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.
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.
Snack food companies love to throw around words like “extreme” (or Xtreme, or XXXTREEEME), “intense”, “maximum”, and all manner of other adjectives that they want you to think makes their product seem like the craziest, most flavorful, most BLOWIN’ YOUR MIND food you’ve ever eaten.
And I fall for it every time.
Well, not exactly. I don’t expect said product to explode my head, blowing my brains all over my kitchen, or even just make me say, “Wow, that was intense.” But every time I see one of these adjectives on the shelves, I have to at least give it a glance. It is just my nature.
This time, it took a brief post on Facebook to catch my attention. Namely, a post from Ruffles proudly letting me know that their Ultimate Beef N’ Cheese Dip contained real beef brisket.
Such a matter-of-fact post, and yet, to my trained eye, I was instantly revolted and intrigued at the same time.
Soon afterward, I saw a commercial for Ruffles Ultimate that was 30 seconds of so much stupid that I had to take an inordinate amount of time pausing and rewinding it to break it down for all of you:
We open with three shlubs playing poker; balding shlub #4 walks in with his innocent-looking girlfriend (played by actress Emily Chang, whose IMDB credits include “Sexy Nurse” and “Flight Attendant”) and asks if they have room for her. She smiles, all “what are these cards and chips (get it? Poker chips in a chip commercial!) and Texas Hold ‘Em oh my goodness” and the shlubs are immediately roped in by her good looks and seeming gullibility.
She sits down; there’s a bag of Ruffles Ultimate Kickin’ Jalapeño Ranch chips and a jar of Smokehouse Bacon Dip already in front of her chair, which begs the question: who was eating the chips and dip before she arrived? Did Dave just go to take a piss and was instantly usurped by the arrival of a female? Was it some sort of shrine to a dead friend and former poker buddy, who refused to play unless chips and dip were provided for him and him only? I guess we’ll never know.
She sits down and immediately says, “Mmmm, new Ruffles Ultimate,” which is a thing nobody in real life would ever actually say, and sticks a chip into the jar of dip, shoving it into her mouth with lightning speed, like she hasn’t eaten in days.
“Never seen ridges this deep,” she says, pile-driving another dip-loaded chip into her mouth. But wait! What has happened? Innocent girlfriend is suddenly wearing oversized sunglasses and a Bedazzled pair of headphones!
“ Is [sic] there chunks of bacon in this dip? Awesome!” The “awesome” is said in a reverent whisper I would reserve for, say, watching a live feed of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars while in a public library. As she says this, she makes an almost O-face and her sad-sack boyfriend sitting next to her leers. Once dressed modestly, she is now wearing a spaghetti-strapped tank top. One of the shlubs announces that he is “all in”, which I’m sure he wishes he was, in a different context.
“Bro, [unintelligible] me a cold one,” she says, now wearing a blinged-out necklace and a tight leather jacket over her tank top.
“I love you so much right now,” her boyfriend says, immediately getting up to do her bidding. It’s obvious he likes this dressed-for-the-club chick over the nice, sweet girl he walked in with, pre-Ruffles. This is sad but telling. My feminist hackles rise like the ridges of Ruffles Ultimate chips.
“Whatchoo got,” one of the guys off-camera says, in a desperate attempt to sound cool in front of the newly-sexified girlfriend while the boyfriend is in the kitchen, oblivious to one of his friends making what I assume is a double entendre.
“Ba-ZIIIIING,” she says, which is also something nobody has ever actually said, and throws her cards down. “Love boys night out,” she says, and takes, like, three chips from the pot. I take this to mean she has no idea how to play poker, and was just randomly throwing cards down and taking chips. Poker chips, not Ruffles chips.
This scene ends abruptly, leaving me to believe that the guys continue to let her win by just throwing down random cards and taking arbitrary amounts of chips from the pot, all in the hopes of having a quad-way with her as she shovels more and more Ruffles into her mouth.
“The new Ruffles Ultimate: snack like you mean it,” a voiceover says, trying his hardest to sound like the manliest man in the land. What does that phrase even mean? Have I ever snacked like I didn’t mean it? I’ve never taken anything with “sleep-eating” as a side effect, so I guess I wouldn’t know.
That sure was a hell of a lot of words to describe a commercial. Heck, you can just watch the damn thing here.
Now that I’m thoroughly disgusted with Ruffles’ advertising agency and myself, let’s get to the actual food. The word “disgusted” may or may not come up again.
Ruffles Ultimate Kickin’ Jalapeño Chips
What makes these chips “ultimate” is explained right on the front of the bag: “HARDERcore ridges for hardcore dips”.
While I’d love to go on a rant about the use of the non-word “hardercore”, there’s an even deeper issue here. Deeper than one stupid commercial. Deeper than hardercore ridges. It’s called manvertising, and Frito-Lay’s Snack Chat post makes it clear that that is what they’re going for:
“The chips rock ridges twice the size and depth of the ridges in original Ruffles Potato Chips and come in a variety of real food flavors sure to satisfy any guy gathering. The thick, deep ridges in the chips allow for guys to load up on hearty flavor with new hardcore dips…”
I’m trying desperately to stay on-topic, but I have to at least mention the ridiculousness of the phrase “real food flavors”. Have you ever seen a chip that was not “real food” flavored?
“Oh man, you gotta try these new PVC Pipe Pringles. Tastes just like plastic!”
“Check out these limited edition cotton-flavored Doritos!” (Never got past test marketing; potheads and those suffering from hangovers complained of cotton mouth.)
Okay, okay, I got it out of my system. Anyways, I don’t go around burning my bras, but stuff like this is so blatantly sexist that my feminist hackles can’t help but go up. I really don’t mind if products that are obviously intended for guys, like, say, Old Spice deodorant, are directly marketed to the male gender, but things like low-calorie soda or chips with bigger ridges can be enjoyed by both genders.
More on this later. Oh, that’s right. We’re not done yet.
Here’s some words about these stupid chips. As you can see, they do have deeper ridges, but they aren’t much thicker than regular Ruffles. Will deeper ridges alone allow for less chip breakage when dipping? We shall find out in a moment.
As for the flavor, I’m completely dismissing the “Kickin’” part because that’s just regular ol’ unnecessary adjective addition, which has become pedestrian in this day and age of snack food marketing. It’s like when you type the same word over and over again; after a while, it loses all meaning and your eyeballs just pass right over it. I don’t even care that Ruffle is doin’ the whole gerund-abbreviation thin’. It don’t mean nothin’.
The jalapeño flavor does have some actual heat to it, which is always appreciated in a product that claims to have some spice goin’ on. The ranch flavor was surprisingly strong, especially on the finishing end; it lingers more than the jalapeño flavor, but has an authentic ranch flavor that I enjoyed.
Oh, by the way, the back of the bag also says, “Your hunger’s about to get kicked in the tail by the hottest ranch this side of Carson City.”
If you don’t quite get the joke there, you’re obviously an out-of-touch woman, or a sissy man who has never been with a legal whore. Watch out; Ruffles will revoke your Man Card for such an offense.
Ruffles Ultimate Smokehouse Bacon Dip
The jar wants to make sure I know that there’s real bacon inside, which is not inherently bad, because, hey, bacon, but I’m a little disturbed at what this bacon is suspended in. The name of the dip is completely bacon-centric, but its creamy whiteness left me unsettled.
I decided to plow ahead without reading the ingredients on the jar and let my tongue decide what was going on. It’s not like I wasn’t going to eat it anyways, and ignorance is bliss, right?
I also decided to try to Smokehouse Bacon Dip with the Kickin’ Jalapeño Ranch Chips, because that’s what Emily Chang did in the commercial, and I always follow the serving suggestions of snack food manufacturers.
Speaking of which, why not just have Emily Chang turn into a dude at the end of the Ruffles Ultimate commercial? Who wants a sexy chick interrupting your male-bonding poker game? After all, nothing says “completely heterosexual guy gathering” like getting something thick, white and creamy all over your hands with your best buds?
Damn these hackles! So distracting! Anyways, as you can see, Ruffles Ultimate chips immediately failed the “hardercore” test, breaking almost immediately after contact with the thick dip. Way to fail at the one thing you claimed you could accomplish, Ultimate chips. I just so happened to have a bag of regular Ruffles in my cupboard, so I thought a comparison might be in order…
Well, this is awkward...
Ouch.
As for the taste of the dip, it was…well, kind of bland, really. Kind of like a half-assed blend of ranch and sour cream flavors. Out of the three rather large chipfuls of Smokehouse Bacon Dip I ate, only one actually contained a chunk with texture that suggested I was eating a piece of bacon, and even then, it was limp and chewy.
The bacon flavor itself, despite the jar’s claim of real bacon, tasted more like Bacon Bits, and was more of an aftertaste. It’s sad when “bland white stuff” taste overwhelms “real bacon” taste. It even overwhelmed the bit of heat from the chips, somehow. I never knew bland could be so strong.
In hindsight, I’m glad I tried the dip before I read the ingredients. Some of the ingredients with sub-ingredients (have I used the word “ingredients” enough yet?) include “sour cream flavor”, “smoky bacon type flavor” and “butter type flavor”. I’ve never seen so many types. Especially without the grammatically appropriate hyphens.
Ruffles Ultimate Smokehouse Bacon Dip wasn’t gross, per se; it was just bland and disappointing. I wasn’t exactly expecting to be blown away with awesome bacon flavor, nor was I expecting to suddenly be wearing ridiculous bejeweled headphones. I was just expecting something beyond blah. I also was not expecting butter type flavor.
But Smokehouse Bacon Dip is joy in a jar compared to what was to come next…
Ruffles Ultimate Beef N’ Cheese Dip
And here we have the dip that started it all. There’s real beef inside, which I already knew from the Facebook post that told me it contained not just real beef, but real beef brisket.
No questions regarding meat content here; when I opened the lid, I was greeted with, well…that. Ominous lumps hiding just under the surface of a sea of processed cheese. I was already filled with trepidation.
The Ultimate chips fared better with this dip, as the cheese was less thick than the Smokehouse Bacon Dip.
However, the regular Ruffles fared just as well, so Ultimate still loses.
These were the first and last two bites of Beef N’ Cheese Dip I will ever experience. I wanted to stop at one, but I already had the second chip loaded up, and I thought the dip deserved at least two chances.
Let me explain further…
Ruffles Ultimate Beef N’ Cheese Dip is horrible. As the dip first entered my mouth, my taste buds were met with processed cheese flavor, which was not unexpected. However, it went beyond just processed, and ventured into, no, past the worst elementary-school-cafeteria nacho cheese you’ve ever tasted.
And then there was the beef. The chunks were visibly large, but also disturbingly soft. The more I chewed, the worse it got. It started out like a bad piece of meat from a can of Dinty Moore stew, but quickly turned into what I can only describe as “value” generic-brand dog food. I’ve never tasted dog food, but I’ve certainly smelled it, and the “beef brisket” chunks in this dip must be close to what you’d feed your dog if you hate it and want it to die. It is animal cruelty disguised as human chip dip.
Just when I thought it couldn’t be worse, the cheese goo from Hell and the dog food chunks somehow conspired to make the aftertaste even worse. Sometimes I go into food knowing that it’s going to be bad; I steel myself, but soldier on. This…this I was not expecting. The taste lingered in my mouth like a wretched food poisoning-induced vomit, which was appropriate, because I actually felt nauseous after eating it.
I was actually hungry before I had started this review; after the Beef N’ Cheese dip, I honestly had no desire to eat anything, instead dousing my mouth with a cold, bitter mug of coffee that had been hanging around for hours. I verbalized actual “ugh” and “bleeeeeh” sounds as I reeled around my house, which may sound overdramatic, but I was alone, and the sounds were genuine.
The taste refused to leave, like an animal had died inside the wall of my house, except the only exterminator that could eliminate this putrid flavor would be the cold, bony finger of Death himself.
Okay, that last part was a little overdramatic. But only a little.
Overall, my Ruffles Ultimate experience was far from ultimate. The flavor of the Kickin’ Jalapeño Ranch Chips was okay but nothing original or fantastic, and the deeper, wider ridges were actually less effective in preventing chip breakage when up against a thick dip.
The Smokehouse Bacon Dip was hardly a bacon party in my mouth, and the dip itself, chock full of “type” flavors, had hardly any flavor at all. I don’t expect a whole lot out of a jarred, shelf-stable dip, but I expected more than a vaguely sour cream/ranchy base with some chewy bits of fake-tasting bacon.
Last and most definitely least, the Beef N’ Cheese dip was a horrorshow that makes me wish I had a time machine so I that I could go back and tell myself to never read Facebook again just so I had never known it existed. I just realized I never bothered to read the ingredients on the jar of this dip, and you know what? I’m not going to. I’ve already been traumatized enough. I don’t need any further confirmation that this dip is made from the Devil’s jizz and boiled chunks of old horse meat.
Oh, right, I actually forgot about my hackles for some minutes, there. Here’s a parting quote from Frito Lay North America’s Vice President of Marketing: “Guys live for larger-than-life moments that fuel legendary stories they share for years. Male bonding is a rite of passage for guys, and what better way to bond than by attending one of the most exciting parties on the planet. The Ruffles Ultimate line was created to fuel epic moments. It’s in moments like these, often over a bag of chips, where recounting the tale is almost as fun as being there the first time.”
These are some of the dumbest words about any food product I’ve ever seen in print. I could rip it apart for another good 500 words, but I already never want to see the words “Ruffles” and “Ultimate” in the same sentence ever again.
The “party” he’s referring to is some Maxim tie-in contest that has since expired. Consider that a blessing, although nothing makes a for some male bonding and a legendary story with an epic moment quite like a circle puke of fake cheese and dog chow all over a group of Maxim models. Hardercore.
Ruffles Ultimate Kickin’ Jalapeño Ranch Chips
Score: 2.5 out of 5 hardercore chips more fragile than the bones of a post-menopausal woman with osteoporosis
Price: $4.29
Size: 8 oz. bag
Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
Nutritional Quirks: These are chips. Blessedly, they’re just chips.
Ruffles Ultimate Smokehouse Bacon Dip
Score: 1.5 out of 5 BA-ZIIIINGs
Price: $4.49
Size: 15 oz. jar
Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
Nutritional Quirks: Sour cream type flavor. Smoky bacon type flavor. Butter type flavor.
Ruffles Ultimate Beef N’ Cheese Dip
Score: 0 out of 5 circle vomits
Price: $4.49
Size: 15 oz. jar
Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
Nutritional Quirks: Since I refuse to read the actual ingredients – Devil’s jizz and old horse meat.
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.
Hey, it’s the day after Easter! For some of you dear readers, you may have just finished the holiday tradition of Lent. Whether you abstained from meat on Fridays, gave it up altogether, or just cut out red meat, you can now continue your carnivorous ways.
I figure today seemed like the perfect day to review something I’ve been holding onto for a while. Back in December, I received a bag of chips from a generous friend of mine, who works at a place that apparently considers rib-flavored potato chips a perfectly normal selection for their break room vending machine. Having had some harrying encounters with meat-flavored non-meat items around that same time, I was justifiably nervous, but I reviewed them anyway, and found them to be quite enjoyable, and also free of any creepy meat flavor.
In the process of that review, I took a look at Herr’s website, and found some wacky flavors that I would’ve loved to have gotten my hands on. Unfortunately, I’d never seen Herr’s in my area. A little while back, I found myself outside my normal grocery/convenience store zone, and decided to check out the local Basha’s. To my surprise, they carried Herr’s! I was disappointed that they didn’t have Creamy Dill Pickle flavor, but they did have Kansas City Prime Steak, which I consider a mighty fine consolation prize.
I’ve always been curious about the name of these potato chips. I get the Prime part; in terms of USDA beef grading, Prime is the highest grade a piece of meat can get, and Prime steaks are usually only sold in hotels and restaurants. Prime means quality. But why Kansas City? I didn’t care enough to research before, but now that I’m writing about these chips, I have to. For you. You’re welcome.
According to Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge and my primary care physician, Kansas City (the Missouri one, not the Kansas one, mind you) is famous for its steaks and, more specifically, the Kansas City Strip Steak. The strip steak is the cut of beef where T-bones and Porterhouses come from, just so you know. Deliciousness.
Kansas City became famous for its steaks due to the creation of the Kansas City Stockyards, which were built to give livestock owners better prices for their stock. At the Kansas City Live Stock Exchange, the headquarters of the Stockyards, livestock was sold at auction, which gave owners a chance at getting more money for their cattle. Previously, cattle owners west of Kansas City had to concede to whatever price the railroad was offering.
In the heyday year of 1923, 1,194,527 cattle (45% of the gross cattle sold) were purchased by local packing houses and markets, making Kansas City the place to get fresh, delicious steak. Built in 1871, the Stockyards flourished well into the 1940s. Unfortunately, the Great Flood of 1951 devastated the Stockyards, and they never really recovered, finally closing in 1991.
And now you know why Herr’s chose to call their steak-flavored potato chips Kansas City Prime. I just went all educational on yo’ ass. Take it. LIKE IT.
Back to the chips! From the mouth of Herr Herr: “Take a bite of this unique flavor sensation, Kansas City Prime Steak Potato Chips. Herr’s takes the finest potatoes and cooks them in pure vegetable oil to a golden crispy crunch. We then top them with the flavor of thick and juicy steak. It’s hard to find this bold flavor outside of your favorite steakhouse.”
“Unique flavor sensation” sounds like a phrase I would use to trick someone into eating something nasty. It’s the equivalent of setting your friend up on a blind date and telling him “she has a great personality”! I can read between the lines, here. I’m also pretty sure you won’t be finding this “bold flavor” inside OR outside of your favorite steakhouse.
I just noticed that the picture on the bag is actually a “serving suggestion”. So you’re supposed to serve these steak-flavored chips with…steak? How very meta. I have a feeling that if you served Kansas City Prime chips with a delicious Porterhouse straight from the grill, the chips are going to pale in comparison to the real thing. I enjoy potato chips, but I enjoy a juicy slab of meat a hell of a lot more.
All of that said, I actually have some high hopes for these chips. From my experience with their rib-flavored chips, I know that Herr’s has not yet figured out the dark magic that Frito-Lay uses to make their meat-flavored chips, so I’m not worried about that. I’m hoping for a chip flavored with a dry steak rub, which, in my opinion, would be awesome. Let’s see how Kansas City Prime these chips actually are.
The first impression I got from these chips was holy balls these chips are salty. That’s a bold statement coming from a salt vampire like myself. I would go so far as to call them excessively salty. The second impression was holy balls these chips are garlicky. It took a few mouthfuls before I could detect the more subtle flavors in the seasoning. Namely, that it tastes like they tossed the chips in a combination of beef ramen seasoning and garlic powder. There’s definitely a beefy taste, but it’s artificial, like you’re sucking on a cube of beef bullion.
This may not seem like a ringing endorsement for Kansas City Prime, but I found myself rather enjoying the chips. This probably puts me in the minority; I’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t want to get intimate with a bag full of chip that taste like beefy garlic salt. I don’t even know how many I could eat before I reached the limit of my admittedly high sodium tolerance, but I could see myself having a handful or two here and there. I also like the texture of Herr’s chips; they’re thick and deliver a nice crunch, but not so thick that shards of potato pierce your gums like shrapnel every time you take a bite.
That said, as a reviewer, I have to be objective, and in the end, not only do Herr’s Kansas City Prime Steak Flavor Artificially Flavored Potato Chips taste nothing like steak, they’re also too salty and remind me of being poor and having 17 cent ramen for dinner. On the plus side, there’s enough garlic in them to ensure that nobody will kiss you for the rest of the day, so if your boyfriend has severe halitosis and you’re too nice to break it to him, these chips will assist you nicely.
Score: 2.5 out of 5 totally interesting and not at all boring facts about the history of steak in Kansas City, Missouri
Price: $2.99
Size: 8 oz. bag
Purchased at: Basha’s #19
Nutritional Quirks: It’s the inclusion of salt and MSG that really makes the chips pop! Also contains butter (what?) and “extractives of tumeric”, which sounds like an ingredient you would need to hunt down if you were concocting a brew to put a curse on someone.
Dots has three different Halloween-themed gumdrops: Bat Dots, which are blood orange-flavored, Ghost Dots, which look like they glow in the dark and come in assorted flavors so you never know what you’re going to get, and Candy Corn Dots, which is what I was stuck with since that’s all they had at my Target. I feel cheated.
Crushing disappointment aside, Candy Corn Dots are full of Halloween fun. Well, at least on the outside. Fall leaves, candy corn, and all the colors of the season.
And then there’s this guy up at the top here who is super happy to be on a box of Dots. Look at him, struggling valiantly to keep his floppy, hay-filled glove aloft so as to say hi and tell you that he’s really happy to see you. Scarecrow don’t get enough play on Halloween. It’s always about, well, bats and ghosts.
I believe that my box of Candy Corn Dots is cursed. I had to retake the pictures because the first time, everything came out impossibly dark. The second time, I took about 30 pictures of the box and had to play the “pick where you want your glare spot to be” game. I chose to sacrifice the Dot down at the bottom, because he was obviously trying to hog the spotlight and I wanted to make sure Scarecrow didn’t get blotted out, thus ruining one of his rare moments to shine.
The Dots themselves also proved difficult, but at this point whatever spirit was haunting my camera and/or Dots had exhausted me, so I just gave up and went with it. You win, Dots spirit. And you deserve to – you are the reason for the season!
On the left you see an example of a normal Candy Corn Dot, dome-shaped with orange being the dominating color and a yellow making up the base. I have to ask, where’s the white tip? Candy corns are pretty simple in their construction, and the white tip is pretty key. You’d think they could have just dropped a blob on the top or something.
On the right, you see the Candy Corn Dots equivalent of Quasimodo – deformed, mutated, and awesome. I commend him for managing to slip by whatever Quality Control protocols they have at the Tootsie factory. I ate him second, out of respect.
Candy corns have had their share of controversy, at least amongst the people with which I associate. You either like them or you hate them. We all know how Lewis Black feels about them. I personally find nothing distasteful about candy corn. It’s mostly just a colored triangle of sugar that crumbles in your mouth and rots your teeth. That said, when I would dump out my pillowcase after a long night of trick-or-treating, candy corn was never in the top tier pile. They weren’t vanquished to the pile of tiny boxes of raisins and Mary Jane Peanut Butter Kisses, but they wouldn’t be hanging out with bite size Snickers any time soon.
Despite the relative simplicity of candy corn, Dots manages to miss the spot. I haven’t had a Dot since…well, probably since I was young enough to trick-or-treat without anyone raising an eyebrow at my age, so I don’t have a Dot control subject. I stuck my nose in the box for a first whiff, and it smelled like plastic and chemicals, with a generic sweet undertone. I thought this was an anomaly, possibly coming from the box itself, but no, the candy itself tasted about the same way. Candy corn doesn’t have that strong of a flavor beyond sugar, and yet you could blindfold almost anyone and give them a piece and they would know that flavor. I had to really look, and possibly wish, for that flavor. It was mostly generically sweet with some plastic and candy corn undertones.
I was pretty disappointed by Candy Corn Dots. Perhaps I set the bar too high. After all, it’s just candy corn. But still, I feel that the missing white tip and the underwhelming replication of that distinct flavor were critical missteps. However, kudos to Dots for putting out a trio of very Halloweeny candy instead of just resting on their tiny-sized regular boxes that are a staple in any trick-or-treater’s bag. Also, Mr. Scarecrow looks so happy on that box. It would break my heart to see him frown.
I’d love to lie to you and say that I picked up Kool-Aid Fun Fizz Drink Drops Partyin’ Punch strictly for review purposes, but honestly, the exact opposite is true. As you might be able to tell from the picture, the pouch has already been opened. Sometimes JFB contributor Bob picked these up on a whim. The truth is, we are both people inching perilously close to the age of 30, and we still make Kool-Aid. No, there are no children in this household. Just two semi-responsible adults who make Kool-Aid.
I should have seen the potential for a review right off the bat, but it wasn’t until Bob tried these Drink Drops that I realized they would be perfect for a review. It’s a fucking Alka-Seltzer that makes Kool-Aid! What’s not to love? Or mock?
The tablets come individually wrapped in their own little packets, which I wasn’t expecting, but makes sense for those who want their Kool-Aid on-the-go. As you can see, on the back of the packet, the tablet has a little smiley face on it, much resembling the Kool-Aid Man’s perpetual grin. Wouldn’t it be great if that was what the tablets actually looked like?
OH YEAAHH!
OH MY GOD I GET TO DROWN THE KOOL-AID MAN! …Which is kind of weird, since he’s already filled with nothing but liquid, but…whatever. Give me my right to pretend I’m drowning a beloved mascot and I’m down.
When he made his cup of Fun Fizz, Bob just dropped one of the tablets into a random amount of water. He then complained that it was too…well, watery. I advised him that maybe he should follow the directions on the back of the pouch, which read, “Put 1 drink drop into 8 fl oz glass of water and watch it fizz. OR Put 2 drink drops into 16 fl oz bottle of water.” However, don’t ever, ever drop 2 drink drops into a 16 oz glass of water, or else you threaten to open a wormhole that leads to a bizarro world, where chicken replaces bread on all sandwiches.
This time I made sure I had exactly eight ounces of water, as the back of the package demands. I dropped in our little Kool-Aid Man tablet and watched the excitement unfold!
I wasn’t timing it, but it took about three or four minutes for the Drink Drop to dissolve completely. It was kind of fun watching all the bubbles come up as it dissolved. My favorite part was when the tab went from sitting at the bottom of the glass to slowly floating up to the surface, where it turned into a frothy blob before dissolving completely. I likened it to watching a dead body writhe free of the chains that had been holding it to the bottom of a lake, slowly and ominously drifting up to the surface, ready to traumatize a group of carefree prepubescents for life when they discover it. Except this time, the body dissolves completely in under five minutes. The perfect crime.
OH NOOOO!
The taste of it was distinctly fruit punch, but it had an interesting fizzy texture that went with it, unlike regular Kool-Aid. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it carbonated; it was more like a brief pop on the tongue before I swallowed the liquid. Almost like when you have a mouthful of Pop Rocks and you get that one last, faint pop out of one of the little guys before they completely dissolve. I am probably the only person under the age of 16 who actually remembers that feeling, because I’m the only person nearing the age of 30 who has had Pop Rocks within in the last decade. I’m also drinking fizzy Kool-Aid. What do you want.
While the drink does have a nice, distinct tropical punch flavor, the sweetness of it is absolutely cloying. The nice thing about making your own Kool-Aid is that you can add as much sugar as you want to it. I tend to lean towards the less sugary side, to the point where the Kool-Aid is almost tart. Looking at the ingredient list is like looking at the chemicals needed to produce…I don’t know, something really sciency, and aspartame is included in that list, which explains the mouth-coating, long-lasting, not very pleasant oversweetness.
Kool-Aid Fun Fizz Drink Drops is an interesting concept that’s fun to watch and I’m sure will make kids clap their hands together like a bus full of autistic children heading off to “special” summer camp. And I’m sure that was the point, so Kool-Aid has succeeded nicely on that front. Kids might also like the overwhelming sweetness, but I’m not sure how they’ll feel about the aspartame aftertaste. Then again, children are forgiving, so watching the Kool-Aid man slowly dissolve to his doom might make them forget about all that. I suppose the portability makes it useful, but Kool-Aid already makes a product called Singles that fills that niche well enough. For me, I’ll just stick to making Kool-Aid the old-fashioned way, like a normal, responsible adult.
Score: 2.5 out of 5 bloated corpses and traumatized children
Price: $1.99
Size: 1 bag of 8 Drink Drops (0.53 oz.)
Purchased at: Safeway #1717
Nutritional Quirks: Citric acid, sorbitol, potassium and sodium bicarbonate, aspartame. Contains less than 2% of natural and artificial flavor, ascorbic acid, sucralose, acesulfame potassium, potassium and sodium carbonate, magnesium oxide, soy lecithin, red 40, blue 1, sodium benzoate and BHA. Oh, sorry, that’s actually just the entire ingredient list.
There’s just something delightful about exclusivity.
As hierarchical, social animals, we just can’t help being thrilled about getting something over on the other guy. It’s an issue of status, a way of waggling your tongue and informing another human being that you got something he didn’t. You can fight it, you can feel guilty, but in the end, exclusivity feels damned good. And that’s why I was filled with joy when retrieving the mail today, and beholding this:
Providence!
I hadn’t previously seen any advertising on this product, either television or Internet. There were no tigers jumping through hoops or other assorted gimcrackery. And on the back of the flyer were coupons for KFC’s Fiery Grilled Wings, still touted as the new kid on the block, and a harsh warning that the product was available only for a limited time. To the mind obsessed with new junk food and fast food releases, an individual who tracks product launches with the cold eye of a cobra tracking its prey, this means only one thing: test market.
Indeed, research appeared to bear this out. I was hard-pressed to find any information about it at all. And yet, once the filthy and howling Junk Food Betty Product Acquisition Team rolled up to the local KFC, their new Sweet & Spicy Glazed Grilled Chicken was served up lickety-split in an eight-piece bucket combo, with nary a scratched head or furrowed brow. This leads to the obvious question, however:
What kind of batshit loco marketing executive decides to test a new product in Mesa, Arizona? This town is basically the Mormon Tabernacle with a shopping mall. Sure, they could be releasing in the full Phoenix Greater Metropolitan area, but even then, this isn’t the place for test chicken. You test new kinds of ammunition in the Valley of the Sun. You test belt buckle designs, and pickup trucks. You release new varieties of illicit, home-brewed methamphetamines to determine overall percentage of consumer deaths. Maybe you demonstrate new air conditioning technologies in August, when everyone’s eyes have acquired that Cujo-sick sheen that accompanies months of brain-searing heat. But you don’t test chicken. Not if you know what’s good for you.
Frothing tirade aside, we were overjoyed to have first dibs on a new product that may or may not be released nationwide. We seized KFC’s Sweet & Spicy Glazed Grilled Chicken, clutched it to our breast, hissed menacingly at the man working the window, and sped off into the night. We proudly, reverently sang the names of all the cities, towns, villages, and unincorporated townships (I’m looking at you, half of Michigan) in the United States that were deprived of our prize. And then things went wrong.
While traveling to the Junk Food Betty Product Testing and Judgment Labs, the car began to fill with a unique aroma. Normally, when exiting KFC, this is an ineffable experience; the ambrosial smell of chicken and no less than 11 herbs and spices fill the passenger cabin, triggering hosts of primal, back-brain responses. The nostrils flare. The mouth waters. The pupil dilate. And you don’t even want to know what happens below the head. This time, I was filled only with trepidation.
Imagine, if you will, walking into a Panda Express. Keep that smell in your mind. Now imagine driving a brand new car. You close your eyes, inhaling deeply of the intoxicating odor of factory-fresh polymers. And, while your eyes are closed, you go careening onto the sidewalk and crash directly into the dining room of a Panda Express, scattering panicked diners and staff alike, flinging cheap furniture about like an enraged giant. That’s what this chicken smelled like: Panda Express and new car smell.
I, for one, suffered a drop in enthusiasm.
Drive safely.
When I got it home, I had a moment of Holmes-like deduction: the chicken was in a plastic bag while it was in the car. And indeed, upon liberating the bucket from its polyurethane oubliette, the plastic smell was less pervasive. So a better visual might be walking into a Panda Express holding a new iPod under your nose like a crazy person. Then came the tasting.
I heartily enjoy KFC’s grilled chicken. If you’ve experienced KFC’s grilled chicken before, your attention will first be drawn to KFC Sweet & Spicy Glazed Grilled Chicken’s Sweet & Spicy Glaze:
Don't make any plans.
The glaze, in a word, is thick. Jam thick. Napalm thick. It sticks to absolutely everything, and this is especially true of your fingers. KFC Sweet & Spicy Glazed Grilled Chicken is something for which you need to plan. There will be no flipping of channels, no fast-forwarding through commercials on your DVR, no chit-chatting on the Internet with friends. You will not update your Faceyspaces. A lone wing of this chicken will turn your fingers into a sticky mess, a honey-glazed horrorshow from which there is no reprieve. Invest in napkins. Buy a four-pack of paper towels. Bar the door, board the windows, turn out the lights. You’re aboard the sticky chicken train, and you’re going to ride it all the way.
As for flavor, take Panda Express Orange Chicken. Toss in some cayenne and chile flake (used in the Fiery Grilled Wings). Drive it through a plate glass window. You have KFC Sweet & Spicy Glazed Grilled Chicken. Furthermore, the glaze seems to make the normally, deliciously crisp skin a bit soggy. It isn’t terrible, and on the bright side, it does have a little heat, which is more than I can say for other “spicy” fast food offerings, such as the Taco Bell Volcano line. And Panda Express Orange Chicken ain’t bad, especially when spiced up with chiles. Just don’t expect to be blown away. Or hit by a rogue car.
Score: 2.5 out of 5 head-on collisions
Price: $19.44
Size: Eight-piece combo with 2 sides and 4 biscuits
Purchased at: KFC #X900041 (from the future?)
Nutritional Quirks: May contain glue and/or car paint and/or the blood of the unlucky.
I should have mentioned this in my last post, but the Coconut M&M’s, Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar and 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bar were all released this month from Mars. The Coconut M&M’s were a re-release, but the latter two are brand new offerings. I bought all three at the same time, and apparently there was some sort of promotional coupon for doing so, but the cashier at my local convenience store and I had some language barrier problems, so when I looked at the receipt when I got home, there were all kinds of mysterious discounts. I guess I got one free for buying all of them at once. Who knows.
The point is that these guys are kind of related, and while Coconut M&M’s got a whole website for me to make fun of, both Milky Way and 3 Musketeers don’t even mention their new products on their website. Way to promote, guys. So, with little information to go off of beyond the wrapper and my own taste buds, I decided to combine the two into one review, since apart, they would probably be pretty short reviews. Consider it a twofer!
Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar
Milky Way Simply Caramel is described on the wrapper as “Real milk chocolate surrounding nothing but rich delicious caramel”. For any of you out there who grew up with parents who refused to allow you any sugar, never went trick-or-treating, and grew up to be the same kind of hippy douchebags as your parents, a regular Milky Way bar is a thick layer of nougat topped by a thinner layer of caramel, all coated with milk chocolate. Simple, tasty, familiar. So basically, all they’ve done is removed the nougat, leaving caramel to stand on its own.
I probably should have tried to pull the bar apart instead of cutting it, to better represent the gooeyness of the caramel, but I used a knife, so deal with it. Trust me, though, it is gooey. Very gooey. The caramel is super thick; chewing it will get you nothing more than a bunch of teeth coated in caramel. You have to sort of roll it around in your mouth, letting the caramel and chocolate melt and slide down your throat. It’s very akin to eating one of those Brach’s Milk Maid Caramel Cubes, except you get the chocolate in there, too. You gotta work at it. You can’t just muscle through this candy bar, unless swallowing a big hunk of caramel whole is your thing, in which case, that’s just weird and I hope you choke on it.
I also probably shouldn’t have left the candy bar in my special picture-taking place while I went to check out the photos and start the review on the computer. Silly me, thinking a cat would take no interest in a chocolate and caramel bar. A few minutes after that picture was taken, the plate was on the floor, the top half was nowhere to be found, and my cat was licking his lips compulsively. I marveled at how a cat could eat that much candy bar that fast, but the intrigue evaporated approximately 30 seconds later, when he barfed up a giant, half-chewed piece of caramel and chocolate. So I guess he is one of those guys mentioned in the paragraph above. I’m glad he barfed instead of choking, but I do want to choke him a little bit for almost ruining my review.
Perhaps I should thank him for taking half, though, because there’s no way I could finish this whole candy bar on my own. The combination of chocolate and caramel is obviously tasty, but it is so rich. The caramel is very thick, and sweet, and each bite takes about three minutes to fully melt in your mouth. My jaw and tongue were exercised to their limits on the one half that I ate, and I felt like I was going into sugar shock.
Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar is a tasty choice if you’re in the mood for a candy bar. Caramel and chocolate always go great together. But you’d better have a friend (or cat) that’s got a serious hankering for some caramel too, because Simply Caramel ain’t playing around. If I had to choose between Simply Caramel and the regular Milky Way bar, I’d choose about one fourth of the Simply Caramel. But if someone had a gun to my head and demanded that I eat the entire bar, which, by the way, happens so often it’s getting ridiculous, I’d go for the original Milky Way. I’m not terribly fond of nougat, but its inclusion in the original Milky Way makes the candy bar lighter, and lets the caramel come through without you feeling like you just sucked your way through an entire bag of those caramel cubes. So, give it a try with some of your caramel-inclined friends, or wait until the fun size version comes out, because that would be the perfect portion of the Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar.
3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars
Quite the departure from an original 3 Musketeers bar, 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars are described on the wrapper as follows:
I’ll be honest with you, I don’t exactly know what chocolate truffle means. I’d imagine they aren’t literally truffles, as in, the fungus that pigs are famous for finding. So I looked it up! According to ehow.com, they are not, in fact, truffles, but are called that because the cocoa-dusted ones resemble truffles.
Okay then.
I like the use of the word “enrobed”. I imagine the 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars wearing a silky milk chocolate smoking robe, a glass of scotch on the table beside it as it sits in its red velvet, high-backed chair before the fireplace, nonchalantly smoking his fine wooden pipe. 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars is the shit, and it knows it.
Anyways, the bars look pretty much like they do on the wrapper. Kind of enticing, really. They smell very rich and chocolaty, a much higher quality of chocolate than you’d typically find when sniffing a candy bar. This could be the chocolate truffle coming into play.
When you bite into the bar, it gives very easily, and the texture is very delicate. There’s a fun little snap when you hit the crisp. The crisp bottom part of the bar is much lighter than, say, the crisp of a Kit-Kat, and it plays well with the smooth chocolate of the truffle part.
I’ve never had a chocolate truffle, so I can’t honestly say if 3 Musketeers has hit the mark on the taste, but it’s definitely tasty. Satiny, and with a more refined taste and texture than the chocolate you’ll find in most other candy bars. The crisp part doesn’t really have much of its own flavor; instead, it takes on the flavor of the truffle, and adds that little crunch that plays with the smooth chocolate.
3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars are quite different than other candy bars. I feel like I should hold my pinky out while I bite into the bar; it’s light and delicate, the chocolate is silky, and it melts quickly and easily in your mouth. It’s like the polar opposite of the Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar. I’ve got more of a salt tooth than a sweet tooth, so I don’t buy candy bars often, but if I did get that rare chocolate craving, this would rank high up on my list when it came time to decide what impulse item to buy. If you’re in the mood for chocolate, but don’t want anything too heavy and also don’t want to go down the more expensive road of fancier chocolates, I would definitely recommend you try a 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bar.
Milky Way Simply Caramel Bar
Score: 2.5 out of 5 jaw workouts
Price: $1.19, $1.00 on sale
Size: 1.91 oz. bar
Purchased at: Circle K #2821
Nutritional Quirks: Cats can swallow it whole.
3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bar
Score: 4 out of 5 times I had to think of a synonym for the word “smooth”
Price: Free, I guess? Something here was free.
Size: 1.1 oz. pack of 2 bars
Purchased at: Circle K #2821
Nutritional Quirks: 85 calories per bar ain’t bad. Also: smooth.
I found these new Athens Hors d’oeuvres, which I will from here on call Hors to avoid spelling errors, in my grocer’s freezer section, filling up the space that my beloved Joy of Cooking products had once occupied. Once my rageful pounding on the glass of the freezer door had subsided and the opaque red film had faded from my vision, I took a closer look at them. I am a sucker for most foods Mediterranean, and my love of appetizers is legendary, so if you name your company Athens and start talking about Hors, I can’t help but show some interest.
Chipotle Cheese and Black Bean seems an odd choice for a decidedly Greek-sounding product, which is, of course, why I chose them. I also chose the spinach and feta variety, but who wants to hear about them. It’s much more fun to mock a Greek appetizer that’s trying to be Mexican.
There are six varieties of Hors, and I will list them for you, as well as a brief comment regarding how appropriate they are in the realm of Greek appetizers, summoned up by an extremely arbitrary rating system:
Mediterranean Vegetables in Corn Fillo Shells – I don’t normally associate corn with fillo, but they get a pass for using the word “Mediterranean”. 3 gyros.
Chipotle Cheese in Black Bean Fillo Shells – There is nothing Greek about this at all, but at least they used fillo (or at least the word) and didn’t just go with a mini tostada shell. 0.5 gyros.
Spinach and Feta in Traditional Fillo Shells – See, now we’re talking. This is all Greek, all the time, and they didn’t even fuck with the fillo. 5 gyros.
Artichoke and Cheese in Spinach Fillo Shells – Still pretty traditional, but anything Greek without feta is a small crime. 4 gyros.
Three Cheese in Tomato Fillo Shells – Feels like they’re kind of phoning it in on this one. Tweak it a little and it could be a Tostinos Pizza Roll. 2 gyros.
Salmon and Cheese in Traditional Fillo Shells – The type of cheese isn’t specified, but I’m going to assume it’s cream cheese, and these guys are a hit in the Jewish community. 1 gyro.
But enough of this. We’ve only got one flavor on the table today, and it’s the Greek/Mexican fusion that is becoming all the rage amongst the hipster crowd. Or haven’t your heard? Well, let’s check these little puppies out.
Aw, they come in a cute little tray, each with its own cup so that nobody has to fight over space or possibly cultural tensions. Hard to see if they’ll come out looking like the picture on the front of the box, at this point. The box describes them as “zesty chipotle cheese with red and green bell peppers, plus a dash of lime juice, cumin and cilantro”. I have to say, they sound more appetizing than most supposedly authentic frozen Mexican foods. I’m looking at you, José Olé.
The box commands me to bake them at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes. Microwaving is not recommended, you lazy assholes. I assume microwaving them would result in a lovely mess of molten cheese and completely mushy fillo. I always obey the box.
I only cooked four out of the 12 that come in the box. I thought that would showcase my delicate feminine appetite, until I read the back of the box and saw that the suggested serving size is two. I guess that is why they are Hors d’whatevers and not a Hungry Man dinner. Of course, the back of the box also suggests that you can turn them into a light meal. Whether or not they imply that the suggested serving size of two is a light meal (anorexic ladies, I’m looking at you!), or that the whole box of 12 is a light meal (bulimic ladies, I’m looking at you!), I haven’t a clue. But I’m going to stand behind my choice of four and not get neurotic about what kind of meal portion choice I’m making.
Not quite as lively as the front of the box would indicate, but that’s to be expected. The top of the cheese looks shriveled, but the fillo cups are crisp and crunchy, holding up quite nicely. The smell is cheesy, the kind of processed cheese odor that wafts off of your typical microwaved nacho cheese sauce.
They taste disappointingly generic. The crunch of the fillo is a nice contrast to the squishy cheese, but make sure you have a plate, because if you’re not going to eat it in one bite, the flaky dough is going to go flying everywhere when you bite into it. I’ll halfheartedly back up their claims of “zesty”, but their enticing description on the front of the box pretty much ends there, in terms of validity. The cheese filling could be pretty much any other cheese filling from any other frozen food product. When I think chipotle, I think smoky, and there’s no hint of that. The lime and cilantro are also disappointingly absent from the party. I’ll give the bell peppers some credit, if only because there was a hint of that “zesty” in there, just enough to keep it from tasting like bland cheese filling. I actually thought I caught a hint of black bean, so I broke off some of the fillo to eat on its own, but the fillo itself was flavorless. It’s possible they added some black bean flavoring to the cheese itself, which gave it just a hint of depth.
Basically, Athens Hors d’oeuvres Chipotle Cheese in Black Bean Fillo Shells are more of a mindless junk food than an elegant Hor that you can present to all your guests at your elegant dinner party. Something you can pop into the oven and eat 20 minutes later while you sit in front of the TV and watch reruns of Three’s Company. Squishy cheese in a crunchy shell; it’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just something you eat at 1pm on a Saturday to tide you over until it’s time to order a pizza. You could substitute a dozen other frozen appetizers and get the same result – I ate something, it had an okay flavor, now my stomach will shut up for a couple of hours.
Score: 2.5 out of 5 Hors
Price: $5.79
Size: 12 pieces (5.9 oz.)
Purchased at: Albertsons #980
Nutritional Quirks: Ingredients contain chipotle powder, lime juice, cumin, cilantro, and black bean powder, yet none can be tasted.
Junk food and fast food reviews from a leftist perspective. We eat it so you don't have to!
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 found these new Athens Hors d’oeuvres, which I will from here on call Hors to avoid spelling errors, in my grocer’s freezer section, filling up the space that my beloved 
