seem. Despite how it may appear due to my shitty photography, the tattoo itself was pretty clear and brightly colored. That’s temporary tattoo success!

Seeing as how your mouth is full of fluids and all, I expected the tattoo to be very temporary. This was not exactly the case. I figured I’d use one of the repeats as a test run, but Flying Jack didn’t want to leave. So there you go.

The tattoo had a pleasant sugary and slightly fruity taste that faded well before the actual tattoo did. I wasn’t expecting much in the flavor department, so I was glad that at least it didn’t taste like envelope glue.

Really, who cares what they taste like. Tung Toos are meant to be seen by your nearest friends. They deliver a bright and fairly clear image, and they’re Halloween as balls, inside and out. I would slap one of these bad boys on right before going trick-or-treating and stick my tongue out at every single person who gave me candy. When you’ve got a pumpkin or a cyclops on your tongue, that’s a compliment, not an insult!

Tung Toos Halloween Temporary Tongue Tattoos Fun Pack and Scary Pack

  • Score: 4 out of 5 zombies walking around with gummy worms falling out of their mouths
  • Price: $1.00 (on sale; regular price $1.29)
  • Size: Pack of 8 temporary tattoos
  • Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
  • Nutritional Quirks: Did not taste like envelope glue!
Beverages

Kool-Aid Ghoul-Aid Scary Blackberry

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Ghoul-Aid Scary Blackberry is not new. I am sorry that I have to call Kool-Aid’s packaging a liar, but The Surfing Pizza caught you with the exact same packaging last year. Oops.

But that’s okay, because I love Ghoul-Aid. I wasn’t aware of it last year, but once I saw it this year, it brought back old, vague memories of it having existed sometime in my childhood.

I knew I’d had Ghoul-Aid before. I knew a part of me missed it. And the Internet proved me right.

Doing a quick Google Image Search for “old Ghoul-Aid” showed me that it wasn’t just a fever dream or wishful thinking. I WAS RIGHT. And now I have the chance to relive those wonderful memories. Or prove once again that things I loved as a child don’t really hold up in adulthood. Either way.

To be honest, I can’t see this going wrong. Kool-Aid has almost never let me down, and if Ghoul-Aid doesn’t scream Halloween to you, well then, you have a dead soul.

Just look at that package. How many things are awesome about it? Let me count the ways.

Spooooooky black/purple background, complete with giant moon and bats. Creeeeepy slime font declaring this to be Ghoul-Aid, which is a no-brainer in the Halloween re-branding department, if you ask me. Scary Blackberry flavor, which not only brings the right color to the Halloween party, but it also rhymes. Seriously, Kool-Aid would be committing a crime not to have initially thought of this. It all writes itself.

And then, of course, there’s the Kool-Aid Man. He’s done a lot of things throughout the years; busting through walls, surfing, even riding a motherfucking pink shark. Fuck that Dos Equis guy; the Kool-Aid Man is obviously the most interesting man in the world.

I’d like to think the Kool-Aid Man actually is a vampire, and Ghoul-Aid is his one chance to show his true colors and his snazzy suit and classic vampire cape. I like the sneakers; it says, “sure, I vant to suck your blhaad, but I’m still a fun guy”.

One glaring omission: no fangs! I was pretty disappointed by this, until I realized that the Kool-Aid Man is filled not with a classic red Kool-Aid flavor, but with blood. Who needs fangs when your entire head is full of blood? Watch out, dude; you’re spilling your precious hemoglobin.

I love his stance, too. It looks like he’s lunging forward, about to throw some ice cubes and Scary Blackberry right in someone’s face. He seems pretty happy about it, too. I have a feeling the recipient would be less happy, especially if they were wearing white. Who cares, though – he’s the Kool-Aid Man; he can do whatever the fuck he wants. One “OH YEAH!” and all is forgiven.

In case you’re a mummy who just woke up after a thousand-year sleep, here’s how you make Kool-Aid: get a pitcher. Empty a packet of the powder into the pitcher. Add a cup (more or less, depending on how sweet or tart you like it) of sugar. Add two quarts of water. Stir that shit.

It’s so easy, even I can make Kool-Aid, and most of the time without setting anything on fire!

Upon opening the wrapper that contained the 5-pack of Ghoul-Aid, I was pleasantly surprised with a strong and definitive blackberry odor. This, before I had even opened a packet! Things were off to a good start.

And check this shit out! Scary Blackberry powder is orange! omg omg I love you even more now Ghoul-Aid for you have managed to incorporate both of Halloween’s colors into one beverage.

I would have seen this coming if I’d actually read through the links I posted earlier, but I didn’t, and I was glad because Halloween should be full of fun surprises and this was one of them.

Another fun surprise: as soon as water touched the powder, it instantly turned black. To quote Nathan Explosion, it was blacker than the blackest black…times infinity. Add “dark magic” to the Kool-Aid Man’s list of awesome abilities.

Even when diluted with two full quarts of water, Ghoul-Aid remained black with just the tiniest hint of purple. I know it’s a little late, but man, you need to be serving this at your Halloween party. I can’t think of another more appropriate beverage, besides maybe some of that blood from the Kool-Aid Man’s head.

I have to say, Ghoul-Aid Scary Blackberry is delicious. I added just a teensy bit less than a full cup of sugar because I like my Kool-Aid a little tart, and it came out perfect. While not an exact match to actual blackberry juice, Ghoul-Aid came amazingly close. I think if you blindfolded someone and asked them to identify the flavor, they could actually identify it as blackberry. Shame on you for blindfolding someone and making them miss out on the joy of being able to see they’re drinking liquid darkness.

Call it odd that I have such enthusiasm for a powder-based sugar drink, but I do. I eerily do. Kool-Aid Ghoul-Aid Scary Blackberry has the perfect name, great packaging and awesome orange powder that magically turns completely black. Oh, right, and it actually tastes like blackberry! I bought it in a pack of five, but I think I might go back and buy some more before Halloween ends so that I can have Ghoul-Aid year-round. I will have a perpetually black-stained zombie tongue, and I’m okay with that.

Kool-Aid Ghoul-Aid Scary Blackberry

  • Score: 5 out of 5 pitchers of blood
  • Price: $1.00
  • Size: Pack of 5 0.14 oz. packets
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Does amazing color-changing powder count? I say yes.
Junk Food

Disney Deliciously Wicked Gourmet Candy Corn Candied Apple and Blackberry Magic

8 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that my mom sends me care packs full of goodies for pretty much every holiday. Yes, I am a grown woman, but that doesn’t make it any less awesome.

She always seems to have a little surprise up her sleeve, too. Nestled amongst every candy bar you could name morphed into a pumpkin, these lovely gems arrived: Disney Deliciously Wicked Gourmet Candy Corn.

I know, I know. Candy corn. Candy corn that claims to be gourmet, at that. But this ain’t no pound of Brach’s, we’re talking about here.

There are six products in Disney’s Deliciously Wicked line of candy. First off, “Deliciously Wicked” is a wonderful moniker. Second, each of the six gets its own evil Disney villainess to represent it.

I only have two, but they’re all so lovely that I felt they all deserved mention. Here are the other four: The Evil Queen’s Sour Green Apple Saltwater Taffy, Maleficent’s Fiery Cinnamon Saltwater Taffy, The Evil Queen’s Pumpkin Spice Candy Corn and Cruella de Vil’s Red Velvet Cake Saltwater Taffy. Check out this site to view them all in their lovely glory. Always glad to see Maleficent getting some love.

While I would have liked to sample some taffy, I’m happy with what I’ve got. My mom must have psychically known I was tired of seeing pumpkin-spice flavored candy, so she picked the other two candy corn flavors. Let’s check out what we’ve got, here!

Disney Deliciously Wicked Gourmet Candy Corn Candied Apple

Say what you will about Disney; for all their faults, they know how to make some motherfucking product packaging. Glossy box, beautiful fonts, cohesive design, and no lack of detail. It’s little touches like this on the back of the box that make such packaging so complete:

In case you’re just now breaking Amish or whatever, that really pissed-off lady on the front of the box is the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.

As you can see, she’s quite the angry bitch. I won’t give you the whole background on her, assuming you have Google on your Internet, but they’ve captured the essence of her quite aptly on the package. You think you’ve got a sadistic boss? Feel lucky you didn’t accidentally plant some white roses instead of red ones. The Queen of hearts is very fond of decapitation, and I imagine this package captures her mid-screaming, “Off with their heads!”

What do caramel apples have to do with the Queen of Hearts? At first, I couldn’t really find a connection, but then I realized, hey – caramel apples – apples impaled on sticks – decapitated heads on sticks!

I have no idea if this was Disney’s intention, but I’m going with it.

Even less intentionally, quite a few of my Candied Apple Candy Corns seemed to be missing their heads, but that happens when you’ve got a candy with a thick base and a pointy end. The color scheme of the candy itself was very apt and self-explanatory; brown caramel base, bright red apple middle, and the classic candy corn white tip.

Despite their cuteness, my first whiff was not encouraging. The Queen’s Corn smelled like a caramel apple candy that had been stored inside a plastic ALF mask since 1987. One that a kid was so enamored with that he wore it and refused to take it off for two weeks before Halloween actually arrived. Not an encouraging introduction.

The taste was unfortunately much the same. Of course, most of candy corn is sugar, so that was definitely present, but the caramel and apple flavors were both off and overwhelmed by that plasticky taste. Out of what little I could taste of the intended flavors, the caramel was “eh”, but the apple was straight-up chemical-tasting and fake.

I demand the head of whomever created the flavors of Caramel Apple Candy Corn!

Disney Deliciously Wicked Gourmet Candy Corn Blackberry Magic

Another lovely rendering of a classic Disney villain. Quick look at her symbol on the back of the box:

“Aw, it’s an adorably rendered international symbol of poison, positioned right above the opening of a box full of candy! Nothing wrong with that!”

If you just escaped from a commune of Luddites, Disney helpfully lets you know that this is Ursula from The Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid is the very first movie I can remember seeing in a movie theatre. I was rather young, but I don’t recall being very scared of Ursula, despite her large and intimidating presence. Perhaps that’s because, in addition to being a scary mersoul-trapper, she was also sassy. It’s hard to be afraid of a fat lady with tentacles instead of legs when she’s singing catchy songs.

I’m pretty sure she’s also the only being with tentacles besides Cthulhu that doesn’t immediately make me think of horrible hentai. That’s a serious compliment, Ursula.

Again, lovely design on the box, and the portrayal of Ursula shows that she is both evil and totally embracing her obese sauciness. Girl knows she owns it.

These are “Blackberry Magic” candy corns, which is a pretty solid connection, since Ursula does employ what you could call black magic, and it gives Disney the perfect excuse to make a lovely Ursula-color-themed candy corn.

My camera apparently hates the color indigo, but this is a fair enough approximation of the color scheme. They couldn’t be more perfectly tailored for Ursula: deep purple base for her tentacles, a lighter indigo for her torso, and even the white tip fits with her hair! I feel like I should display them in my living room rather than eat them.

Sadly, my nose also agrees with this first impression. Blackberry Magicorns smelled like a Glade “approximation of berry” air freshener that had just been installed in a newly sanitized bathroom.

Ursula’s Corns fared a little better than the Queen’s upon tasting, but not by much. There actually was something of an approximation of blackberry flavor in there, but once again, it had to play second fiddle to the inescapable taste of chemical plastic. Ursula needs to go back to her cauldron and rethink this particular dark magic spell.

Disney is one of the masters of creating polished packaging, and these Deliciously Wicked Candy Corns are no exception. I wish I’d never opened the boxes and instead just set them on a shelf to admire the artistry and the fun candy corn colors.

Unfortunately, my job is to actually taste things, and that’s where these candy corns go wrong. The Queen of Hearts’s Candied Apple tasted like plastic upon bad caramel upon chemical apple, and Ursula’s Blackberry Magic tasted like plastic upon some approximation of blackberry that came somewhat close to succeeding, but failed again in the chemical territory.

As I’ve said before, I give big points to Halloween packaging, which I definitely have to factor into my score. Sadly, the R&D taste development department didn’t have the same luck as the marketing department, and therein lies the downfall of these candy corns, which taste anything but gourmet.

At least for a few days, the Queen and Ursula will be placed where they rightfully should be: on my shelf of Halloween decorations that are inedible.

Disney Deliciously Wicked Gourmet Candy Corn Candied Apple and Blackberry Magic

  • Score (The Queen of Hearts’s Candied Apple): 2 out of 5 decapitated heads on stakes
  • Score (Ursula’s Blackberry Magic): 3 out of 5 squirming tentacles
  • Price: Free!
  • Size: 9 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Somewhere in California
  • Nutritional Quirks: Made mostly of sugar and corn syrup, but it’s the artificial flavoring that spooks me.
Junk Food

Count Chocula Treats

3 Comments

I can’t find anything on the Internet that indicates Count Chocula Treats existed before this year, so I’m going to declare them a new Halloween product for 2012. Go ahead, try and refute me. Just don’t be surprised when you see someone wearing a hockey mask standing outside your window. That heavy breathing sound when you pick up the phone? Ignore it, I’m sure it’s nothing.

Count Chocula and his friends Boo Berry and Frankenberry have been around for over 30 years, making October mornings just a little more awesome for kids. Due to some kind of gross oversight, I was never one of those kids.

It doesn’t make sense. My mom loves Halloween. I love Halloween. I grew up in a time where parents weren’t worried about vaccines causing autism or sugary breakfast cereals turning their kids into obese blobs. I ate Lucky Charms and Frosted Flakes with the best of them. So how come I never ate any of the General Mills monster cereals? It is a perplexing mystery.

No use crying over unspilled sugary milk, however. Last year, I tried Boo Berry cereal for the first time. Now I’m going to sink my teeth into Count Chocula, this time in Treat form.

I usually give big points to any Halloween packaging that’s overstuffed with ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and whatever else you can fit onto a box or wrapper. Basically, I want everything to look like a Michael’s craft store threw up all over it.

That said, I like the cohesive minimalism Of Count Chocula’s Treat box. The color palate sticks to differing shades of brown, which keeps things looking clean and on-target with the product. Count Chocula keeps his appropriate font, and the other text also has a sufficiently spooky font.

The Treats are described as “Chocolatey Cereal Bar with Spooky-Fun Marshmallows”. Boo Berry also used the phrase “Spooky-Fun Marshmallows”, which I kind of like, but I also think General Mills isn’t giving kids enough credit. Just calling them “spooky marshmallows” would up the Halloween factor, and I can guarantee no child is going to be frightened by practically-formless blobs of sugar. By just calling them spooky, the fun is implied.

Moving on to Count Chocula himself. He has gone through several redesigns over the years, but his general undead spirit remains intact. I never really took a good look at him before now, but upon close inspection, he’s quite the interesting form of vampire.

First we have the cape with the giant collar, which is required for any self-respecting bloodsucker (or chocolatesucker, in this case). Then there’s his fabulous double-pointed hairstyle, which very few people could pull off, but Count Chocula does it with finesse and also with a wicked widow’s peak that would make any self-respecting vampire jealous.

The Choc-Man starts getting weird when we begin examining facial features. I respect his pointy ears that seem to extend almost beyond the top of his skull, But what is with that schnoz, man? I’ll skip right past the racist Jewish joke and ponder the idea that the Count is somehow related to Pinocchio and he just told a really big lie. I hope it’s not about the marshmallows being spooky-fun, or that his Treats are “naturally” flavored. He’s already got a loophole in describing the bars as “chocolatey”, which implies some degree of chocolateness but makes no claims in regards to actual chocolatude.

Maybe his big nose helps him to sniff out chocolate. Like Toucan Sam’s, it always knows.

I never noticed this before I started a triple-digit-wordcount-breakdown of every damn aspect of Count Chocula like he was auditioning for America’s Next Top Monster, but what is happening with his fangs, if you could even call them that? Dude, are you a vampire or some sort of undead human/nutria hybrid? It’s a good thing he’s a chocolate vampire and not a blood-sucking vampire, else he’d just be ineffectively trying to gnaw on people’s necks until they just got uncomfortable and squirmed away. Also, General Mills apparently does not provide dental insurance, because the poor Count has lost all his teeth except for two. That is sad.

Now that I’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time completely sperging out on Count Chocula, let me just completely contradict everything I’ve said and say that Count Chocula is awesome. It’s our flaws that make us beautiful, right? He may a buck-toothed big-nosed chocolate vampire, but he’s our buck-toothed, big-nosed chocolate vampire, dammit.

If you ask me, the one flaw in this packaging is that there’s too much emphasis on the cereal bar. You’ve already hooked us with Count Chocula and the promise of spooky-fun; I really don’t care what the dang thing looks like. The fang-ished guy doesn’t even make an appearance on the bar wrappers themselves. Give the immortal man his deserved time to shine (note: shine should not come from the sun).

Count Chocula Treats, much like the Count himself, aren’t exactly pretty, but sure do have a lot going on. Just on the surface, I could see chocolate chips, chocolate drizzle, Count Chocula cereal, and even a peek of marshmallows. There also seemed to be a sheen of chocolate glaze, and oh, by the way, the entire foundation of the bar is made out of chocolate.

In other words, this ain’t no Nutri-Grain breakfast bar. This is a chocolate mecca in cereal bar form. It’s seriously no wonder the Count lost all but two of his teeth.

But was it worth it? My mouth says yes. Biting into a Count Chocula Treat creates an instant chocoparty in your mouth. The Chocula cereal adds one of the many chocolate dimensions and a bit of crunch. The marshmallows are more formless and less spooky-fun; I think there’s a marshmallow ghost assistant that adds that chewiness and flavor that makes this a Treat (think Rice Krispies) and not just a “bar”.

My biggest complaint about these Treats is that the spooky-fun marshmallows are mostly hidden inside the bar and have no discernible form. At first, I thought this was a design flaw in the bar, but the more I looked on the Internet, the more I became convinced that Count Chocula cereal’s marshmallows never actually had a form. Just amorphous blobs. Hey, blobs have their own place in the Halloween echelon, but I’d like to see some effort to make them look like…something. Fangs, maybe?

The chocolate chips, drizzle topping, glaze and chocolate foundation all add to the overall chocolatey taste, but it’s the taste and texture of the Count Chocula cereal and the marshmallow goo that really makes Count Chocula Treats come together, as it were.  If you’re not a fan of chocolate or marshmallow treats, you’re obviously going to hate this. If you love Count Chocula cereal and have always wished it could be made into an even less healthy and more chocolatey S’mores-like food, then these bars will make your Halloween just that much more happy.

Completely unrelated note: Count Chocula Treats were listed on my receipt as “COUCHO”. Little-known fact, Count Chocula is a long-lost Marx brother!

Count Chocula Treats

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 pretty women being mildly irritated as Count Chocula tries to gnaw their necks
  • Price: $2.66
  • Size: Box of 6 0.85 oz. bars
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Each bar contains a surprisingly low 100 calories, but they are also rather small at only 0.85 oz. per bar. But who cares about calories; it’s Halloween!

Dinosaur Dracula and The Surfing Pizza also bit into some Count Chocula Treats.