Tag Archives: Halloween

Beverages

Vile Villains Hot Chocolate: Wonderfully Wacky Purple, Deceivingly Orange, and Heartless Green

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Kids love food that is a color it isn’t supposed to be. My mind immediately travels back to Pop Qwiz, a microwave popcorn that came in various un-popcorn colors like red, green, and what should always be your favorite unnatural food color, blue. It also came in yellow, which is weird, because you can do that with butter. But hey, there was also purple, so I will forgive Pop Qwiz. For those of you too young to remember Pop Qwiz, here’s a commercial, and get off my lawn.

The second thing I remember is Heinz ketchup, which made some cah-RAZY colors like green, purple, blue, and teal. Teal? Most kids probably don’t even know what teal is. This was in 2000, at which time I had (mostly) grown out of my desire to eat foods of inappropriate colors, but I do remember my grandfather bought a bottle of the green stuff. Just because. I tip my hat to his spirit, since it’s obvious a little bit of him rubbed off on JFB.

Pop Qwiz disappeared long ago and Heinz stopped making the colored ketchups in 2006, presumably leaving millions of children without the opportunity to eat extra food coloring while their parents roll their eyes.

But fear not! (Or be afraid, it is the season for it.)  Just in time for Halloween, and possibly only for Halloween, I present to you Vile Villains Hot Chocolate! Not a hell of a lot of info about them on the Internet, but I gather they’re only available at Walgreen’s, and they come in three colors: Wonderfully Wacky Purple, Deceivingly Orange, and Heartless Green. The chocolate remains the same, but the colors are Halloweenolicious.

This is a Disney Joint, so we’ve got three villains from their vast library of evil beings. I’ll talk briefly about each and show you the all-important pictures, but since the chocolate is the same in all three, we’ll check that out at the end.

Wonderfully Wacky Purple Hot Chocolate

Okay, I have objections right off the bat, here. Really, the Chesire Cat? First off, he’s not even a villain. Second, I suppose he could pull off representing purple, but isn’t there someone who would really embody the spirit of purple? Any guesses? Motherfucking MALEFICENT from Sleeping Beauty, that’s right! Only one of the awesomest Disney villains ever! SHE TURNS INTO A MOTHERFUCKING DRAGON. Wasted opportunity.

Oddly, all the powders look generally the same. I was expecting purple powder, but this is what I got. But hey, kids like shit that changes colors just like they like food that is oddly colored, so…bonus?

The hot chocolate itself was a little more pastel than I would have liked. Lavender is not that spooky. I had a heck of a time taking the photos because, as you can see, it gets that film on top that masks the true color of the liquid, but you can generally see it around the edges. I later realized I could have let it cool down and that probably would have fixed the problem. But done is done. Deal with it.

Deceivingly Orange Hot Chocolate

Here we have the Evil Queen from Snow White, disguised as a witch. She gives Snow White a poisoned apple in the story, but here she appears to be presenting a Jack o’Lantern, apparently to tie in with the orange color. I have to say, if Snow White had been given a pumpkin, the story would have turned out much differently, unless she decided to toast the seeds and eat them I suppose.

Deceivingly Orange is a strange name. Out of context, it makes little sense. Oranges are not so deceiving. You pretty much get what you’re asking for out of an orange, unless you bought a grapefruit by mistake, but that’s your own fault. In this context, Deceivingly Orange means several things – first of all, nobody expects their hot chocolate to be orange, and second, the poisoned apple is deceiving. Except now it’s a pumpkin. Why not.

I’m not a big fan of orange as a color, but I guess this one delivers the most Halloweeny of all the colors. Purple and green are great backup colors for Halloween, but if you’re going to go Halloween, you know you have to go black and orange. The black is surprisingly absent, but at least orange has a backup team.

Heartless Green Hot Chocolate

Here we see the Evil Queen from Snow White in her natural evil form. With that bubbling green cauldron, she feels the most natural of the three. I am, however, a little miffed that two of the three Vile Villains are from Snow White. There are a bazillion Disney villains; do we really have to dip into the same pumpkin bucket twice?

Also, she’s holding the poisoned apple. Where the hell was the continuity director on these things?

Much like with the purple hot chocolate, this drink’s color is disappointingly pale. It does look a little sickly, however, which could be considered in the spirit of Halloween, but I would have liked to have seen a deep, dark green. Same with the purple.

Now then, to the hot chocolate flavor itself. I ran into a problem right off the bat: Vile Villains Hot Chocolate does not contain any chocolate. No cocoa powder, nothing. Now, I understand the fundamental reason for this; cocoa is brown, and that would effect the color of the drink. I understand with the orange and the green, but if they had made the purple darker, couldn’t they have gotten away with adding some cocoa? And what about black? It seems like it would have been easy to incorporate cocoa powder into that. But hey, I wasn’t on the hot chocolate development team; who knows what hurdles they went through before they settled upon these choices.

Oddly, despite the absence of actual chocolate, the Vile Villains do possess a ghost of hot chocolate taste. The basic ingredients are sugar, nonfat dry milk, and non dairy creamer. This makes for a very sweet drink, and I think it’s the creamer that makes it taste a bit like hot chocolate.

My mom (who lovingly sent me these when I couldn’t find them at my local Walgreen’s) thought they were awful due to the lack of chocolate flavor, but I found them passable as a hot, sweet, milky drink. Then again, I may or may not have enjoyed a few sips of flavored creamer in my past, so perhaps I’m not quite right in the head.

In the end, the execution of packaging and coloring didn’t sit quite right with me, but I think kids would enjoy drinking hot “chocolate” that comes in a spooooky package and nontraditional colors. Temperatures are falling, Halloween is in full swing, and a hot sweet treat would probably satisfy most young palates. Adults will probably find the lack of chocolate flavor disappointing, unless they really enjoy the taste of non dairy creamer. I appreciate the effort to create a cool Halloween product, but Disney’s Imagineers could have put a little more thought into it. (Note: I doubt the Imagineers had anything to do with this product; I just wanted an excuse to use the term “Imagineers”.)

Vile Villains Hot Chocolate: Wonderfully Wacky Purple, Deceivingly Orange, and Heartless Green

  • Score: 2 out of 5 totally kick-ass Maleficent dragons that should have been on the purple package
  • Price: Freeeeeeeee! (Thanks Mom!)
  • Size: 1.25 oz. package
  • Purchased at: A Walgreen’s somewhere in Southern California
  • Nutritional Quirks: No chocolate in the hot chocolate. Perhaps the largest quirk of all time.
Junk Food

Chips Ahoy! Haunted Halloween Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Did you think I’d forgotten about Halloween? Shame on you. And shame on me for not having all that much to work with this year. But I’ve got a few things up my sleeve, and Chips Ahoy! Haunted Halloween Cookies are one of them. Not literally though; I don’t want crumbsleeves.

If you’ve read this website for any amount of time, you know I appreciate a good piece of packaging, and Chips Ahoy! Brings it in spades. These are not just Chips Ahoy! cookies, they’re Chips Ahoy! Haunted Halloween cookies. BEWARE! It’s all black and orange and ghosts and bats and YEAH HALLOWEEN!

They didn’t just go all-out on the front and ignore the rest, however. There’s more! Tombstones and black cats! EERIE! (Chips Ahoy! are not very eerie, but I appreciate the sentiment.) BE AFRAID! (There’s not really much to be afraid of, besides maybe choking on a chocolate chip, which would be embarrassing.)

Even the ends get the spooky treatment. SPINE TINGLING! Love it.

On the other side, there’s even a recipe for Chips Ahoy! wiches, which a.) is a rather awkward name, and b.) totally should have been “witches”. There’s even a damn witch right next to the word! Chips, you dropped the ball. But I forgive you because your package is still 100% awesome.

I would have made the wi(t)ches, but I didn’t have any ice cream or Halloween sprinkles, and it just strikes me as odd to make ice cream sandwiches for myself. That’s a fun family activity. Just hanging out by myself with a pile of cookies and ice cream rolled in sprinkles seems sad. I don’t have enough cats to justify that.

“Have the guts to make it?” is also a lovely touch. I guess I just didn’t have the guts, though.

Oh hey, added bonus – there are cookies inside! I haven’t had a Chips Ahoy! in forever, but these seem smaller than I remember. If you don’t know what a Chips Ahoy! tastes like, well…it is a chocolate chip cookie. The crunchy kind, not the soft kind. Although there are Chewy Chips Ahoy! and I could probably put down a whole package of those. Oh, I just looked at their website, and I guess they have a “Chewy Gooey” kind now that has fudge inside and-

You know what, we’re getting off track here.

What sets apart Haunted Halloween Chips Ahoy! (can I stop with the exclamation point now?) from their regular chocolate chip cookies is the addition of little orange candy-coated bits of chocolate thrown in with the regular chocobits. Not exactly revolutionary, but look at them! They look about as Halloweeny as chocolate chips can look without being made out of bat wings and eyes of newt. Or some little ghost-shaped candies thrown on. Either way.

By appearances, you’d think the addition of the orange candies wouldn’t really make that much of a difference in the cookie, but I think they bring a little something to the cauldron. You can taste the candy shell, which adds a different sweetness than the cookie and the chocolate chips, and the added crunch is notable and rather fun. It’s not like the addition is groundbreaking (see: Keebler Chips Deluxe, every mom who has ever baked M&Ms into cookies), but it’s fun, and it’s Halloweeny, which is more than I can say for most other cookies. At least Chips Ahoy is trying.

And let’s not forget that packaging!

Chips Ahoy! Haunted Halloween Chocolate Chip Cookies

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 cauldrons full of cookie ice cream sandWITCHES
  • Price: $2.50
  • Size: 12.2 oz. package
  • Purchased at: Walmart #3799
  • Nutritional Quirks: No newts were harmed in the making of these cookies. As far as I know.
Junk Food

Boo Berry Cereal

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Happy Halloween! I chose Boo Berry to represent on this day because, while he’s an old standby, I’ve also never tried Boo Berry Cereal. I also refrained from using its true title, “Boo Berry Artificial Berry Flavored Frosted Cereal with Spooky-Fun Marshmallows”. I figured y’all had gotten the picture by this point. I do like the bold statement of “spooky-fun”, however. I’m holding you to that, Boo Berry.

A little history lesson, largely provided by Wikipedia, which is my primary healthcare physician, attorney, and monster-themed cereal expert: Boo Berry was introduced in 1973 and was supposedly the first blueberry-flavored cereal. Ambitious! Resting on its laurels, these days Boo Berry claims to be only berry-flavored, but I’m still okay with that. After 37 years, a ghost can sit back and take a break. From the look of it on the front of the cereal box, a ghost can also make creepy, eyebrow-raised facial expressions and grabby postures that look less like he’s going to steal your soul and more like he’s going to do something to your children that would cause Elliot Stabler to punch him in the face.

The back of the box delivers more innocent fun. I tried to capture images of the whole thing, but the text would have been too small to read, so I’ll spell it out for you: Count Chocula and Frankenberry are playing a racing game that looks like it was made in 1986. “One more lap and I choc up another Monster Truck Racer WIN!” Says Count Chocula, who is presumably hanging upside-down, which would make his win even more impressive until you realize Frankenberry is probably just mashing the buttons with his nerveless, pieced-together thumbs. “Not so fast, Count! I’m a turbo boost away from TASTING SWEET VICTORY.” Apparently they are playing a very shitty video game based on the 2008 television remake of Knight Rider.

Boo Berry then shows up out of nowhere and says, “Argue all you want, fiends, but when we’re talking cereal, my BOO BERRY ALWAYS WINS!” They were not talking cereal, and you are being an asshole for interrupting them with your cereal talk, Boo Berry.

Apparently they don’t mind, however, because they immediately stop playing to have a Monster Cereal SHOWDOWN! This involves a “scare-off”, wherein the scariest face wins. Frankenberry’s all like “MMMRRRRR!” with a face that looks more developmentally disabled than scary, Count Chocula goes “Blah-Ha-Ha-Ha!” looking more like he just ate something gross (I’m guessing Kroger Jelly Belly Pudding) than anything resembling scary.

Finally, Boo Berry says the traditional “BOO!” which is not in and of itself scary, but…HE’S WEARING A MASK THAT LOOKS LIKE WHAT MONSTERS APPARENTLY THINK HUMAN CHILDREN LOOK LIKE!!!!! Frankenberry jumps into Count Chocula’s arms and they both shit themselves out of sheer terror. Boo takes his mask off, flashing his classic pedo smile in victory, which is actually more scary than the mask of a child’s face with the expression of someone who just snorted about six lines of meth. Boo wins this round, but I’m sure the other guys get their own moments to shine on the back of their own cereal boxes. I wish I’d looked at the store.

Here’s the cereal! Yes, there’s actual food inside the box! Here’s your players:

From top to bottom:

  • A Pac-Man ghost in eatable form Boo Berry himself, presumably, more purple than blue, but an impressive purple nonetheless. I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten something this color. I approve of both the shape and the color.
  • Purple bat guys. Or gals, whichever. Suitable for the season and the cereal.
  • Blue blobs. I think they’re supposed to be skulls? Poor execution, but skulls are cool. When’s the last time you ate a skull? That’s right. Don’t be so judgmental.
  • Pink Cthulhu and baby pink Cthulhu. I honestly don’t actually know what those are really supposed to be, but Cthulhu was the first thing that came to mind, and I’m going with it. Eldritch gods are spooky fun.
  • Apostrophe marks White ghosts. Two ghosts in one box! These are just generic ghosts, though. I assume they are Boo’s minions. I like eating minions.

The cereal itself has a subtle berry flavor that doesn’t really taste like any specific berry. It’s sweet, but not cloyingly so. It also has a definite “whole grain” aftertaste that I don’t remember from eating sugary cereals in my childhood. It’s been forever since I’ve had any kind of cereal, let alone corn-grain-and-marshmallow cereal, but I seem to remember them being way sweeter and less whole-grainy. I’m assuming the whole child obesity epidemic has pressured cereals into making them less sugary and more healthy than they were in 1989. Boo Berry cereal is chock full of vitamins and minerals, and has only 12 grams of sugar per 1 cup of cereal. I have no idea if that is any different than Boo Berry circa 1989, but I’m sure someone does. Feel free to comment.

The marshmallow pieces taste just like I remember them from olden times, which is basically like sugar and more sugar. They’re still firm yet tacky, and melt in your mouth in a delightful way. Marshmallows make any cereal better.

Boo Berry Cereal gets the honor of showing up on Halloween because it’s a classic. I don’t know how I never had any of the monster cereals before now, but I definitely remember loving their presence in commercials around Halloween when I was a kid. I’ve heard from friends that Boo Berry was always the hardest to find (excluding the short-lived Fruit Brute and his later equally short-lived and stupidly named incarnation, Fruity Yummy Mummy), so that makes him extra special. The cereal itself is your typical whole-grain with marshmallows fare, but the shapes are wonderfully Halloweeny and the box offers lots of fun for kids and adults like me who act like kids, even more so around this time of year. Boo Berry gets two thumbs up, even though he looks like a creepy pedo.

  • Score: 4 out of 5 spooky-fun pink marshmallow Cthulhus
  • Price: $2.50
  • Size: 9.6 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains 8 vitamins and minerals that have 25% of your daily value in one cup of cereal.  I now consider Boo Berry Cereal health food.
Junk Food

Pop-Tarts Limited Edition Choc-o-Lantern Frosted Chocolate Fudge Toaster Pastries

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Pop-Tarts didn’t just put out Pumpkin Pie as a seasonal offering – they also created Choc-o-Lantern Frosted Chocolate Fudge! Okay, so it’s not a new flavor – Pop-Tarts already has a chocolate fudge toaster pastry – but this one has orange frosting and bat and ghost sprinkles! Other companies should take note – all you have to do to get love and adoration from Halloween fans is turn your product orange and black (or a vague approximation of black) and toss on some sprinkles and you’ve got it.

“Choc-o-Lantern” is a little weak, especially considering there’s nothing pumpkin-shaped on the actual Pop-Tarts, but they threw a picture of a chocolate pumpkin on the box to make it more acceptable. As with many re-purposed holiday foodstuffs, it’s the appearance that makes the product. Pop-Tarts delivers on the box, with spoooooky trees, bats, and little cartoon eyes that look suitably frightened by the toaster pastries. There’s also a splattering of slime in the corner, telling you the quantity of toaster pastries because, hey. Slime. Halloween!

The fun continues on the back of the box. Pop-Tarts urges you to “dig” into their “graveyard”! Halloween is the one holiday that I accept, even welcome, cheesy puns. The graveyard consists mainly of an unhealthy amount of chocolate pudding, some candy corn, and some Pop-Tarts, but I like the setup. I especially like the ghost lollipop in the background, frowning very emphatically and making an “I dunno, whaddaya gonna do?” gesture with his ghost arms. I assume he is unhappy with the pudding graveyard and also making the hands-up shrugging gesture to show that he takes no responsibility for its creation. I don’t blame you, ghost lollipop. I blame the obviously shitfaced Jack-o-Lantern candy bowl behind you.

I love Ghost Lollipop and Shitfaced Jack-o-Lantern Candy Bowl, but my heart really belongs to Seriously Bored and Somewhat Indignant Vampire Toaster. He resides on Pop-Tart’s website, and his facial expression seriously contradicts the assertion that the fact he is delivering to you is “super fun”. While I find the fact useless, since I will never plant a pumpkin, I think Vampire Toaster is being a little melodramatic. You have a job to do, Vampire Toaster, and you’re doing it. Try to muster up a little enthusiasm. After all, you are a toaster AND a vampire, and while that makes you the coolest toaster ever, you’re still not above dispensing pumpkin-growing facts.

My Choc-o-Lantern Pop-Tarts didn’t exactly have the plentiful and uniformly-arranged bat and ghost sprinkles like the ones on the box, but we all know that marketing doesn’t equal reality. I was just happy that some of them slightly resembled bats and ghosts and weren’t just black and white blobs. The orange frosting was sufficiently bright and seasonal. As for the taste, I was surprised to find I rather enjoyed them. I’m not a big chocolate fan, but the fudge filling was quite acceptably fudgy and rich, especially decadent when warm. It made me wish I had a glass of eggnog and it was about 30 degrees cooler outside.

I also found the chocolate pastry to be softer than other Pop-Tarts I’ve had. Usually, the edges are hard, and I would just nibble them to the edges of the filling and throw the rest away. These were soft all the way through, and tasted very similar to chocolate graham crackers. The icing and the sprinkles added a little extra crunch and sweetness.

Once again, Pop-Tarts Limited Edition Choc-o-Lantern Frosted Chocolate Fudge is just an already-existing flavor with a bit of Halloween flair, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t rock. The warm fudge is like comfort food, the soft pastry reminds me of chocolate graham crackers from my childhood, and the bright orange frosting and admittedly haphazard sprinkles complete the Halloween package. After eating just one, I feel like I’ve gotten my chocolate fix for the next three months, but I think chocolate and Halloween lovers alike will enjoy these Pop-Tarts.

  • Score: 4 out of 5 bored vampire toasters
  • Price: $2.69
  • Size: 22 oz. box containing 12 toaster pastries
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: One pastry contains 10% of seven different vitamins and minerals.  I now consider Pop-Tarts health food.
Junk Food

Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce

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It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been in a drugstore. I’m not sure why; I guess since I shop like I’m British and all the grocery stores I frequent have pharmacies, I never really have the need to visit them. However, after a recent trip to the bank went wrong (after almost three decades of life you’d think I’d have learned that banks are closed on national holidays), I noticed that the new Walgreen’s across the street had opened. I also remembered that drugstores often have the best Halloween sections.

As you can see, I was NOT disappointed. There were so many gems that I wanted to bring home with me, but my cupboards are already so full of Halloween crap that if I brought home another armful, I’d have to put the Cheez-Its out on the streets, and that would have been immoral. Everybody knows Cheez-Its got no street smarts. They wouldn’t last a day out there. They’d be eaten alive. MUAHAHAHA BAD PUN HALLOWEEN TIE-IN.

I stood in that aisle for a good five minutes, taking everything in and trying to decide what I would pick. The store was almost empty and strangely silent. I felt exposed and conspicuous. No grown woman should spend that much time looking at novelty Halloween items. Which is not to say I picked Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce out of panic or embarrassment. (Not that that hasn’t happened before.) No, I think the picture and the name say it all. I mean, c’mon. Miniature Chinese take-out box? Fake noodles with eyeballs and sauce? Tiny plastic chopsticks?! I think the chopsticks were what ultimately won me over.

One of the hazards that a food reviewer has to navigate through is the Embarrassing Cashier Moment. Much like how a grown woman shouldn’t spend five minutes looking at novelties, a grown woman also shouldn’t walk up to the cashier with nothing but a fake take-out box containing gummy noodles. I considered buying a few other items, like maybe a box of suppositories and a can of nuts, in an attempt to look like I hadn’t just come in for bizarre candy. In the end I decided to man up and walked to the counter with my silly, lonely purchase. Lucky for me, the teenager who rang me up had dead zombie eyes and couldn’t have cared less what I was buying. It was so anticlimactic that I felt mildly disappointed.

While arranging my Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce for its Glamour Shot, I became unreasonably grossed out. Maybe it was the plastic smell of the gummies. Maybe it was the squishy, elastic texture. Maybe it was the fact that I knew I was going to have to eat it. Whatever it was, dread filled my stomach, and I came to realize that this was a good thing. I was being grossed out by a gross-out Halloween candy! My body became confused with revulsion and joy. ‘Tis the reason for the season. I fell even more in love with my take-out candy.

Turns out, my fears were largely unfounded. I bit into an eyeball, squinting my eyes closed, and…it was a gummy eyeball. It was squishy and tasted like high-fructose corn syrup. That was it. I had that feeling you get when you exit a Halloween maze – you’ve just been tormented by normal people playing crazy psychos and werewolves, you screamed like a little baby, but now that it’s over, you just laugh at yourself. That wasn’t so bad! I tried a noodle and it tasted exactly like the eyeball. Also, kudos to the noodles for looking like earthworms. It’s the kid-friendly version of Fear Factor. That show ended four years ago. My pop culture references are always so timely and relevant.

More props to Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce for putting some extra care into the Candy Sauce packet. That is one evil-looking green apple, right there. The sauce itself is more like a super-thick syrup; I had to coax it out of the packet and somehow managed to get it all over my hands. I hate sticky hands. The syrup calls itself “sweet”, but never believe an evil green apple. It will lie to you. The syrup was actually sour green apple. Very sour. Delightfully so. I took a bite of earthworm noodle coated in it, and my lips were puckered for thirty minutes afterward. I approve.

Really though, who gives a shit about how Take-Out Gummy Fried Noodle & Eyeball with Candy Sauce tastes. It’s all about appearance, and this candy delivers in spades. From the box to the chopsticks with convenient eyeball holder to the earthworm noodles to the evil apple sauce packet, this novelty Halloween candy is the best. One box of TOGFN&ECS could make the centerpiece of your whole Halloween party. Evil Green Apple for President 2012.

  • Score: 4 out of 5 earthworm gummy fried noodles
  • Price: $1.99
  • Size: 5.19 oz. fake take-out Chinese food box
  • Purchased at: Walgreens
  • Nutritional Quirks: Eyeballs do not actually taste like eyeballs. Halloween!
Junk Food

Candy Corn Dots

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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.

(Candy Blog and The Surfing Pizza also reviewed these AND the two other varieties.)

  • Score: 2.5 out of 5 spoooooky candy-haunting spirits
  • Price: $0.99
  • Size: 7 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Contains titanium dioxide, also found in paints and sunscreen. Yum!
Junk Food

Limited Edition Cheetos Mighty Zingers CRAZY Cheddar and WICKED Picante Flavored Snacks

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I’m stupid.

Okay, maybe I’m not completely stupid. But I am overzealous. When I read this in Frito-Lay’s Snack Chat blog, I got to “a limited-time snack with a special Halloween twist” and my brain went YAY! So much yay, in fact, that I didn’t put it together that CRAZY cheddar and WICKED picante actually meant sharp cheddar and salsa picante, a flavor of Mighty Zingers that I already reviewed here. It even explicitly states this in the next sentence, but I paid no attention. You put the words “limited edition” and “Halloween” together, and I lose all sense of control or logic.

So I picked these up at the store and soon realized my folly. You’d think I would have just given up there, but NO! This is Halloween, dammit, and if Frito-Lay is going to repackage an already-existing flavor for the holiday and trick me into buying it, then I’m going to review it, even if it means I have to photograph yet another incredibly shiny foil bag that turns every shot into an all-out glare-fest. Seriously, Cheetos, stop it. I only know how to do three things in GIMP, and removing glare is not one of them.

There are three things of note about this product, however. First of all, I bought a “Hungry Grab”, which is a bag size I’ve never seen before. It’s about the same width as a “Big Grab” bag that you usually find in a convenience store, but longer. I believe you would have to be rather hungry to finish off one of these bags in one sitting. It contains quite a few grabs.

Second, while re-purposing a flavor for Halloween is kind of weak, at least they tried to give a little backstory on the back of the bag: “Chester’s lab experiment went haywire causing Cheetos Mighty Zingers snacks to make a transformation”. I’ve seen Chester’s lab, and the idea of one of his experiments going haywire is very plausible. This brings me to my third point:

GREEN CHIPS! Or “snacks”, to be more precise. This is not the first time Cheetos has gone green. It may not even be the second or third, I gave up looking after a two-second Google search. Doesn’t matter. Green Cheetos are awesome.

If you want to know more about the actual flavor of these Cheetos, I refuse to repeat myself, so go read the article linked above. I will say, however, that it’s delightfully disconcerting to eat Flamin’ Hot Cheetos leftover bits that are green instead of fire-truck red. One might even call it…MADNESS! MUAHAHAHAHA!

On a final note, I now demand Christmas Flamin’ Hot Cheetos with red and green in the same bag. I will throw a candy cane-induced temper tantrum if this does not happen.

  • Score: 3 out of 5 hungry grabs
  • Price: $1.29
  • Size: 3 1/4 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
  • Nutritional Quirks: Green Cheetos.  ‘Nuff said.
Junk Food

Ring Pop Halloween Screaming Berry Pop

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I haven’t had a Ring Pop in forever, so when I found these Halloween Screaming Berry pops, I thought they looked appropriately festive and picked them up. Nice font use on the package, cute little bat thrown in there. And the Ring Pops themselves, if advertised correctly, are black and orange! I have no idea what berry flavoring has to do with anything, but at least they made the berries scream while they were being transformed into Ring Pops. That’s pretty hardcore Halloween.

The pops themselves totally deliver on the Halloweenosity, alternating between jet black and spooooooky orange. I thought they seemed smaller than the last Ring Pop I’d been in a room with, but my husband explained to me that no, I had just grown bigger. Fortunately, my fingers are dainty, so I was still able to wear the Ring Pop as it was properly intended.

Even though berry isn’t the scariest flavor in the world, it is one of my favorites. Although wearing a black and orange costume, I know it’s blue raspberry underneath, and blue raspberry rocks. The only thing better than sucking on a blue ring is sucking on a black-and-orange ring that tastes blue. My Screaming Berry Ring Pop lasted a satisfyingly long time, too.

I know this is a short review, but really, there’s not a whole lot to say. It’s a Halloween Ring Pop. It’s awesome! And it comes in packs of two, so after my lips un-shrivel from the sourness of the blue raspberry, I can have another one! Halloween is awesome because I can wear candy rings and get away with it.

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 berries screaming in terror
  • Price: $0.99
  • Size: 2 0.5 oz. pops
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: No real quirks, but I like the idea of Blue Raspberry wearing a costume. Trick or treat!
Junk Food

Pop-Tarts Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Toaster Pastries

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Pop-Tarts Toaster Pastries come in 32 different iterations. You’d think that would be enough, but now there’s Pop-Tarts Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Toaster Pastries. Seems like a stretch at first, but hey, stuff some canned pumpkin pie filling into the already existing pastry crust, throw some frosting on top to represent whipped cream, and blammo, you’ve got yourself an autumn gimmick product!

The front of the box has a pretty generic fall landscape, but the real fun is on the back of the box.

Fall Fun! To be more specific. I’d attempt making Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts a la mode, which involves mashing up the pastries, lumping them on top of a scoop of reduced-fat frozen vanilla yogurt, and topping that with fat-free caramel ice cream topping, but I only have two Pop-Tarts and I only eat extra-fat vanilla ice cream. I love how Pop-Tarts tries to act like they’re soooo good for your kids. One of these Pop-Tarts has 200 calories, so if you finish off a pack of two you’ve just consumed more calories than are in a Whopper Jr.  Not to shatter any illusions or anything.

A more interesting suggestion for Fall Fun, however, is making your own Pumpkin People!

The instructions are pretty easy: grab some little pumpkins or gourds, collect a bunch of nature bullshit like pinecones, leaves and pine needles, and glue that shit together. Unfortunately, I live in the southwest, so I guess if I made Pumpkin People they’d be covered in cactus needles and rocks. That’s depressing.

Pop-Tarts describes this process as “making your new friends”, but these Pumpkin People look like the natives are getting restless. I know the cold seasons can be trying on children who live in colder climates, but surely you could make some more friendly friends to hang out with when it’s snowing. Make your own Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, perhaps? Of course, if you’re going to consider Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts a Halloween item, you should make your Pumpkin People as scary as possible. Maybe using cactus needles isn’t such a sad idea after all. Pumpkin Person Pinhead, here I come!

After a brief stint in the toaster oven, I took my Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tart out and cut it in half, and was instantly hit with the familiar smell of…well shucks, it smells like pumpkin pie! And it tastes like it, too! Okay, well not exactly. I am eating a Pop-Tart and not a slice of pie, after all. But the pumpkin pie taste comes through quite strongly, evoking memories of Thanksgiving and all the dishes I had to wash afterwards.

The pastry that holds the filling is largely tasteless, but the frosting adds a nice sweetness to the pumpkin flavor and does its best to make you forget that Pop-Tart crust sucks. It’s no whipped cream, but it’ll suffice in a pinch. I would have preferred my fall-inspired sprinkles to be a little less neon, and last time I checked, purple and hot pink were not fall colors. In fact, let me amend my previous statement: I would have preferred my fall-inspired sprinkles to be a little less not having anything to do with fall.

Honestly, I was impressed at the actual pumpkin pie-ness of these Pop-Tarts, until I realized that, seriously, all they had to do was take canned pumpkin pie filling and shove it into their already existing product. However, Pop-Tarts gets props for at least trying, which is more than I can say for 90% of the other products lining store shelves this month. Seriously, Ritz, where’s my bat-flavored cracker? You suck.

Thanks to the dedicated reader who graciously donated these Pop-Tarts to make this review happen!

The Impulsive Buy and Rodzilla Reviews also reviewed these.

  • Score: 3 out of 5 angry Pumpkin People
  • Price: Free (thanks again!)
  • Size: 21.1 oz. box (12 toaster pastries)
  • Purchased at: Target
  • Nutritional Quirks: Two Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts have almost as much sugar as a can of Coke. Good luck getting your kids to focus on making those Pumpkin People! Now that’s true horror.
Junk Food, Miscellaneous

Box of Boogers

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First Halloween review of the month! Hooray!

Box of Boogers almost didn’t make it to Junk Food Betty. I passed it up as “eh, just another novelty candy”, but then I saw “Ssssnot Your Regular Candy!” and I realized I’d be insane not to buy these. I mean, c’mon, look at this box:

Awesome, right? Look at that insane guy! And they actually use the term “boogies”! I didn’t even notice how much more awesome it got until I got home:

OH MY GOD THEY WERE PICKED OUT ESPECIALLY FOR ME. And check out those flavors! Snottermelon! Sour Green Boogy! Lemon Loogy! Okay, Sour Green Boogy is pretty weak, but I pronounce Snottermelon and Lemon Loogy to be solid. I haven’t seen this many puns about nose mucus since Jimmy Bermond performed his stand-up comedy routine at our fourth grade talent show.

The full-length view of Crazy Monster Chef is much more satisfying than the headshot on the front of the box. I count four different colors of stains on his clothes and spatula, and there’s a big ol’ spider hanging out on his hump. He appears to be cooking up a delicious stew of infant skull, bone of questionable origin, eyeball and earthworm, all in a delicious green sauce. Listen, I’m not super picky about the cleanliness of restaurants I frequent, but somebody should really call the Health Department on Crazy Monster Chef. If his appearance is any indication, I’m betting his kitchen has a number of violations.

Speaking of Crazy Monster Chef, I almost missed this little piece of joy on the side of the box:

He’s not generic Crazy Monster Chef, he’s CHEF GHOULICIOUS! And he has a whole pantry of candy! Chef Ghoulicious, you are the best! I promise not to call the Health Department on you.

The box alone would have been well worth the price, but it turns out there’s actually candy inside!

Expect to see this cocktail napkin again.

Snottermelon and Sour Green Boogy are hard to tell apart at first glance, until you realize the back of the box has a helpful color guide and each of the three flavors has their own unique but uniform shape.

Let’s just get the elephant in the room out in the open now: Sour Green Boogy looks sort of like cock-and-balls. There, I said it. Other than that, the boogers are basically lumpy, shapeless forms with flat bottoms. Still talking about the candy, folks. I’m not sure why the bottoms are flat, but it did make photographing them a bit easier. Chef Ghoulicious thinks of everything.

I like that Chef Ghoulicious kept true to booger colors. The shapes and sizes don’t exactly reflect any mocos I’ve ever mined out of my nasal caverns, but I love the colors. Clear snot is boring, but when you reach Lemon Loogy color, you know something is wrong. Probably coming down with a cold. Sour Green Boogy, you should probably see a doctor about that sinus infection. Snottermelon? I’m assuming that’s the color of mucus that Spiderman spews out whenever he sneezes. Box of Boogers teaches kids about early illness detection.

I forgot that I don’t like gummy candy until I bit into my first Booger. I’ve never eaten my own (or anyone else’s) boogers; or, at the very least, my mom scolded me enough when I was little so that I didn’t become that one kid everyone else made fun of in elementary school who ate her boogers in plain view of everyone. That kid was probably scarred for life, but she made great material for Jimmy Bermond.

Real booger consistency aside, Box of Boogers gummy candy are the kind of gummies that challenge your teeth to bite them in half on the first gnash. They manage to be springy, yet firm. I’m sure there are people out there who like this kind of texture, so I’m trying to remain objective and not give my personal opinion, which boils down to “this feels gross”. Then again, we are talking about a box of boogers, so maybe that’s actually an endorsement.

I pushed my distaste for the texture aside and decided to focus on the flavors, which were surprisingly well-developed for a throwaway gag candy. Snottermelon delivered a strong hit of watermelon candy flavoring, which of course tastes nothing like actual watermelon. I immediately thought of a watermelon Jolly Rancher, which is not a bad thing in my book. Sour Green Boogy tasted just like any other green apple candy I’ve ever tasted. It was more muted than the watermelon, and I think the addition of “sour” was extraneous, since all three flavors had that citrusy sour bite to them. I guess they tried to make up for Sour Green Boogy’s weak moniker by making it look like – oh right, we’re done talking about that. Lemon Loogy was probably my favorite. As you may have guessed, it tasted like lemon candy! The fine print on the back of the box clears up any confusion about what these flavors are supposed to be and lists Lemon Loogy as “lemon/lime”, but I think it most resembled a gummy incarnation of Lemonheads, which I enjoyed greatly as a child.

All in all, Box of Boogers gets an A+++ from me. I scored a box for just a buck on sale, and if I were a person of moderate means who wanted to be the talk of the town come November 1st, I’d hand these out to kids dressed up in cheap plastic Iron Man costumes in a second. Chef Ghoulicious and his green infant stew sells itself, and the sour gummies are just icing on the ridiculous gross-out cake. While gummy candies aren’t really my thing, Box of Boogers is my new favorite gimmick candy, at least until Box of Armpit Farts comes out.

  • Score: 4.5 out of 5 mysterious stains
  • Price: $1.00 (on sale; regular price $1.49)
  • Size: 3.5 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Albertson’s
  • Nutritional Quirks: No actual boogers listed on the ingredients list, but you never know.  YOU NEVER KNOW MUAHAHAHAHAHA