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

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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

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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.

Junk Food

Cadbury Screme Egg

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Now this is Halloween. I hope those four simple words got that song from The Nightmare Before Christmas stuck in your head, because I have had it stuck in mine for three days now. I could think of worse Halloween songs. See: The Worst Witch.

Now you really hate me. We’re off to a great start.

The packaging of Cadbury Screme Eggs is simplistic but effective: black background, green oozy blob, and purple accents. Oh, sure, black and orange get all the attention around this time of year, but I think green and purple are the backup players that really add to the Halloween spirit.

And, of course, there’s the name. Could a candy be more primed for a Halloween makeover? Just pop an S on “creme” and you are set.

Cadbury wasn’t content to just make a slight name change and re-decorate some foil, however. More on that in just a second.

Screme Eggs are new in the US this year, but they’ve existed in the UK for…I’m not sure how long, but at least a year. I know this for a fact, because a friend of mine (the same one that sacrificed herself to ingest a pizza stuffed with hot dogs just for the sake of JFB) sent me a Halloween care package last year from the UK that included these eggs. Unfortunately, due to accursed international shipping, the package didn’t arrive until after Halloween was over.

I should have told November to screw off and reviewed the awesome sampling of products anyways, but for some reason I took a hard line on Halloween. I ate the goodies, but I really should have reviewed them. I have regrets, but also bragging rights that I ate Cadbury Screme Eggs before most people in the US had this opportunity. The regret still lingers, however.

Looks pretty innocuous, right? Just another already-existing product with some Halloween packaging. Yawn.

JFB confession time: I hate eggs. I have hated eggs for as long as I can remember. I don’t want to hate eggs; it makes ordering breakfast an unjust challenge. I have often seen breakfast products and thought, “That sounds delicious…too bad it’s an omelet.”

I wish I could say that I’m up for anything when it comes to reviewing foods, but I just can’t bring myself to eat things with eggs in them. I’d consider it a grand character flaw, but I’m sure most people out there have at least one food that they just can’t stand. Eggs are my kryptonite.

This all leads up to an anecdote: when I was a child, I was absolutely convinced that Cadbury Creme Eggs had actual egg inside. Try as she might, my mom could not convince me that these eggs were nothing more than a sugary Easter treat that just happened to look like an egg, inside and out. It took years before I was willing to try one. Kids are stupid.

However, perhaps if I’d had Cadbury Screme Eggs in my life as a child, I would have been much more willing to try them.

AAAHHHHHH! That’s not the typical white-and-yellow filling of a Cadbury Egg! The yolk has been replaced with green ooze! You’ve now completely won my heart, Cadbury Screme Eggs. You’re my Ectoplasm hero.

And yes, as a youth I probably would have been more willing to try an egg with green ooze inside than one that somewhat simulated actual egg filling. Kids.

Not one to rest on their slimy laurels, Cadbury also has a very Halloweenie website, complete with haunted house, bats, and a Halloween countdown clock on the home page. It also has suggestions for Halloween activities like “eyeball race” (hells yeah!) and “pin the wart on the witch”, which I think should replace pin the tail on the donkey year-round.

There’s also a Halloween trivia quiz, with questions like, “Why were Jack o’Lanterns created?” and multiple choice options like “People were lonely and found the face comforting.” It is rather adorable. Let’s face it, Cadbury Screme Eggs are for kids, and adults like me who turn into kids when October 1st rolls around. I also like the idea of lonely people carving into squash because they need a friend. “Oh Jack, you’re such a good listener. No hard feelings about scooping your guts out, right?”

As for the taste, if you’ve eaten a Cadbury Creme Egg, you’ve tasted a Cadbury Screme Egg. Sugar goo inside a milk chocolate shell. Oh, sure, they could have changed the flavoring of the green goo to green apple or something, but you know what? I love Cadbury Screme Eggs just the way they are. Good packaging, fun website, and green ooze inside.

My only bone to pick would be that the egg itself doesn’t have a cool skull on it, but after careful consideration, I think leaving the egg as-is works just as well. It’s innocence betrays nothing of the fun ghost goo that lies inside. It’s like a wall at a haunted house that suddenly drops away to reveal a bloody psychopath who wants to cut you in half with a chainsaw. Halloween is a time of surprises.

As an added bonus, I’m now halfway to making green eggs and ham, and I don’t even have to eat real eggs!

Cadbury Screme Egg

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 disembodied heads covered in slime
  • Price: $0.79
  • Size: 1.2 oz. egg
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: These things are almost literally pure sugar. Parents BEWARE
Junk Food

Limited Harvest Flavor Milky Way Caramel Apple Minis

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I have to say, I’ve been disappointed by this year’s Halloween-themed food offerings. Given, my expectations are pretty high – I expect pretty much every food packaging on grocery shelves to be covered in bats, ghosts, and witches, and the contents possibly coated in Ectoplasm.

I understand that this is unrealistic, and I applaud companies for at least trying, like the Candy Corn Oreos, even if the results are less than stellar. But if I see the words “pumpkin spice” one more time, I’m going to cause an incident in aisle three that may impede my ability to do my usual grocery shopping in the future, unless I can get away with blaming it on a poltergeist.

I also realize that making something “Halloween-flavored” has some pretty strict limitations. Eating ghost-flavored Doritos would probably pretty disappointing; I’ve never tasted a ghost, but I imagine they aren’t very flavorful. Maybe cold, at best. Likewise, I would hesitate to eat a Snickers bar that had spiders instead of peanuts in it.

…Actually, that would be kind of awesome, but I understand where they could run into some problems with that.

All this complaining leads up to one of the few new Halloween offerings I’ve seen this year: Limited Harvest Flavor Milky Way Caramels.

Okay, so there’s no ghouls or goblins on the packaging, and it’s technically not a Halloween offering, it’s a “Harvest Flavor”, which is an odd thing to call a flavor, but I’ll go with it. At least it has a cute little leaf logo.

Because I so desperately want this to have some semblance of Halloween to it, I like to think the candy on the bottom is actually vomiting out the words “Caramel Apple” in delicious caramel ooze. That’s good ooze vomit control, right there. Excellent cursive. Vomiting pumpkins the world over could take a lesson from this barfing piece of candy.

These candies are called “Minis”, and for obvious reasons. Milky Way Caramel Apples are only available in this size and in this package, which means they’re obviously made for trick-or-treaters. Piece of advice: if you’re going to give these out, give more than one per child. Kids are demanding, these days. Fun Size or egg on your house.

Getting to the candy itself: imagine you’re a youth, living in, say, Massachusetts. It’s October; the leaves are turning a myriad of beautiful colors, there’s a brisk chill in the air, but it’s not cold enough that your Ghostbusters jacket can’t keep you warm. You and your parents have made the drive out of the bustling metropolis and are at an orchard where, for a price, you now have a basket in-hand to perform your own manual labor.

You’re on the quest for the perfect apples. You need a little help to reach the taller ones, but in the end, you’ve picked the ripest, reddest, juiciest apples you could find.

Once you’re home, your mom painstakingly melts both cubes of caramel and chocolate chips on the stove while you dutifully shove popsicle sticks up the ass of the very best of the apples you’ve picked. You wait with anticipation until, finally, it’s time to dip. First the caramel, then the chocolate, and then it’s time to bite into that juicy, sugary, perfect apple. It’s harvest time, and life is good.

Now, forget all that.

Okay, that’s not exactly fair. Caramel Apple Minis have the typical Milky Way chocolate coating and caramel upper layer, but you can see that the lower nougat layer is lighter than typical Milky Ways. It’s actually rather close to the color of the inside of an apple.

It’s not just the color that’s different, however. Upon biting into one of these Minis, my mouth was instantly flooded with apple flavor. The chocolate and caramel flavors were immediately overwhelmed.

Exactly what constitutes “apple flavor”? Well, it’s a little hard to describe. It’d be easy to say that it tasted like a green apple Jolly Rancher, or a green apple Jelly Belly, or…well, any of the innumerable green apple-flavored candies that have snatched the title of “go-to green flavor” from lime in not-so-recent years. RIP, lime. I miss you.

But this candy was different. It wasn’t sour like other apple candies. It actually kind of tasted like…apples?

Don’t fall out of your chair in shock quite yet, though. It was more like a hint of real apple with a healthy chemical artificiality. I know it’s weak, but my first impression was, “This is…weird.” Not helpful, really, but there it is. It was unique in that it almost pulled off an actual apple taste, but that taste was ruined by the strength of the artificial taste. In fact, even though these candies were less than bite-sized, after eating only two, the chemicapple taste lingered well after I was done, and I’d had my fill.

I have to say, I was expecting disaster from Limited Harvest Flavor Milky Way Caramel Apple Minis. What I got was a surprising and unique apple flavor that wasn’t a total disaster, but far from a tasty autumn treat that mimics an actual caramel apple. The apple flavor was too chemically and artificial, and it overwhelmed the chocolate and caramel, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste that didn’t leave me wanting to come back for more.

As always, I give points and appreciation to Milky Way for trying to go beyond just throwing a bat on the wrapper or changing the shape of the candy to a pumpkin, but I can’t give a total thumbs up on these Limited Harvest Flavor Caramel Apple Minis. If I were a trick-or-treater, I’d be excited to see this new product in my pillow case (as long as there was more than one), but I’d wind up going back to my A-pile Fun Size Snickers and Twix pretty quickly.

Limited Harvest Flavor Milky Way Caramel Apple Minis

  • Score: 2.5 out of 5 puking pumpkins
  • Price: $2.79
  • Size: 11.5 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Nothing remotely apple-related listed as an ingredient, so I guess the mysterious “artificial and natural flavors” are what make the apple magic happen. I’m leaning more towards the “artificial” part.

Candy Blog, Fatguyfoodblog and The Impulsive Buy also reviewed these little buggers.

Junk Food

Doritos Jacked Enchilada Supreme and Smoky Chipotle BBQ

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Another Frito-Lay chip, another XXXtreme chip name. Ruffles became Ultimate; Doritos are now Jacked.

The word “jacked” does not immediately bring up positive connotations; when I think jacked, I think “jacked up”, like, “Oh man, you totally jacked up that guy’s face!”

Of course, now I’m old, so it’s more like, “Oh man, I totally jacked up my back while I was sleeping last night.”

Doritos seems to have a different definition of the word, however. According to the front of the bag, Jacked means “Bigger. Bolder. Thicker.”

Okay. Obviously not my first guess, but hey.

The back of the bags expounds. “It came without warning: a NEW, extreme snack sent to shock your taste buds with MIND-BLOWING flavor and a bigger, bolder, thicker CRUNCH than you’ve ever experienced before.”

The caps emphasis is all Doritos, because everyone knows caps lock means EXTREME. Or Jacked. Or maybe Doritos is just screaming at me, it’s hard to tell.

I like the idea that Doritos Jacked “came without warning”. It makes the chips sound like an old-school horror-movie monster. “It came without warning: SLIGHTLY LARGER AND THICKER TORTILLA CHIPS.” If I was your mom, I’d tell you not to eat Doritos Jacked in the dark before bedtime. You know how you get flavor dust nightmares, dear.

"Mommy, can I sleep in your bag tonight? I had that dream about those Jacked chips again."

As you can see, Jacked Doritos are indeed larger than regular Doritos, and they are also thicker. Plus side: there were almost no crushed chips in either of the bags I purchased. Negative: being larger, they are harder to shove mindlessly into your mouth. It took me at least two bites to get through each chip. Potential for double-dipping increases greatly.

Doritos Jacked comes in two flavors, Enchilada Supreme and Smoky Chipotle BBQ. Consider your mind blown all over the chip aisle of the convenience store.

Doritos Jacked Enchilada Supreme

I love enchiladas, but I had doubts about just how Supreme these Enchilada Doritos would be. According to the back of the bag, “Experience the RUSH of bold cheddar cheese & tangy salsa: then a WAVE of sizzling Mexican spices that’ll leave your taste buds BEGGING for more.”

That’s quite the promise of Flavor Country.

I wasn’t exactly sure what the “bolder” part of the Jacked equation was, but it seems to translate to “we left the chips in the flavor dust-sprayer an extra few minutes”, because these bitches be covered in powder. I’ve always appreciated finding those half-dozen Doritos in a bag that seem to have gotten an extra dust, and it seems like that’s the case with all the Jacked chips.

Unfortunately, I’ve been disappointed by Doritos and their promises of brain-spraying flavors before, and Enchilada Supreme was no exception. Again, I appreciated the heavy coating of powder, but the flavors here were nothing new. Imagine Spicy Nacho Doritos with just a hint of enchilada sauce, and that’s just about it. Does that count as a WAVE of sizzling Mexican spices? Not particularly.

Doritos Jacked Smoky Chipotle BBQ

I’d love to tell you how Doritos described these chips on the back of the bag, but we had a little…review malfunction in my household, resulting in the chips being eaten and the bag being thrown away before I had a chance to write down whatever ridiculous copy the Doritos marketing team came up with.

As an apology, I’ll use my powers of creativity and experience reading the backs of Doritos bags to make up my own description. “Your mouth parts will CRAVE this HIROSHIMA-LIKE EXPLOSION of barbecue and AUTHENTIC chipotle flavor that is so AMAZINGLY SMOKY you’ll think you just stepped into a Memphis jazz bar and someone threw a slow cooked brisket RIGHT INTO YOUR FACE. EXTREME BOLDNESS CRUNCH YOU LIKE A HURRICANE”

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Please do not mistake the accidental consumption and subsequent disposal of the bag as an overpowering eagerness to eat such delicious chips; I would describe the situation more as “these are here, and we are running out of room in the cupboard”.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, and for good reason. I’ve railed against the use of chipotle as a flavor description when there is no discernible chipotle flavor, and sadly, that remains true here. There is a little bit of smokiness, but the dominant taste is your typical barbecue chip flavoring with a definite sweet side.

Call it a personal preference, but I just don’t truck with BBQ-flavored tortilla chips. Something about the sweetness just doesn’t jive with the flavor of the tortilla chip itself. Like Enchilada Supreme, Smoky Chipotle BBQ Jacked chips are heavily coated with flavor dust, which works against the chip in this case, as it only emphasizes the sweet barbecue flavor.

The premise of Doritos Jacked chips is “Bigger. Bolder. Thicker.”, and I’d say they pretty much deliver on that tagline. They are bigger, but do you really need a bigger tortilla chip? They also do seem thicker, but not to the point of hurting your teeth, and this seems to prevent chip breakage, which I call a plus.

As for the claim of being bolder, if we’re taking that to mean more flavor powder, they do certainly deliver on that front, too. While this works for Enchilada Supreme, despite the lack of originality in flavor, it works against Smoky Chipotle BBQ, which is just too sweet and lacks any chipotle flavor.

Does the world need Doritos Jacked? Not really. I get enough crunch from regular Doritos, and I don’t really want a tortilla chip that is too big to fit in my mouth. While I am a fan of heavily-dusted chips, there’s nothing original about Enchilada Supreme, and I found Smoky Chipotle BBQ straight-up unappealing.

If the Doritos Jacked line comes out with more flavors, I’m give them a try, because I’m a sucker. But for now, I’m perfectly content with regular ol’ Doritos.

Doritos Jacked Enchilada Supreme

  • Score: 2.5 out of 5 flavor dust nightmares
  • Price: $1.49
  • Size: 3 3/8 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Circle K #2821
  • Nutritional Quirks: Do tomato and garlic powders count as “sizzling Mexican spices”? Because that’s the closest I could find on the ingredients list.

Doritos Jacked Smoky Chipotle BBQ

  • Score: 1.5 out of 5 briskets in your face at a Memphis jazz club
  • Price: $1.49
  • Size: 3 3/8 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Circle K #2821
  • Nutritional Quirks: No chipotle listed as an ingredient. Sigh.

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