white cheddar | Junk Food Betty

Limited Winter Edition Cheetos Puffs Winter White Cheddar apparently really wants you to know that it’s winter. I’m sure those of you who live in the Northeast are already well aware of that. Nevertheless, Cheetos wants a reason for the season. Actually, they want a reason to make limited edition Puffs. Winter is often white, because of snow. White cheddar is (somewhat) white! Boom. I’m disappointed they didn’t make the Puffs in the form of snowflakes. Perhaps that technology is not yet available.

Cheetos already makes White Cheddar Puffs, but they’re only available in their Natural line of products. This means that instead of organic corn meal, cheddar cheese and sour cream, Winter White Cheddar Puffs contain enriched corn meal, cheese seasoning, and MSG. But Chester Cheetah is riding a Puff like it’s a snowboard! The back of the bag says “Strap on your gear because you’re in for a ride.”

I’m assuming by “gear” he means your obesity-necessitated sleep apnea machine and by “ride” he means the ambulance ride you’ll take when you forget to take your insulin. I’m just saying.

I just read on Frito-Lay’s Snack Chat blog that Winter White Cheddar Puffs were only available through the end of December. I guess that shows you how long I’ve had them (in my defense they have not reached their expiration date yet) and also that you will not be able to eat them. I’m sorry. Egg on my face, eh?

Snack Chat also brought to me this interesting sentence: “The packaging even features Cheester Cheetah snowboarding, and they’re made with real cheese.” The “even” makes me feel like they’re a little desperate. Wait, didn’t I already explore this joke three paragraphs ago? It’s disturbing to think that I’ve started mind-melding with Frito-Lay’s marketing department.

The sentence is also worded in such a way that it reads like the two have something to do with each other. Snowboarding and cheese, together at last. Oh, and I just realized Frito-Lay blog writer “Katherine” spelled Chester’s name wrong! With quality writers like Katherine, how am I not writing for Snack Chat already? Oh, it’s probably because of unnecessarily scathing criticisms like these. Hm.

While the white cheddar on the Puffs is rather white, apparently they couldn’t take a step further and bleach the enriched corn meal. This means the Puffs themselves are yellow, and they couldn’t drench them in enough cheese seasoning to hide that fact. So the Winter White is more like Summer Sunset Pale Yellow. Ah well, at least you can still use them as a snowboard.

I’ve never had Cheetos Puffs before. I was surprised at how big they are. Any one of them could have replaced my index finger, if I wanted my index finger to always be crooked and Cheetos were medically approved to be used as finger transplants. One day, technology will catch up.

Cheetos Puffs are fluffy, crunchy and somewhat dense at the same time. They remind me a little bit of Planters Cheez Balls. The corn meal taste of Cheetos is definitely present, and the white cheddar powder compliments that flavor. I found myself going from “eat for review” to “see how I can fit a Puff into my mouth like I have a retainer” to “mindlessly munching while watching TV instead of writing review”. At worst, that makes them inoffensive. At best, I seem to enjoy shoving giant Cheetos into my mouth.

Limited Winter Edition Cheetos Puffs Winter White Cheddar stands on a pretty weak gimmick, especially considering there’s already a version of Cheetos White Cheddar Puffs out there with (allegedly) healthier and more “real” ingredients, but I like them anyway. I’m a sucker for limited edition products, even more so when they’re trying to tie themselves to a holiday or season. Plus, you know, Chester Cheetah riding a Puff like a snowboard. You could pick up pretty much any white cheddar-flavored snack food and get the same flavor powder, but hey, why not have it on a Winter Puff? Oh, right, because they no longer exist. The texture of the Puff is interesting, although I wish they hadn’t made them the size of my entire jaw. Will I Winter Puff again? Well, no, because I’m an asshole and waited too long to write this review, so now we all can’t. But I may try the Natural White Cheddar Puffs just to see if the better ingredients add up to better flavor.

Score: 3.5 out of 5 Cheeeeeesters
Price: $1.29
Size: 3 1/4 oz. bag
Purchased at: Circle K
Nutritional Quirks: With the same serving size, Winter White Cheddar Puffs and Natural White Cheddar Puffs have the exact same amount of calories. Natural has one less gram of fat. Winter actually has 70 mg less sodium. So much for natural meaning healthier!

Cheetos Wild White Cheddar Small Today, we’re looking at Cheetos Crunchy Wild White Cheddar Snacks. I like that they just call them “snacks” on the bag, because I was wondering what exactly to call them. Chips? Weird lumpy corn sticks? No. Snacks. Cheetos is the Herb and Jamaal of the snack world. Approximately one person reading this will understand that joke.

Cheetos are famous, of course, for being the favored snack of video game-playing nerds living in their mothers’ basements. I don’t know how or why this happened, but it’s true. Cheetos doesn’t really fuck around with flavors; there’s the classic orange, Flamin’ Hot, and a couple of other ones that nobody’s heard of or cares about. Unlike Doritos, who releases a new flavor every two days, the original Cheetos are immediately what you’ll think of when you hear the name. Cheetos. Orange dust-covered fingers. Nerds.

Cheetos Wild White Cheddar

But now there’s Wild White Cheddar, which, according to Frito-Lay’s official press release, has existed before. I had never heard of them before, but Frito-Lay says it was a “popular flavor”, so I guess I’m just an asshole who hasn’t been paying attention. It’s also available for a limited time only, starting in late January and ending mid-February. That is, indeed, a very limited time. Kind of makes you wonder why they’re releasing them at all. Hardly seems worth the effort. I guess they’re banking on tools like me, who will buy any junk food that has a limited run. I can’t imagine there are that many of us out there.

I’m not entirely sure what makes this flavor so “wild”, but hey, I’m all for alliteration. Chester does seem pretty damn enthusiastic about putting that Cheeto in his mouth, even though it actually seems larger than his already enormous mouth. Actually, if you look closely, it looks like we’ve caught Chester in the act of tripping over a Wild White Cheddar Cheeto laying on the ground. Maybe he’s reaching out desperately towards the Cheeto, trying to grab onto it in the hopes that it will stop his fall. That Cheeto cannot help you, my friend. Your face has a date with the floor. Maybe he’ll get lucky and land on that wedge of white cheddar down there. I could think of worse surfaces on which to perform a faceplant.

Cheetos Wild White Cheddar Back

Flipside gettin’ crazy with the fonts, yo. It’s a little hard to read from the picture, so let me help you out:
CAUTION!
These CHEETOS snacks are DANGEROUSLY CHEESY
So if you need to keep your hands clean, don’t even THINK about opening this bag!
BUT…
if you’re willing to get some
WHITE
CHEESY
DELICIOUSNESS
all over your fingers, open up

AND ENJOY!

I can’t tell if they’re trying to entice me to eat the snacks or terrify me into running out of the chip aisle of my local grocery store, blathering incoherently about my hands being unclean, so unclean. People with OCD, Wild White Cheddar Cheetos are not for you. But you’ve probably already figured that out.

I’m also not very comfortable with the sentence “If you’re willing to get some WHITE CHEESY DELICIOUSNESS all over your fingers, open up and ENJOY!” Think, Cheetos marketing team. Just…just take a few moments in the meeting and think about the words that you are putting together to form a sentence.

Not much of a cheesy smell present when you open the bag. What comes through more is the smell of corn meal, which is what Cheetos are made of. It’s kind of weird to see Cheetos not dressed up in their signature neon orange powder. The white cheddar powder is barely visible on the light yellow Cheeto, causing them to look naked. I’m sorry you have to suffer this indignity, Cheetos.

The cheese taste in Wild White Cheddar Cheetos is much more subtle than it is in original Cheetos, and it’s also less tangy. The snacks taste mostly like that generic artificial cheese flavor that you’d find on other foods, with just a hint of what could pass for white cheddar. They’re not bad, but they’re not exactly exciting. The more understated flavor of Wild White Cheddar means that more of the corn meal taste of the Cheeto comes through, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, I guess. For me personally, it’s a negative. Ninety percent of the time, when I’m eating a snack food, I consider the chip (or “snack”) to be nothing more than the delivery vessel for the flavor powder, and if it’s a naked chip, it belongs in a dip. Maybe that makes me a jerk, I dunno. That’s just the way I feel.

Cheetos Crunchy Wild White Cheddar Snacks are boring. There, I said it. If I had a serious hankering for a cheese-flavored snack and these were the only things available, yeah, I’d eat them. Like I said, they’re not bad, they’re just old news in the flavor department. Despite supposedly being white cheddar, they end up tasting like just another artificially cheese-flavored product. On the plus side, the white powder won’t stain your fingers like original Cheetos (or especially Flamin’ Hots) will, so you don’t have to hide the secret shame that you’ve recently been shoving Cheetos down your maw.

According to Frito-Lay, these snacks are only going to be available for a couple more weeks. So if you have a burning desire to see for yourself what mediocrity can taste like, you better move fast.

Score: 2 out of 5 teeth knocked out of Chester’s mouth after his fall
Price: $2.99
Size: 8 oz. bag
Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
Nutritional Quirks: White cheesy deliciousness all over your fingers. That doesn’t really have anything to do with nutrition, I just wanted to type it again.

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