Junk Food

Screaming Yellow Zonkers!

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SNEAK PREVIEW ALERT! Screaming Yellow Zonkers will not be in stores until May 15, so don’t run out looking for them until that date!

Screaming Yellow Zonkers! Popcorn is something I seem to remember from my childhood (like Pop Qwiz), but don’t recall ever trying (probably because I was too busy eating Pop Qwiz). According to Wikipedia, which is the only real source of information I could find, so take all this with a grain of salt, Zonkers (I am dropping the exclamation point from now on since it’s annoying to have every word after that get auto-capitalized) were first introduced in the late 1960s. According to me, that was a run-on sentence.

For what seems like an innocuous snack food, Zonkers has quite the interesting history. Instead of pasting the entire Wikipedia article here, get off your Internet ass and read it yourself.

It seems they always had a sense of humor, and it seems they’ve kept that tradition alive, which just tickles my knickers. These days, food packaging is either THIS IS HEALTHY AND A SERIOUS MATTER or THIS PRODUCT IS SO FUCKING EXXTREEEEEME IT WILL LITERALLY BLOW YOUR MIND STRAIGHT OUT THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD. A little tongue-in-cheek is refreshing. Enjoy these commercials from the 1970s(?) and 1980s(?)  I especially like the latter; when was the last time you saw someone convulsing on the ground to advertise for a product?

Case in point: the top of my box says, “open here, but don’t get mouthy with me!” Get it? MOUTHY? Man, I’m the only one who appreciates a good pun anymore.

Zonkers were discontinued in 2007, but now they’re making a comeback! Which is obvious, since I am reviewing them. In true Zonkers fashion, on the side of the box they explain their absence:

“You may have noticed that have BEEN GONE for a while, and you can blame Bill for that one. He’s one of those bottom of the box KERNELS that’s missing some of his BUTTERY GLAZE, if you know what I mean. He decided that we needed to get out of this box and go on a trip to ‘FIND OURSELVES’. It was somewhere between here and there we had our A-HA MOMENT. We had it good, really good, so we came SCREAMING BACK to the good life!”

Damn that Bill. I bet there wasn’t a kernel of truth to his entire story. I hope they popped him right in the face.

Sorry, I’m being really corny.

Now that’s how you rock some puns.

ANYWAYS. Zonkers came back in four limited edition retro-looking boxes, and here they are! (You can see an example of an old school box on the Wikipedia page I referred to earlier that none of you clicked on.)

I wound up with limited edition box #3.

I’m happy with my box. I think it’s the most sinister-sounding. I imagine my box of Zonkers hovering around my house for days. I catch glimpses of it in the window, but think my eyes are playing tricks on me. Then, late at night, as I’m watching a rerun of Golden Girls, it suddenly bursts through my front door, eyes wild. “Did you MISS ME, baby?” It says, right before it violently stabs me 17 times, laughing maniacally the whole time.

Screaming Yellow Zonkers should be happy I’m not on their marketing team.

I should probably get to the actual product at some point. Given that “Screaming Yellow Zonkers” gives you zero clue as to what the actual product is, the box goes on to describe the product as “crispy butter-glazed popcorn snack!” Zonkers loves exclamation marks.

I’m not sure exactly what a Zonker is, but these little guys are certainly Screaming Yellow. This is not a color that occurs in nature. The glaze just adds to the unnaturalness. I feel like I should be repulsed, but I’m really not. I’ve eaten blue popcorn before. How many times am I going to reference Pop Qwiz in this review?

Considering I hadn’t viewed those commercials before I ate Zonkers for the first time, I was surprised to find that there was quite a bit of sweetness to them. I suppose I shouldn’t have been, but I’m dumb, whatever. It’s impossible to not immediately think of Cracker Jacks when you eat them. They feel exactly the same in your hand – glazed and a little sticky.

They also taste remarkably similar; take out the nuts and exchange caramel coating for butter coating, and there you have it. There’s really no better way to describe them.

The taste combination of butter and sugar is disconcerting at first, and yet I found that I kept eating them. After my mouth accepted the combination, I actually started liking them, until my sugar limits kicked in. The glaze also gives them a nice crunch, which I liked. It feels like one of those snacks you sit down with in front of the tv, and before you know it, you’ve eaten the entire box and consumed 360 calories.

Would I buy again? (Or in this case, use my own money to acquire.) Probably not. I like popcorn, and I like butter, but I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers are pretty damn sweet. While I accepted the combination of butter and sugar surprisingly easily, I can see how it would not sit well with others. I wish they could have been butter-glazed without the sugar, but I’m pretty sure you can’t glaze anything without using sugar, so I guess I’ll just have to wait for some sort of futuristic non-sugar-glaze technology.

While I didn’t like the sugar, I have to give props to the Zonkers marketing team for their excellent sense of humor. It’s not going to make me like the popcorn any more than I did, but I appreciate their efforts nonetheless.

If you like sugar and you’ve always wished Cracker Jacks had no nuts and tasted like butter, then you’ll like Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Unfortunately, they don’t come with a surprise toy. I only ate Cracker Jacks as a child because I was hoping for some temporary tattoos.

Screaming Yellow Zonkers will be available exclusively at Walgreen’s nationwide, so don’t search your local grocery stores fruitlessly, because you’ll only be met with heartbreak.

Required disclosure: my box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers was provided to me as a free sample by ConAgra Foods. As always, I remain objective and often insulting.)

Screaming Yellow Zonkers!

  • Score: 3.5 out of 5 sticky fingers. I hate having sticky fingers.
  • Price: Free sample, but you can score a box for $1.00
  • Size: 3 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Sent to me, but you can find them exclusively at Walgreen’s nationwide
  • Nutritional Quirks: That shade of yellow does not occur in nature.
Fast Food

Pizza Hut Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza

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Please enjoy this special guest review by Kirsten, a friend of mine who resides in the UK and thus had the opportunity to try Pizza Hut’s new Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza, a luxury (or curse, depending) that Americans do not have. My thanks to her for going out of her way to try this…thing, and review it for me!


The hot dog stuffed crust pizza (let’s just go with HDSC) comes with a ‘mustard drizzle’ which initially caused some concern as to whether they’d undertake the drizzling or I’d be allowed the honour myself. In preparation for the former, I went for the ‘Super Supreme’ option – Spicy pork sausage, pepperoni, spicy minced beef, red onions, whole black olives, ham, mushrooms, mixed peppers (plus pineapple, personal preference) which seems to be standard for US Pizza Huts too – on the basis that it’d work fine if they did offer the HDSC. I kinda wish there was a chilli/sloppy giuseppe version – who wouldn’t jump at the chance of a chilli-dog-pizzatrocity?

Comparing the US/UK Pizza Hut menus shows quite a difference between the two. I hear the US PH is more delivery-centric, whereas here in the UK the restaurants get equal push – marketed to families as a special kid-favourite treat.

The UK menus differ between restaurant and delivery joints, the restaurants serving ‘posh’ options such as ‘Creamy Blue’ (Blue cheese and mozzarella on a Béchamel base with sliced mushrooms and finished with a sweet balsamic drizzle) and the cringingly named ‘Shrimply Delicious’ (King prawns, fresh spinach, mozzarella cheese and mixed peppers.) If you’re eating in, you can even have wine with your meal.

[Editor’s note: I could not get over UK Pizza Hut’s “posh” pizza menu. Béchamel and balsamic drizzle?! Most Americans probably don’t even know what Béchamel is, let alone putting it on a pizza! Crazy.]

We get pasta dishes (“a foot long!”) but you get cinnamon breadsticks, so I know who wins that one.

[Editor’s note: I also could not get over the idea of foot-long pasta. What does that even mean? Who measures pasta by the foot? I’m just saying.]

Delivery offers the ‘Classic’ menu (same as the US options) plus a few more types for variety, and usually a Flavour of the Month. Last year we had A-Team themed ones (each character had a different wackily-named combination of toppings) but usually it’s simply a new combination of meats or flavoured meat.

The pizzas arrived reassuringly hot, and to my relief I was handed two sticks of the mustard drizzle – an oil and mustard dressing, basically.

In retrospect, I would have preferred a more dunkable dip vessel. Maybe I should have just applied it to the crusts somehow, but it said drizzle, and I drizzled. Liberally. Everywhere.

I ordered two pizzas, one for myself and one for my pizza friend, Dan. I only managed 1/3 of mine, whereas he managed 2/3 of his. Toppings were fairly irrelevant in the end, simply being what you worked through to get to the crust. They were incredibly filling, each of us usually able to finish a large pizza in a sitting (perhaps a slice left for breakfast).

Construction wise, it’s pretty much the same as a regular cheese stuffed crust, but on this order the dogs weren’t always covered by the dough.

The crust held firm and was surprisingly non-greasy. UK hot dogs are typically pork-based and these seem to be no exception (though no nutritional information on this is available on the website). Anything more flavourful, like Vienna franks, would have totally overpowered it in my opinion.

The mustard drizzle was a great and in keeping addition to the pizza, though I’m not sure I’ll be fetching the French’s every time I order out from now. It worked well with the Super Supreme topping, and the hot dog stuffed crust, but I wouldn’t recommend it with any of the BBQ sauce bases.

The hot dogs in the crust made for a change from the usual and made the pizza a lot more filling. For the extra £2.50, it stretched the pizza out to two meals worth (or two sharing, I guess) and that is good news in my book. I’d happily order again, if the website didn’t say they’d sold out…

Pizza Hut Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza

  • Score: 4 out of 5 Drizzle Sticks
  • Price: £18.49 (~$30)
  • Size: 14” (only size available)
  • Purchased at: Pizza Hut Delivery, Crookes, Sheffield (UK)
  • Nutritional Quirks: There’s hot dogs in the crust, isn’t that enough?

 

Fast Food

Carl’s Jr. Southwest Patty Melt

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By now, you’ve probably heard about the new Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s Southwest Patty Melt. Or maybe you haven’t, because you were too busy watching Kate Upton have sex with it. Carl’s obviously knows how to generate press: the news was all aflutter about the commercial; some called it sexy, some called it disgusting. I call it fodder for a review, because while I was actually rather excited to try something I’m reviewing (for once), let’s face it: the commercial is more interesting than the burger.

Let’s have some fun and examine all the different ways Kate Upton has sex with the Southwest Patty Melt!

Kate is sitting at a movie drive-in, in what looks like an already sexy classic convertible. He date is a Happy Star bag. The idea that Kate Upton couldn’t get a date to quietly have under-blanket sex with during the movie is almost as improbable as the idea that she found a drive-in movie lot that still exists.

But Kate doesn’t want to bonk a dude; she wants to eat a Southwest Patty Melt. Her first position is oral; she bites into the sandwich, practically having to unhinge her jaw like a snake in the process, creating a sound that’s more like someone stepping on a slug than eating a burger.

She lets her hair down like a sexy librarian; sweat beads up on her chest and she takes her sweater off, making for a completely obvious but really who cares about that tit shot.

Kate Upton is suddenly transported to the back seat of the vehicle, where she is sitting on top of the seats with the Happy Star Bag between her legs. It is a very unladylike position, as her legs are spread quite far apart and she is wearing a dress. I guess the Happy Star bag is going down on her? Perhaps they are performing the sexual act known as the Leg Lock. I have a friend to thank for going out on the Internet and finding the actual name of that position. I also now know the names of 77 different sexual positions, and I think I’m going to have to take up yoga.

Up next, Kate Upton is eating her burger while laying down in the backseat of the convertible, which I would not recommend as it seems that would present quite the choking hazard. Her legs are resting on the top of the door and the Happy Star is once again between her legs. I would call this missionary style, which is so pedestrian, but hey, sometimes you gotta get back to the basics.

At the end of the commercial, she’s just kind of sitting in a sexy model pose, and takes another slow, juicy bite out of the sandwich. I am assuming this is her version of the post-coital cigarette.

Oh, we’re not done. There’s another commercial on Carl’s Jr.’s website that I’d like to touch on briefly, much like how many of you would like to touch on Kate Upton. Or yourselves, after watching that commercial. Ugh I just grossed myself out.

I can’t identify the woman in this commercial, but she also appears to be able to unhinge her jaw, and porn music plays while some audio geek in the studio steps on another poor slug as we get a close-up of her biting into the giant Southwest Patty Melt. She makes her best O-face, then bites into a jalapeño and does that thing with her hands that you do when something is too hot, while her mouth does a weird thing like she’s about to suck on…you know what, this review is already incredibly raunchy, so I’ll let you readers finish that sentence.

Then some text comes up that says…JALAPEN-O-FACE?! Oh my god, I made the same joke that Carl’s Jr. did, but they made it even better by throwing in a pun. I am shamed.

Well, it can only go upward from here, folks. Let’s just talk about the burger.

I figured I would enjoy the Southwest Patty Melt from the moment I heard about it. I already enjoy Carl’s Jalapeno Burger, and I prefer sourdough bread over a hamburger bun, so I was pretty psyched.

Never change, Carsl's.

 

And the Southwest Patty Melt delivers, for the most part. Carl’s describes it as “A charbroiled beef patty, with sliced jalapeños, grilled onions, pepper-Jack cheese and spicy Santa Fe sauce, all on grilled sourdough bread.” The bread was a little smushed, which is to be expected in fast food, but it was sufficiently toasted. The sauce was plentiful and tasty, but more tangy than spicy. The cheese was melty, and paired well with the sauce.

The grilled onions didn’t really add much flavor; there also wasn’t very much of them. The most important omission, however, were the jalapeños. As you can see in the picture, mine came with only three, and one of those was a small end piece. In a sandwich, and a commercial, that puts emphasis on a certain ingredient, having a serious lack of that ingredient is a big misstep.

All in all, I enjoyed the Southwest Patty Melt. I liked the bread, Carl’s always delivers a decent burger, and the cheese and the sauce combined were creamy and added a little heat. While I actually didn’t mind the lacking/flavorlessness of the grilled onions, the lack of jalapeños was the really disappointing part. Like with any fast food, I could order it again and get a ton of them, but I can only go off of my experience, and three jalapeños just ain’t cutting it.

In conclusion, I’d like to apologize to my mom for what is probably the raunchiest review I’ve ever written. I blame Carl’s Jr for turning a burger into a sex act.

Carl’s Jr. Southwest Patty Melt

  • Score: 4 out of 5 Kate Upton-on-burger sex acts
  • Price: $3.49 (for the single patty version)
  • Size: 1 burger
  • Purchased at: Carl’s Jr. #828
  • Nutritional Quirks: Have some water handy, because the single patty Southwest Patty Melt contains 1,460 mg of sodium. The Six Dollar version contains a whopping 1,970 mg.

So Good also reviewed the Southwest Patty Melt (and got 17 jalapeño slices!), as did GrubGrade, Brand Eating and An Immovable Feast.

Fast Food

Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread Spinach & Feta and Bacon & Jalapeno

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If you’ve watched any television at all over the past few years, you’re probably aware that Domino’s Pizza has been completely revamping their pizza and desperately wants you to know about it. They’ve relished in showing (allegedly) real people complaining about how much their pizza sucks, which is designed to be a ballsy move from their marketing department.

“But wait!” They’ve responded, looking earnest like a puppy that just destroyed all your throw pillows. “After listening to you, we’ve realized our pizza blows. We changed everything from the dough to the sauce to the toppings, determined to get you to stop ordering from Pizza Hut or one of those mom ‘n’ pop joints down the street. Seriously, we don’t suck now!”

Cue the previously (supposed) real people trying the new and improved Domino’s Pizza. “Well, shit! This doesn’t taste like cardboard anymore! SOLD!”

Okay, so I may be embellishing a little. And, to be honest, I have tried their new pizza, and it does taste better than their old pizza. In fact, I’d put Domino’s at the top of the big pizza delivery players now. (But I still order from the mom ‘n’ pop joint down the street.)

Not to rest on the laurels they awarded themselves, Domino’s decided to revamp their cheesy bread. Sticking with the self-effacing formula that brought their new pizza a fair amount of publicity, the commercial for their new cheesy bread shows them ordering cheesy bread from other pizza places, admitting that “we were one of the worst offenders” and making comments like, “the undercheesing is rampant”.

Oh, dear gods! THE UNDERCHEESING! I am so adding that to my vernacular. Watch out, guy at the Olive Garden who carries around the Parmesan grater. I will not be undercheesed.

Not satisfied with just improving the quality or quantity of the cheese on their cheesy bread, Domino’s went ahead and decided to stuff the fuck out of some unsuspecting breadsticks. Having lived in a world where it’s normal to have cheese inside the crust of your pizza, you may be unimpressed. However, Domino’s claims that their new Stuffed Cheesy bread has as much cheese in it as a medium pizza.

That is a lot of cheese. So much cheese, in fact, that the commercial states that they would like people to jump rope with their cheese.

I will not be doing that, but feel free to picture that outrageous and somewhat disturbing concept.

Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread comes in three varieties: Cheese, Bacon & Jalapeno and Spinach & Feta. I chose the latter two, figuring that after eating the cheese volume of two medium pizzas, I’d have a pretty good idea of what was going on without adding a third medium pizza’s worth of cheese.

While the Cheesy Breads come with different fillings, the fundamentals of Stuffed Cheesy Bread remain the same, so I’ll get to that before I discuss the different goodies inside.

The cheese inside was, as promised, very plentiful, gooey and stretchy. Each piece of Cheesy Bread delivered a bounty of cheesy goodness. It was, indeed, stuffed. I didn’t get all scientific and weigh the cheese on a medium pizza versus the cheese in the Cheesy Bread, but my mouth would call it a fair comparison.

Through some sort of magic, they managed cram an ample amount of both the cheese and the other ingredients into each stick, and the filling went all the way to the edge on the sticks.

Well, almost all the sticks. Some of the end pieces had hardly any filling in them at all.

Lucky for Domino’s, even though the end pieces lacked stuffing, the bread they used was soft and chewy without being tough, and the extra cheese baked in on top added crunch and even more cheesy flavor, so they weren’t a total loss. I’ve always required that my breadsticks come with dip, but with the Stuffed Cheesy Bread, there was so much packed into the middle sticks that the only time I felt the desire for a dip was with the end pieces.

With all that stuffing and the cheese that had been baked on top, I found it difficult to actually separate the bread into stick form. I was sometimes left with a cheesy, bready mess. Perhaps that’s why Domino’s went with Stuffed Cheesy Bread and not Stuffed Cheesy Breadsticks. This is not a food I would recommend on a first date. Then again, if you’re eating at Domino’s on a first date, there may be some more fundamental problems to worry about. If your date starts jump roping with the cheese, it may be time to go “powder your nose” and escape out the bathroom window.

Now then, on to the individual fillings.

Spinach & Feta

I loves me some spinach and feta, and Domino’s actually delivered on this one. There was a healthy amount of both spinach and feta. The spinach added a nice crunch and texture, and the feta crumbles were noticeable in each bite, adding that feta twang and upping the cheese factor even more.

Bacon & Jalapeno

The bacon and jalapeno fillings were less successful. I enjoyed the jalapenos, which added a nice heat and crunch, but the bacon was…off. It was torn into small pieces that were spread fairly evenly throughout the Cheesy Bread, but it was limp and seemed undercooked. There was little crunch or smoky taste. It almost tasted more like ham than bacon. I take my bacon pretty seriously, and this was some disappointing bacon.

I still like my mom ‘n’ pop pizza, but I would forgo them every once in a while to order Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread again. The Bacon & Jalapeno fell short, but the Spinach & Feta hit just the right flavor combo, and I bet the plain Cheese variety could even hold its own. I was disappointed that some of the end pieces lacked stuffing, but the rest was chock full of cheesy filling, the bread was just the right consistency, the cheese baked on top was crunchy, and the messiness was worth sacrificing a few napkins. Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread is worth ordering on its own, even if you don’t get a pizza, and that’s something I don’t think I could say about any other pizza joint’s breadsticks.

Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread Spinach & Feta and Bacon & Jalapeno

  • Score (Spinach & Feta): 4.5 out of 5 Olive Garden employees about to get UNDERCHEESED
  • Score (Bacon & Jalapeno): 3 out of 5 jump ropes made of cheese
  • Price: $5.99 each
  • Size: 8 sticks (if you can break them into that without mangling everything)
  • Purchased at: Domino’s Pizza
  • Nutritional Quirks: We’ll go with stuffing an entire pizza’s worth of cheese into some breadsticks, but I’ll change that once someone shows me a YouTube video of someone jump roping with cheese.
Fast Food, News

News: Papa John’s Wants to Make Your Party a Total Sausage Fest with Their New Five Sausage Pizza

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Just can’t get enough sausage? Are you insatiable when it comes to long, thick tubes of meat? Well, Papa John’s has what you need with their new Five Sausage Pizza. That’s right, I said five sausages. Can you handle that much sausage in your mouth?

Let’s run them all down: it starts with just “sausage”, which is obviously pedestrian, but then moves on to both mild and spicy Italian sausage. Whew, it’s getting a little warm in here! But we’re not done yet. There’s also smoked sausage, which, as everyone knows, is the most sultry of all the sausages.

Most interesting to me, however, is the last sausage – chorizo! Chorizo is typically a spicy, crumbly sausage, for those of you not living close to our friends south of the border who may be unfamiliar with it. I live in the southwest, and I’ve never seen chorizo available as a pizza topping, even from local joints that have some pretty exotic topping choices.

You can currently get all five of Papa John’s sausages in your mouth on a large pizza for the promotional price of $9.99.

Source: Papa John’s

Junk Food

Limited Edition Doritos Sour Cream & Onion and Salsa Rio Tortilla Chips

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I’ve become quite accustomed to Doritos coming out with crazy new flavors. It’s kind of their thing; it’s what they do.

However, last year they went in the opposite direction and introduced a blast from the past: Taco Flavor Doritos. This flavor originated in 1967 and persisted at least into the late 1970s, but was eventually retired.

The re-introduction of the Taco Doritos was an instant hit. Originally packaged as a limited edition, Doritos almost immediately announced that they would be keeping it on store shelves, and to this day I still see that alluring retro bag as I walk down the chip aisle.

The Taco Doritos did not come without controversy, however. Billed as the original flavor, the comments section of my review blew up. Battle lines were drawn. Some loved them, said they tasted just like the original, and expressed nostalgia as they remembered eating them ask kids.

Others were not so pleased. “These taste nothing like the original!” They shouted angrily from the rooftops of their Internets. “There’s sour cream in these! There was no sour cream in the original Taco flavor!”

It was a tortilla chip nation divided. However, to Doritos, it was money in the bank. Going off the business model that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, they’ve recently released two new/old limited edition retro flavors: Sour Cream & Onion and Salsa Rio, complete with retro packaging. I swear, the packaging is the real allure. Even I cannot resist its siren song.

Sadly, like Taco Flavor Doritos, I never had the opportunity to try either of these flavors, so I’m flying blind as far as their authenticity when compared to the originals. And again, like the Taco Flavor, I ask you, the reader, to tell me in the comments section if they got it right or not. I am looking forward to it. Imagine I just said that in a Mr. Burns voice with my fingers steepled. Muahahahaha.

Limited Edition Doritos Sour Cream & Onion

Those who so hated the addition of sour cream to the Taco Doritos won’t have a leg to stand on here. Personally, I had some trepidations about this flavor. I don’t know why, but it just seems like sour cream and onion should stick to potato chips and leave the tortillas out of it.

It must just be me, though, because there’s an entire Facebook page devoted to bringing them back. Congratulations to the 511 people who Liked this page! You succeeded! Or it was just a coincidence. Either way, now your page is USELESS.

From what I can tell on the Internet, these were introduced in the late 70s and were discontinued in the early 80s. Because of this, I can legitimately say that I never had a chance to experience the original Sour Cream & Onion Doritos, unless I had an irresponsible mother who fed me Doritos as a baby. From what I know, that did not happen.

As a fun treat, I found this delightful old commercial for Sour Cream & Onion Doritos, wherein a Gene Shalit lookalike (I’m sure he gets lots of work) knocks over a table and causes a butler to faint with the power of Doritos crunch. You’re welcome.

Like the Taco flavor, I can tell from several websites even beyond Facebook that there are people passionate about these Doritos and they must all be over the moon that they’ve been re-released. I’m sorry that I can’t give you a comparison, but I can give you my opinion. And pictures of chips.

I’m happy to report that sour cream and onion isn’t weird at all on a tortilla chip. At least, not the way Doritos makes them. Unfortunately, they taste almost indistinguishable from Cool Ranch Doritos. Honestly, if I were blindfolded and forced to eat these chips, first of all, I’d be terrified and confused, and second, I would immediately guess Cool Ranch. If a gun were to my head, I would be dead. Over Doritos.

If I really stretch it, I guess there’s a little bit more of an onion flavor than in Cool Ranch. I was pleased to see some heavily powdered chips in the bunch. There’s something about seeing a Dorito loaded with little flavor bits that makes me happy. But…what’s that? Red? What’s red doing on a sour cream and onion chip? Is the onion red? Ah well, who cares. Slightly more oniony Cool Ranch. You could do worse.

Limited Edition Doritos Salsa Rio

There’s also a big following for Salsa Rio on the Internet. I should probably just stop mentioning that, because I’m beginning to think that every discontinued junk food has about 500 “BRING IT BACK” websites and petitions. Some of these people sound almost desperate. It’s creepy.

Salsa Rio apparently had a short run from the late 80s to early 90s, which means I technically could have tried the original, but I was still young enough that I have the excuse that I had no idea they existed. My dad did all the shopping, and once I expressed an interest in a certain junk food, he would always make sure I had it. Forever. I think it took me three years to get him to realize I was tired of Cool Ranch. God bless him for trying.

I have no awesome Gene Shalit-related videos for Salsa Rio, but I like the fatass tomato on the front of the bag and the name itself. Salsa Rio. River of Salsa. It evokes Willy Wonka-esque visions in my mind of salsa rivers running through fields of flowers made of tortilla chips. The grass is luscious, fragrant cilantro. There’s wallpaper that tastes like onions and garlic when you lick it.

I should probably just stop there.

Man, these chips look muy caliente! This bright red is usually reserved for something like a Tapatio or Flamin’ variety of chip. What really hits you first, though, is the tomato flavor. That may not sound appealing, but there was a strong backup team of onion, garlic, and a variety of spices that I couldn’t identify but knew were participating.

There actually is a bit of heat, although nowhere near the mouth-blistering heat that the eye-searing color might indicate. There’s no substitute for a real, quality salsa, but Salsa Rio does its best to replicate it in powder form. All the flavors blended really nicely, and I found myself reaching into the bag more than I thought I would.

There’s nothing wrong with Limited Edition Doritos Sour Cream & Onion; I just can’t get over how similar they taste to Cool Ranch Doritos. Maybe it was those three years it took to convince my dad to buy a different flavor of Doritos for me, but my mouth got bored with Sour Cream & Onion pretty quickly. I’m sure the bag won’t go to waste, but they just didn’t bring anything new to the table.

There are many flavors of Doritos that I haven’t had in a few years, but I found Limited Edition Doritos Salsa Rio to be a refreshing change of pace from the usual recycled flavors that Doritos spits out. The flavors were bold, the powder was plentiful, and all the different salsa-like elements worked well together. That little kick of heat was like icing on the cake.

Sour Cream & Onion could remain limited and I wouldn’t mind that, but I’d actually like to see Doritos go the Taco Flavor route and keep Salsa Rio around. At least until my Junk Food Betty and the Salsa Factory fantasy comes true.

Limited Edition Doritos Sour Cream & Onion and Salsa Rio Tortilla Chips

  • Score (Sour Cream & Onion): 3 out of 5 Cool Ranch rip-offs
  • Score (Salsa Rio): 4.5 out of 5 giant tomatoes
  • Price: $4.29
  • Size: 11 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
  • Nutritional Quirks: Despite neither Sour Cream & Onion or Salsa Rio having cheese as detectible flavors, both list cheddar and Romano cheeses as key ingredients.  Doritos makes lactose intolerant consumers sad.
Fast Food, News

News: You Cannot Stop It: The Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco Is Coming

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Taco Bell is finally unleashing the monster.

Way back in April of last year, the news broke that Taco Bell was releasing the Doritos Locos Taco in test markets. Unfortunately, I didn’t live anywhere near one of them. But on March 8, they will be making this…thing available nationwide.

What is the Doritos Locos Taco? Well, basically it’s a regular Taco Bell taco with one ridiculous addition – a taco shell made out of Nacho Cheese Doritos. You can also get a Supreme Taco, which basically just adds chopped tomatoes and sour cream to a regular taco. With a Doritos shell

If you can’t wait to find out what a Dorito and a taco taste like together, Doritos is doing a “Hometown Tweet-Off”, wherein the person who gets the most retweets by Tweeting using the hashtags #DoritosLocosTacos and #Contest will get a visit from the Taco Bell Truck, which will give out Doritos Locos Tacos to the winner and their probably bewildered neighbors.

Sources: GrubGrade, Fast Food Maven

Fast Food

Jack in the Box Bacon Shake

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I’m sure we can all agree that this bacon thing has gotten out of control. Bacon has become an Internet meme, putting it right up there with cat breading. Don’t know what cat breading is? Look it up. You won’t thank me.

What does this have to do with absolutely goddamn anything? Jack in the Box has a new BLT Cheeseburger. That’s fucking boring. You know what other companies call that? A bacon cheeseburger with toppings. However, there’s more to this story. So much more.

Jack in the Box has made a special website encouraging you to marry bacon. I know some gay couples who might believe Jack has his priorities a little out of order, but we’ll leave that hot button topic alone.

Political portion of this post now over, let’s take a look at this website. First off, there’s a video of a man marrying a BLT Cheeseburger, ending with the line, “You may now eat the bride.” There are jokes here ranging from generically unsettling to just plain crass, so I’ll let you choose which way you want to go on that one.

There’s also a section of bacon-related .gifs called “Wedding Gifts” with the “t” crossed out (get it? GET IT?!) and a Tumblr site, both containing items either boring or disturbing, the latter being a .gif of a woman eating a piece of bacon and then presumably devouring the face of the man next to her like a praying mantis that has just copulated.

Impossibly, things get even more disturbing with the “Make a Bacon Baby!” feature. You get a pretty clear idea of what this entails with the picture on the website, which looks like a female version of the Elephant Man’s face if she’d also been in a terrible fire and then had her head stuck on the body of a baby.

As if this weren’t horrible enough, Jack gives you the opportunity to make your own Bacon Baby. I’ve written seven paragraphs without mentioning what I’m actually reviewing, but since the title of the post is a jerk and always gives it away, you already know that all of this is really about Jack in the Box’s Bacon Shake.

I’ve had a previous experience with a bacon-flavored beverage, namely Jones Bacon Soda. To this day, it ranks #1 on the list of most horrible things I’ve ingested for Junk Food Betty, and quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. And I have made some serious mistakes with expiration dates.

I knew right away who would be my Bacon Baby: Jones Bacon Soda Creepy Pig-Nose Girl.

Appropriately terrifying.

The Bacon Shake itself looked surprisingly innocent, a light pink color with whipped cream and a cherry on top. One could walk around with it and no one would know you’re holding a complete abomination. Not even any bacon sprinkles on top. Although now that I think about it, it does mimic the skin tone of a pig pretty accurately. Ugh.

It actually took a little sucking up to, well, suck it up. I stood in my kitchen, taking deep breaths, while flashbacks of the Jones Bacon Soda experience ran through my head like I was a Vietnam vet on the 4th of July. It occurred to me that I have food PTSD. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.

I finally got up the nerve and took the plunge. The first few sips through my straw were not unpleasant; the shake was thick and creamy, a little bit less sweet than your usual shake. As I got further in, however, the porcine flavor started to come through. It was like tasting a pork belly that had been smoked to preserve it on a olde tyme boat making a venture to the New World, but made more subtle, and then mixed with vanilla ice cream. A little smoky, a little bacon-y, but not overwhelming and not very salty.

I didn’t throw up, so that’s always a plus.

Honestly, the Bacon Shake was not the horrorshow I thought it would be. The smoky bacon flavor is subdued enough that it almost works with the vanilla flavor of the shake. Almost. The shake isn’t made with actual pig; Jack in the Box uses Torani Bacon Syrup to flavor it, which is scary in and of itself, because Torani syrups are the flavors you’ll often see behind the counter at your local coffee shop, which means…well, we can all see the terrible possibilities there.

The worst part of the Bacon Shake was that it had a lingering ham flavor that stuck in my mouth long after I’d finished dumping most of it down the drain. A lingering ham mixed with ice cream flavor. I did not appreciate it.

Jack in the Box’s Bacon Shake didn’t give me PTSD, but it did make me rinse my mouth out afterwards, and I can think of about 700 other flavors I’d like in a shake besides bacon. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, bacon does not belong in everything, and I can now put milkshakes in that category. At the very least, I can say that the smoky flavor was subtle enough that it wasn’t completely discordant with the ice cream. Hell, if you like the combination of smoky, sweet and hammy, you may even enjoy the Bacon Shake. You may also have a bad palate.

Jack in the Box Bacon Shake

  • Score: 1.5 out of 5 Creepy Pig-Nose Girl Bacon Babies
  • Price: $2.79
  • Size: Regular (16 oz.) cup
  • Purchased at: Jack in the Box #161
  • Nutritional Quirks: Bacon syrup. It exists. Enough said.

The Impulsive Buy also reviewed the Bacon Shake, unfortunately for them.

Junk Food

Mission Sweet Sugar & Cinnamon White Corn Tortilla Chips

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Well, it’s New Year’s Eve, and you know what that means! Yes, you will go to a party, get drunk, and act retarded, possibly kissing someone you barely know and then crying on his shoulder about how Jake was the best and you don’t understand why he suddenly won’t return your phone calls and then blaaaaargh all over his shoes.

Or perhaps you’ll ring in the new year a little more quietly, taking inventory of your bunker’s contents for the dozenth time, making sure every shotgun, bottle of water and Tactical Sammich is in place for the coming zombie infestation/financial and governmental collapse/Mayan calender apocalypse.

In reality, unless you’re a hermit or incarcerated, at some point during the holiday season you’ll be going to a party, voluntarily or involuntarily. Whether it’s a workplace potluck, a New Year’s bash, or a get-together to watch Favorite Football Team play against Rival Football Team, there’s one thing that’s going to be present:

Chips!

Yes, that’s right, chips. During the holiday season, they are quietly ubiquitous, usually sitting near some salsa or onion dip, waiting for you to mindlessly shove into your mouth as you make awkward small talk with that guy whose name you can’t remember or yell impotently at some dude in tights running up and down a length of grass. You may not think of chips as a holiday food, but they’re always there. Waiting. Watching.

Okay, so they’re not really watching. (It’s the salsa that you should be worrying about.)

Chips love to party so much that Tostitos is the official sponsor of the Fiesta Bowl, one of the bigger…bowls that goes on during this…bowl season. I’ll be honest with you, my knowledge of football bowls begins and ends with the male side of my family watching them on tv. I don’t even know why they’re called bowls. But hey, chips go in bowls, so that works…right?

This whole weak chip-and-bowl setup would not have happened except for something I half-heard on my local news this morning. I had to rewind just to make sure I’d heard correctly. The plastic-looking anchorwoman mentioned something about the Chip Drop coming back. I eagerly waited for her to expound, but no further information was given.

What the fuck is a Chip Drop?

Thanks to the Internet, I now know the answer to that question and I am so glad that I do, because it is fucking awesome and ridiculous at the same time. The aforementioned Fiesta Bowl takes place around where I live, and apparently there’s a little tradition known as the Chip Drop of which I was previously unaware. Let’s let the local news website explain:

“The last Chip Drop was in 1998 when Tostitos was the party’s title sponsor. A massive tortilla chip was dropped from a crane into an even larger jar of salsa.

The chip is a triangular, 4-by-4 foot piece of metal covered in small mirrors to represent salt. It will be suspended from a truss system above the video structure and dropped about 15 feet. High intensity beams will shoot from the chip to add flash, complementing the block party’s midnight fireworks show.”

Holy balls, you guys. Fuck watching some stupid disco ball drop in Times Square on your television. Those of us in the Valley of the Sun get the opportunity to watch a giant metal tortilla chip covered in salt mirrors. And the chip shoots high intensity beams. It’s not often there’s something to gloat about from where I live, but the Chip Drop just kicked the ass of all y’alls New Year’s traditions.

What does all this have to do with what I’m reviewing? Well, I’m about to have my own personal Chip Drop with this bag of Mission Sweet Sugar & Cinnamon White Corn Tortilla Chips.

Far be it from me to criticize a chip company for trying to go all holiday on our asses. I mean, Mission could have just stopped at offering red-and-green food-colored tortilla chips, but they weren’t done there. They wanted to make a tortilla chip with some serious holiday zazz. I keep saying “holiday” instead of “Christmas”, because I discovered these too late to review before that particular event, but hey. You know you’re still drinking eggnog. There’s still a tree in the corner of your living room, rapidly dropping needles and becoming more and more of a fire hazard. Give Mission a chance.

I say that with a bit of trepidation on my own part, because, well, tortilla chips and sugar and cinnamon don’t sound like flavors that would jive to me. Tortilla chips go with cheese, salsa, guacamole…but cinnamon and sugar? I know a lot of people like the combination of sweet and savory, but this one didn’t sound like a good match.

Upon opening the bag, however, I started to change my mind. I was immediately hit with the comforting and nostalgic odor of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Cinnamon Toast Crunch rocks.

And, amazingly, so do Mission Sweet Sugar & Cinnamon White Corn Tortilla Chips! Honestly, they taste like thinner versions of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch, with just a hint of tortilla at the end. In fact, I’d say these have an even stronger sugar and cinnamon presence. Almost every chip was heavily coated with both sugar and spice, making me feel like I was reaching into a cereal box and not a bag of chips.

I think Mission’s winning secret here is using white corn tortilla chips, which let the sugar and cinnamon dominate while leaving just a tiny bit of tortilla on the back end. I also think making the chips thinner made the tortilla flavor less prominent.

Because I have some sort of compulsion about chips and dip, I immediately wondered what would make a good dip for these chips. After almost going with Funfetti frosting because I will use any flimsy excuse to eat Funfetti frosting despite being a grown woman, I went with Duncan Hines Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting. Delicious.

When I initially bought Mission Sweet Sugar & Cinnamon White Corn Tortilla Chips, I figured they would be totally disgusting, but make for a fun holiday review. Merry Christmas, my taste buds are suffering for your entertainment! I should know by now not to judge a chip by its cover. These chips totally rock; unfortunately, they’re a limited seasonal flavor, so you’ll just have to go back to being that person that eats Cinnamon Toast Crunch straight out of the box the rest of the year.

My only problem with these chips is that I could never blow through a whole bag, just because they are so sweet. Others with a sweet tooth more prominent than mine will probably fare better, but I couldn’t eat more than a handful or so at a time before I went into sugar overload. Also, if you’re a fan of dipping like myself, I wholly recommend a whipped frosting with a vanilla or cream cheese flavor, but any frosting thicker than that and you’re going to get serious chip breakage, as these are thinner-than-average tortilla chips.

I hope you all have a Happy New Year’s! And don’t worry about Jake; he’s a total jerk and you deserve better.

Mission Sweet Sugar & Cinnamon White Corn Tortilla Chips

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 totally frickin’ awesome Chip Drops
  • Price: $3.29
  • Size: 12 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
  • Nutritional Quirks: First ingredient listed is “ground corn treated with lime”. Thankfully, no lime flavor was detected upon consumption.
Junk Food

Hershey’s Kisses Holiday: Milk Chocolates filled with Cherry Cordial Crème, Candy Cane Flavored Candies, Dark Chocolates filled with Mint Truffle

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Merry Christmas! Can you believe the last review I posted was Halloween? Life gets in the way sometimes. I’d started up a “Does this smell funny to you?” taster-for-hire business, but it went tits up, so I promise I won’t just be posting on holidays anymore. This doesn’t mean I’ll be posting a review on Boxing Day, but I promise you’ll see me again before Valentine’s Day.

When I think of Christmas Hershey’s Kisses, I think of your run-of-the-mill Kisses wrapped in green, red and silver foil. Apparently, I am ignorant and wrong. There are actually several special flavors of Christmas Kisses available. Well, Hershey’s calls them “Holiday” Kisses, but c’mon. They’re Christmas. Don’t fall in with the PC hype.

There are four different Holiday Kiss flavors: Milk Chocolate filled with Caramel, Milk Chocolate filled with Cherry Cordial Crème, Candy Cane Flavored Candies and Dark Chocolate filled with Mint Truffle. I only bought the latter three, and I’m not sure why, because I love chocolates filled with caramel. Perhaps it’s because I’m already pretty familiar with what caramel inside of chocolate tastes like. Perhaps it’s because buying three bags of Kisses is my limit. Whatever the reason, I found the three that I bought to be the most intriguing, so this is what you get. Well, sort of. One of my bags of Kisses went a little…AWOL, you might say. More on that later.

How long have these Holiday Kisses been in circulation? I have no idea. This is the first time I had ever seen them, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been around since 1963. Well, they’re new to me, and maybe they’ll be new to you, too. Listen, just read the words and look at the pictures. Hell, you’re not even going to read the words. It’s Christmas. If you’re here at all, you’ve already eaten five pounds of ham, seven sugar cookies poorly decorated by your young relatives, and bitten the head off of at least one gingerbread man, having a not-so-secret feeling of satisfaction as you watch Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust.

I really hope you’re not actually watching that movie, unless you’re doing it in an effort to repulse your relatives and get a moment of private time for yourself. Desperate times, desperate measures. I understand. I don’t judge.

Hershey’s Kisses Milk Chocolates filled with Cherry Cordial Crème

Growing up, cherry cordials were a staple in my house. Not just during the holidays; there always seemed to be a box in the kitchen cupboard, right next to the Entenmann’s donuts variety pack . I did not partake in the cherry cordials. As a youth, I was not a fan of chocolate, and I hated cherries and all things cherry-flavored. I blame that on having to take a horrible “cherry-flavored” medication twice a day for god knows how many years. You can see how the association would taint my opinion.

These days, I am older, and questionably wiser. At the very least, I am more open-minded about trying new things, especially things that I would throw a tantrum over as a kid. I recently learned that green beans ain’t half bad. Hey, it only took two decades to figure that out!

The foil wrapping on the Cherry Cordial Kisses doesn’t exactly scream Christmas. Bright fuchsia with curvy brown stripes that would make Yipes the Zebra jealous? It’s the candy wrapper equivalent of buying a pink plastic Christmas tree.

Encased in classic Hershey’s Kisses chocolate, a pink ooze flooded my mouth as I bit into the candy. It was very viscous, and had a strong cherry flavor. Unfortunately, the taste was rather artificial. The gooey inside was a little cloyingly sweet, but the chocolate actually worked well in taming it a bit.

I could see how some people would be turned off by the texture of the filling, but I grew up with Freshen Up gum, so I wasn’t put off by it at all. Man, I am really showing my age with these references. First Yipes, then Freshen Up. If you were born after 1986, Google them.

At first, I rather enjoyed the Cherry Cordial Kisses, but the flavor got a little overwhelming after about three pieces. I haven’t had a chance to try a real cherry cordial since I’ve broadened my food horizons, so I figured I’d let my mom try one, since she was always the big cherry cordial fanatic. She immediately spit it in the trash and said it was awful.

Well. There’s one opinion.

Hershey’s Kisses Candy Cane Flavored Candies

Come Christmastime, there’s no shortage of peppermint-flavored sweets out there. It’s kind of hard to get excited about yet another candy cane-flavored candy, when I’ve already had at least a dozen of them. Given this, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to try out these Holiday Kisses.

I am not, however, immune to the charms of Christmasy packaging, and Candy Cane Kisses obviously have the most Navidad-oriented foil wrapping, with the little red candy canes standing out against the shiny silver background. Anybody reaching into a bowl of candy is instantly going to know what these Kisses are all about, even if they are illiterate and can’t read the classic Kiss tissue paper…unwrapper…thingie.

Does that thing have a name? Is it called a flag? I’m going to call it a flag. I’m writing this on Christmas Eve. I can’t be delving deep into the depths of Hershey’s Kisses history to find out what their iconic little piece of paper is called and probably trademarked.

Getting back to the candy itself, I found myself enjoying Candy Cane Kisses more than I thought I would. I like that Hershey’s put the effort into making these Kisses white with red stripes, thus mimicking the look of an actual candy cane as much as they could, given the shape of a Kiss compared to a candy cane.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that, when you bite into a Candy Cane Kiss, there’s little pieces of crunchy candy that add to the already strong peppermint flavor. I’d like to say those little crunchy bits are actual pieces of candy cane, but after reading the ingredients list, I couldn’t find any indication that this was the case. The main flavors of Candy Cane Kisses come from white chocolate and oil of peppermint. That said, the chocolate and the peppermint work great together, and I did love the little candy crunches, even if they weren’t authentic cane. I found myself reaching for a handful after I’d eaten my first one. Afterward, my breath was minty fresh and ready for some hot mistletoe action.

Hershey’s Kisses Dark Chocolates filled with Mint Truffle

Speaking of mint, here we have another minty Holiday Kiss. Hershey’s wants to make sure you’re 100% free of ham breath this holiday season.

The Mint Truffle Kiss foil wrapping is appropriately green, with adorable silver snowflakes all over. You may notice that there is no picture of an individually wrapped Mint Truffle Kiss here. There is a reason for this.

There are times when living with a food blogger can be trying. For instance, you get to stand around in the store while I try to find the best package that looks like it will photograph well and have the best chances of the product inside not being crushed or otherwise damaged. And then, once the product has been brought home, it’s hands-off until the photographs have been taken.

I was hanging out with my mom, who was visiting during the holiday season, during this particular purchase. She does not know the rules of food blogging. Before I had a chance to take my coat off once we’d come home, she had already ripped open the bag of Mint Truffle Kisses and was sampling the wares.

I was distressed. I informed her that the package was not to be opened until a picture had been taken. She was mortified, as if she had accidentally thrown away my sure to be award-winning piece of moldy bread that I was going to present at the Science Fair. Before I could get a word in, she already had the Scotch tape out, and was working fervently to repair the opened package with Scotch tape, positioning and re-positioning the plastic until she had repaired the bag to the point that you could barely see it had been opened. Can you spot the repairs? I have to admit, she did an admirable job.

The entire time she was doing this, I was trying to tell her that it was no big deal, and that the more she fussed with it, the more I was just going to make fun of her in this article. I don’t think she heard me. She was too busy trimming off millimeters of tape so it wouldn’t show in the picture.

For as much effort as she put into attempting to restore the bag back to mint (har) condition, she did not seem to take into consideration the fact that I had not taken a picture of the actual candy. So enamored was she with the Mint Truffle Kisses, in fact, that she either ate the whole bag or took the rest of them back to California with her while I wasn’t looking. This means I have no pictures of the foil wrapper or of the inside of the candy itself. Luckily, I did get the picture of the bag, and managed to score a few of the candies to eat for myself, so I can at least tell you how they looked and tasted.

I know you want pictures. I am sorry that I have none. Luckily, there is a candy out there that is remarkably similar to Mint Truffle Kisses: Andes Crème Menthes! You may have found these candies on your pillow upon arriving at a hotel room. You may have gotten one with your check at a restaurant once or twice. Mint Truffle Kisses taste almost exactly like these candies.

These Kisses have a dark chocolate outside, unlike the other Holiday selections. I’m not a huge fan of dark chocolate, but the kind they used for these Kisses is a less cocoa-heavy dark chocolate, and I found it paired fantastically with the minty inside. If you bite a Mint Truffle Kiss in half, you’ll see a green filling, but unlike the gooey, oozing center of the Cherry Cordials, this filling is about the same consistency as the dark chocolate outside, making for a smooth chocolate mint experience.

I enjoyed each of Hershey’s Holiday Kiss offerings, to varying degrees. I liked the pairing of chocolate and cherry in the Cherry Cordial Kisses, but found the artificial cherry flavor a little too strong, and the texture of the gooey center might be off-putting to some.

I thought I would find the Candy Cane Kisses a big yawn, but the creaminess of the white chocolate paired with the crunch of the tiny (although faux) candy cane pieces resulted in a pleasant peppermint candy with a texture that sets them apart from other Kiss varieties.

Pairing a mild dark chocolate with a creamy mint filling in the Mint Truffle Kisses was a no-brainer. If you like mint chocolate chip ice cream, well, you’ve pretty much found that flavor in the form of a Hershey’s Kiss. You could serve your Christmas guests Andes Crème Menthes and get pretty much the same flavor, but you’d be missing out on the iconic Kiss shape and the adorable snowflake wrapping. There’s a reason why my mom ran off with these before I had a chance to take a picture of the candies.

Today is Christmas, so unless you’re an extreme procrastinator, you’ve probably already got all your Christmas candies set out in your Santa-shaped bowls for all to snack on as they wait for their ham or duck or tofurkey or whatever it is you slave over to serve before the wrapping paper starts flying. However, I hope you’ll keep these in mind for next year, if they’re still around, as a fun alternative to the regular ol’ gussied up Hershey’s Kisses. And try the green beans this year; you may find that you like them, after all.

Hershey’s Kisses Holiday: Milk Chocolates filled with Cherry Cordial Crème, Candy Cane Flavored Candies and Dark Chocolates filled with Mint Truffle

  • Score: Milk Chocolates filled with Cherry Cordial Crème: 2.5 out of 5 late 1980’s gum references
  • Score: Candy Cane Flavored Candies: 4 out of 5 candy cane Vaudeville Hooks
  • Score: Dark Chocolates filled with Mint Truffle: 4.5 out of 5 carefully Scotch-taped bags of candy
  • Price: $2.50 each
  • Size: 10 oz. bags
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Candy Cane Kisses appear to not contain actual candy canes. The “truffle” in Mint Truffle is unexplained.

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