Cereal Review : Tiny Toast

Posted by robbposch on July 13, 2016
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

My mental and emotional experiences with Tiny Toast have run a very wide gamut.  I first heard about it a while back, when I saw an article about General Mills releasing its first new cereal in (insert surprisingly large number that I now forget) years.

 

The first thing I thought was, “Wait, that doesn’t sound right… really?”  The second thing I thought was, “They’re breaking their hermetic seal for something called ‘Tiny Toast’?”

 

01

 

After seeing the packaging, it became pretty clear – General Mills just wants to find more usage for the machines that pump out French Toast Crunch.  Maybe giving into the 90’s nostalgia wasn’t as financially rewarding as they had hoped, I don’t know.

 

But clearly, the head of General Mills wanted to turn that little toaster into a profit machine.

 

Tiny Toast doesn’t seem like the most interesting cereal, in theory.  Without a description like “Cinnamon” or “French Toast”, you might just be expecting… toast.  The “tiny” part goes without saying.  No one would worry that Cinnamon Toast Crunch wasn’t going to fit on a spoon.

 

On the bright side, “Tiny Toast” is a lot of fun to say.

 

Tiny Toast seems to give up on the toast theming almost immediately with the product itself.  It comes in two varieties : Blueberry and Strawberry.  I guess you could argue that they are popular flavors of jam / jelly, that go on toast, but I don’t know if I buy that.  It just seems like, “Here’s a little toast-shaped cereal piece.  Also, it’s flavored.”

 

02

 

One thing the cereal definitely has going for it is packaging aesthetics.  The cereal box looks exactly like something you’d see mock-advertised on Ren and Stimpy.  Simple design, but well-executed with bright colors and a fun logo / font.  So the boxes look awesome.

 

03

 

The cereal pieces look close enough to what they’re supposed to be.

 

The flavor of Blueberry hedges its bets, between “real” tasting and “this is the fake flavor that you expect blueberry cereal to taste like”.  Sitting in this middle ground, it’s a very forgettable taste.

 

It did a respectable job of making the milk taste vaguely like if Blueberry Quik was a thing.

 

04

 

Strawberry, on the other hand, ups the ante a bit with its willingness to lean towards the fake cereal flavors.

 

05

 

The problem is, the fake strawberry flavor doesn’t taste good.  It’s not a horrible flavor, but something is just very off with it.  You can easily eat a bowl, but you might not be about with it.

 

It does, however, finally answer the age-old question of, “What if Strawberry Quik tasted really weird?”

 

[no seal of approval]

Friendly’s Wattamelon Sundae

Posted by robbposch on June 24, 2016
Posted in: Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Due to my long distance relationship with Friendly’s, sometimes some amazing releases escape even my watchful eye.  So according to my research, this is a month or two shy of reviewing a brand new product.  But that’s not too shabby considering I live about 1,800 miles away from where I bought it from.

 

One of Friendly’s most popular (I’m assuming, but I find letting facts get in the way makes for less fun writing) products are their collection of pre-packaged sundaes.  And without a doubt, their most popular product overall is the Wattamelon Roll (again, assuming – but if someone doesn’t agree with that I don’t want to know that person nor do I want to interact with them on any level).

 

Friendly’s finally decided to Frankenstein these products together, in an attempt to produce an offspring that could unite the families and rule all the lands.

 

01

 

I’ve mentioned Friendly’s rolls once or twice on here (and approximately two thousand or so times a day in real life).  The restaurants serve actual food, but I think that’s largely just so people feel less ashamed, and don’t have to just sit down at a table and say “A very large portion of ice cream, please!”

 

So the ice cream is where it’s at.  And the actual ice cream is all well and good, but the packaged products at Friendly’s are the stars.  We’ve discussed the rolls before.  Well, I’ve talked about them – you have been almost aggressively non-verbal about them.  But one other line of products that is important to describe – especially since that’s what this review is about – are the pre-packaged sundaes.

 

01a

 

They look like this, are slightly larger than the size of a baseball.

 

You might wonder, “If you’re largely indifferent to the ice cream, and the actual sundaes you can buy, why are the packaged ones so special?”  Easy – because they’re pre-packaged.  It’s a little cup with a sundae in it.

 

They come with all the advantages of other pre-packaged versions of food: convenience, not being quite as good as the real thing but for some reason that is okay, and not having to place an order means you don’t have to interact with as many people during the day.

 

As for the Wattamelon Sundae, finding it on the shelf should not prove to be a problem.  I think Friendly’s put something in the package’s ink to make the green actually glow.  The combination of intensely bright green, red, and pink means this sundae will never run the risk of being hit by a car at night.  There was probably a very slim chance of that ever happening anyway, but still – playing it safe is smart.

 

02

 

Besides the garish colors, the other thing that is immediately noticeable on the packaging is what appears to be green slime.  Like, Friendly’s got a really good deal on the factory where Hostess made Turtle Pies, and just figured “Hey, waste not want not!”

 

03

 

Being so used to what a Wattamelon Roll looks like, looking at the sundae for the first time was odd.  The layer of mutagen was a shocking to see.  Also new wass what appeared to be a fake cherry on top, or maybe a little M&M on some Fat Frog levels.  Further inspection revealed that this was just a little bit of the watermelon sherbet peeking through.

 

04

 

The green part was described as “whipped topping”, which can mean a lot of things.  Usually I think it’s more when it’s a Cool Whip type thing, where if you call it “whipped cream” that’s technically lying and you can face a small amount of prison time.

 

05

 

In this instance, it was more like thin pudding, which reinforces my Hostess factory theory.  The topping kind of ran down when you took a bite, which at first looked creepy, but actually was a good contrast to the firmer sherbet.

 

06

 

The watermelon sherbet is the same Wattamelon goodness we already know and love.  There are chocolate chips / chunks on top of the sundae, but they are still in the sherbet as well.

 

Given the small handful of thousands of Wattamelon Rolls I have consumed, trying the sundae for the first time was a very confusing experience.  It is, to be sure, a very good product.  But it was also an internal battle, constantly thinking, “Wait, Wattamelon Roll doesn’t have whipped cream topping!  Where is the fake rind?  What is going on?”

 

You may have to dig deep, to find that secondary level of courage that you’ve always hoped to never need, to overcome these initial challenges.  Because once you realize this isn’t “Wattamelon Roll crammed into a little cup”, and embrace the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle changes, it becomes an awesome sundae.

 

07

 

The sundae cup still doesn’t solve my main problem – Wattamelon Roll availability.  If for some reason the sundae cups made their way out to me, but not the rolls, they’d be an extremely welcome product.  They would surpass the Watermelon Bomb Pops as my Wattamelon Roll methadone treatments.

 

But since both Wattamelon Rolls and Wattamelon Sundaes are all, presumably, for sale in the same areas, there is some redundancy.  Which is why they were smart to make it a sundae, with an actual change to the roll.

 

As the old cliché goes, “Sometimes you’re in the mood for green whipped topping on your sundae, and sometimes you’re more in the mood for lemon sherbet.”

 

So while there’s a bit of redundancy in the products, they’re different enough to warrant purchasing both.  Especially since when it’s 3 AM and you wake up hungry, it’s much easier to grab a pre-packaged sundae and eat it in bed than it is to cut a slice of Wattamelon Roll when you’re half awake.

[insert seal of approval here]

 

Cereal Review : Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereal

Posted by robbposch on May 17, 2016
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have a decades-long reputation for knowing how to put out a good cereal.

 

I know there was at least one foreign TMNT cereal, which – oddly enough – looked similar to the cereal we’re about to learn about.  I know that’s a very liberal usage of the word “learn”.

 

But when you talk about TMNT cereal, you’re talking about the one and only – the Ralson sweetened Chex with marshmallows cereal.  I know nostalgia can make a lot of things seem better, but I vividly remember how it tasted, and how it is one of my favorite cereals ever.

 

I tried it again a few years back, and I will admit it wasn’t as good as I remembered.  Granted, this was probably because the box expired about twenty years prior, so I’m willing to cut it some slack.

 

Stale attempts to recreate the good old days aside, any cereal to come out now that would dare attempt to put the TMNT name on the box has a hell of an uphill battle.  The original will likely always be king, so any newcomer better step up their game big time.

 

01

 

I’m not familiar with the newer TMNT, the show where the characters look like cheap Happy Meal toys come to life.  I kind of like that aesthetic – it fits the ridiculousness of the Turtles’ world – but it’s not the look that I “know”.  But I’m old and willing to concede that they don’t care about my opinions anymore, especially because I don’t watch the show or buy the toys.

 

02

 

The bragging on the box about no artificial colors or flavors is worrying.  I know cereals are starting to shy away from them, and the TMNT cereal is a great example of how this hurts a cereal.

 

The colors are all sort of sad.  All of them except for Leonardo are okay, just subdued and rather blah for a cereal based on Ninja Turtles.  And Leonardo’s pieces are terrible.  The shade of blue is legitimately ugly to look at.

 

Using no artificial flavors also seems to hurt the cereal.  The taste is… fine.  It tastes like a fruit cereal, but it tastes like it should be a healthy cereal.  One of those cereals on the far end of the cereal aisle, where the boxes always seem to use jungle imagery for some reason.

 

Finally, as for the cereal pieces themselves, they’re pretty well done.  You can tell that they’re meant to be turtles.  However, they look vaguely sinister.

 

03

 

If Giggles cookies, Phanto from Super Mario Bros. 2, and a racist caricature of a sumo wrestler all had a wild night and made kids (I can’t explain the biology of that), the kids would look exactly like these cereal pieces.

 

Overall, the cereal is okay.  Not bad, not great.  If you’re fiending for something TMNT, it should fit the bill.  You might not go back for a second box, but you will be able to know for sure that the original TMNT cereal still reigns supreme.  Also, the new cereal doesn’t come with a free cereal bowl, so there’s also that.

 

[insert very lazy half shrug of a seal of approval here]

Cereal Review : Jif PB&J Strawberry

Posted by robbposch on March 23, 2016
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Despite my unhealthy obsession with cereal, both in the “affecting my mind” and “affecting my body” aspects, I pretty much draw the line at following cereal sales.

 

My knowledge of if a cereal is selling well is usually based on, “They don’t make it anymore, I guess it didn’t sell that well.”

 

So I was kind of surprised to see they still make Jif Peanut Butter Cereal.  I wasn’t a big fan.  I get the appeal, to be sure, but it just seemed like a cereal that didn’t have a huge audience.  It seemed like Jif would come out, people would go “Huh, there it is.” and we’d all move on.  Over time I did grow to really like the box art.  Its almost aggressively dull retro aesthetic became something to respect.

 

Instead, two years later, Jif still exists and is getting a line extension – Jif PB&J Strawberry.  That name sure is awful typed out like that.

 

01

 

Jif kept its 1982 cereal-piece-shapes.  But instead of going for a more odd shape for the jelly pieces, it went with the tried and true Crunch Berry shape.

 

02

 

The color of the jelly pieces seems abnormally bold, in contrast to the very blah coloring of the peanut butter pieces.  On their own, the jelly pieces look like your typical “red” berry piece, but mixed in the bowl they almost look nuclear.

 

Side Note : I finally replaced my previous camera, so this is hopefully the last review where the cereal looks like blurry, off-colored terribleness.

 

03

 

Since I already knew what the peanut butter pieces tasted like, I first tried the jelly pieces on their own.  And they were good.  They were either the same flavor as Crunch Berries, with maybe 10% more “natural-ness” flavoring added, or it’s just Kellogg’s approximation of actual Crunch Berries.  In any case, no problems there.

 

Mixed together, as the cereal is presumably intended to be eaten (since it comes out of the box that way and all), it is a really good cereal.

 

The understated, more “real” flavored peanut butter pieces mesh perfectly with the “fake berry” jelly pieces.  Instead of the opposite ends of the spectrum clashing, they just meet in the middle.

 

If you liked the original Jif cereal, I don’t see why you wouldn’t like this one (unless the dilution of the peanut butter purity is too much to handle).  If you weren’t a big fan of it, it’s worth a shot.

 

[insert seal of approval here]

Cereal Review : Smorz Cereal

Posted by robbposch on February 5, 2016
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . 1 Comment

Apparently, looking online to see what product’s discontinuation people are complaining about has become a viable business method.  Or the other side of that, our innate desire to complain online has become rewarded, now numerous times, by a product’s re-release.

 

We’ve seen this with Surge, French Toast Crunch, probably other stuff I’m too lazy to remember, and now Smorz cereal.

 

I wasn’t too hyped on the return of Surge or French Toast Crunch, because I was never super into either of them when they originally came out.  I don’t even remember if I ever actually had French Toast Crunch during its original run.

 

01

 

Smorz cereal falls into a different category than Surge or French Toast Crunch, in that I know I never had it, never had an interest in it.  Also, that name is just awful.

 

Despite the box’s appearance, and that name, the cereal surprisingly did not come out in the 90’s.  It came out in 2003, which was way too late for a cereal to be named “Smorz”.

 

I know a cereal’s box won’t always indicate exactly how it will look in the bowl, the size of the marshmallow compared to the cereal pieces on the box, versus how they actually compare, borders on criminally deceptive:

 

02

 

Thankfully, this change is something I prefer, as these are the more “real” cereal marshmallows, of which I am not a fan.  Give me the dry Lucky Charms marshmallows all day, but the weird fake mini-marshmallows are often off putting .

 

The taste itself is okay.  You get chocolate, graham, and marshmallow – it’s s’mores.  Unfortunately, you get that cheap, crummy Cocoa Puffs-esque cereal chocolate flavor.  The graham flavor is odd – it strikes a balance between “real” graham cracker flavor and the more artificial Golden Grahams flavor.  The flavor compromise just leaves in this awkward, unsatisfying middle ground.

 

I think this cereal should have stayed dead.  I know lots of people won’t agree, and that’s cool – they got their comeback victory.  I’m just genuinely confused as to how Smorz could have generated the comeback clamoring it did.  It’s not particularly good (being complimentary, there) and given its barely-deceased status, it doesn’t even have nostalgia going for it.

 

[no seal of approval]

Cereal Review : Batman vs. Superman Cereals

Posted by robbposch on January 4, 2016
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . 1 Comment

DC either likes to give off the attitude of being the morose cinematic Yang to Marvel’s more lighthearted Yin, or they just don’t seem to do much about fighting that reputation.  Given their more stone faced attitude, the fact that they are bringing out a dynamic duo (comic reference!) of cereals to promote Batman Vs. Superman is something of a plot twist from DC.

 

I hadn’t actually heard that this was coming out.  Not to brag, but I spend a fair amount of time online reading about comics, comic movies, and cereal.  So seeing the boxes on the shelf was a very nice surprise.  Especially because the boxes look awesome.

 

01

 

Take a moment to look at these boxes.  LOOK AT THEM.  Now, notice anything missing?  That’s right, they didn’t even put the name of the cereal on the box.  DC said, “The Superman and Batman logos are so iconic, if you don’t know what they are, you are dumb and we hate you.”  And they are completely right.

 

There’s no need for a “Batman vs. Superman : Breakfast at Dawn” or any other cereal name.  When you’re browsing the cereal aisle and BAM there’s a gigantic Bat (on the box, not a real one – that would change the mood), you’ll know exactly what’ up.

 

Bear in mind, my as-always photography does the boxes no (cough) justice.  The box is textured, to simulate the kevlar weave of the Bat suit, and the Kryptonian hope whatever of Superman’s suit.  In hand, the boxes look – and whatever I’m using this word to describe a cereal box I don’t care – gorgeous.

 

Once you get past the visual awesomeness, you see the two flavors : Caramel Crunch and Chocolate Strawberry.  Hm.  Not super exciting, but we’ll see how this goes.

 

02

 

I started with Batman first, because the flavor seemed more interesting (like the character).  Opening the box, the cereal smells… sort of awful.  Like cough medicine.

 

04

 

The cereal pieces do an admirable job of looking like bats.  Not the high tech cereal advancements I had hoped to achieve by the 21st century, but still, batty enough.

 

03

 

Thankfully, the cereal tastes better than it smells.  That being said, it only tastes okay.  It has the mediocre chocolate flavor of Cocoa Puffs, with a weird berry aftertaste.  I guess they were going for a chocolate covered strawberry flavor, given that Batman Lives For Love, but it’s an odd choice and an odd flavor.

 

At least the color / flavor has more to do with Batman than the 1989 Batman cereal, so credit for that, I guess.

 

Overall, it’s not a great eating experience, but not a bad one.  The resulting milk was maybe a 3/10 chocolate level.

 

05

 

Superman’s cereal is even more in line with typical “Here you go, a licensed cereal – enjoy” thinking.  While Batman’s wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary, they at least didn’t just make it chocolate.  But Superman just gets a caramel-flavored cereal.

 

07

 

On the bright side, the S shields are decently done, but other than that it’s an incredibly dull looking bowl of cereal.

 

06

 

The cereal is standard caramel cereal – it tastes better than you’d expect, but is nothing interesting.

 

Unfortunately, once the cereal leaves the box, these two varieties are nothing special, or particularly good.  Those boxes, though.  It’s worth buying these cereals just to have them to look at on your shelf.

 

[insert seal of approval for the boxes here]

Coke-Babies Classics : My Week of Eating Nothing But Candy

Posted by robbposch on December 22, 2015
Posted in: Candy, Food, Holidays. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Halloween gets all the credit for being the holiday of candy, but Christmas is in it for the long haul. With Halloween, you have candy a couple days before, and a couple days after. With Christmas, you start eating candy on Black Friday, and don’t stop until you go into insulin shock on New Year’s Day.

Which got me thinking: how far could I stretch my candy intake? (Side note: Dentists, stop reading now to avoid potential stress aneurysms.)

While a month of eating nothing but candy seemed like an exciting feat, I assumed it would end in something less exciting: my death. So I thought a week of eating exclusively Christmas candy would be a great excuse to test my sugar endurance, and eat pounds and pounds of candy, which I love. Plus: probably no death. Bonus!

My meal plan for the next week.

The day before the experiment, I made a shopping trip that is every ten-year-old child’s dream. While at Wal-Mart, my basket overflowing with sugar, I felt I had to buy some random non-candy items just to dilute my cart: like when you get flagged for buying a lot of bombmaking materials at Home Depot, I was worried about being placed on a sexual predator watch list.

My lunch and dinner on Wednesday were my last chances to get some real nutrition before my fast from vitamins and minerals, so I really had to make those meals count. So, of course, I had Taco Bell and pizza.

Day 1: Thursday

Most of the time, my breakfast consists of Fruit Roll-Ups and soda, so making the switch to candy wasn’t a terrible shock to the system. Still, I figured I should start with a serving of fruit.

Exactly as pictured!

Cordial cherries are the elegant cousin of the Cadbury Creme Egg. Both candies feature chocolate shells filled with disgusting slime, but only one has a red thing resembling a cherry in it. Fancy!

As you can see, the cherries inside aren’t exactly a bountiful harvest. But after eating the whole box, they probably add up to maybe 1/10 of a serving of fruit.

At least they will stay fresh for the next 300 years.

This probably wasn’t the best candy to start with. The (I’m searching for a more polite word) slime inside uses some sort of weaponized version of sugar, taking it to a sweetness level that could almost give you superpowers. My teeth are still throbbing.

In a surprising turn of events, the cordial cherries weren’t very filling. So for my mid-morning snack, I decided to go with something more substantial.

Some might say that Peanut M&Ms aren’t a Christmas candy. To that I say: Look at their colors, you fool! Red and green! It was either the Supreme Court, or possibly Kid’s Court on Nickelodeon, that upheld the ruling that anything colored red and green was automatically Christmasy.

Since Peanut M&Ms have actual peanuts, which contain protein, they’re nutritious. I don’t know if it was the peanuts, or the fact that I ate half the jumbo-sized bag, but I did get pretty full.

Later on, I started to get sick of chocolate, so I went for something more reasonable. What seemed logical at the time was a foot-long candy cane.

Maybe this means I can skip brushing my teeth tonight.

The novelty of the foot-long cane wore off fast. The rest of my day was made up of various fun size candies, which I figured were less conspicuous and would delay my wife asking why I was eating so much candy. Well, more than usual.

Day 1 Results:
Hunger Level: 2
Mental Stability: 10
How much do I still like candy? 10

Day 2: Friday

The sugar from the first day was sending my mind into overdrive. My brain was frantically fretting over one of the age-old questions: why does everything you eat after brushing your teeth taste like crap?

I quickly worked out a solution: simply make sure your breakfast tastes like toothpaste. The transition between brushing and breakfast is seamless!

So I had a bag of York Peppermint Patties for breakfast.

Anyone who says this is an unhealthy diet has never opened thirty individually-wrapped candies. Surely, that has to burn some calories.

At lunchtime, I thought it might be fun to get a little football going. No, I don’t mean going outside and exercising. I mean eating a chocolate football.

Thank God this was hollow, because a solid football of this size would have accelerated the schedule of my diabetic death by at least three months.

The back of the box had ten NFL trivia questions, of which I knew the answer to one. So between eating chocolate all day and being ignorant when it comes to sports, I’m slowly turning into the comic strip character Cathy.

Later on, feeling extra hungry and needing some protein, I thought some arctic meat might do the trick. I decided on a chocolate walrus, since walrus is a traditional Christmas meal in northern Europe. (Fun fact: that previous statement was a complete lie.)

Goo goo ga joob.

Unfortunately, it tasted more like a chocolate-scented candle than it did actual chocolate. Full disclosure: I’m only assuming what a chocolate scented candle tastes like.

Rounding out the day’s meals was a box of Christmas Dots. If you are one of those lesser-evolved people with peanut allergies, these are apparently a great snack since they have a giant logo of a crossed out peanut on the side. I wouldn’t expect Dots to have peanuts in them anyway, but I guess you can never be too careful.

Day 2 Results:
Hunger Level: 2
Mental Stability: 10
How much do I still like candy? 9.5

Day 3: Saturday

Speaking of peanuts, I tried to get Saturday off to a filling start by going with some protein-packed peanut candy. Unfortunately, twelve fun-sized bags of Reese’s Pieces didn’t have that trail-mix-fill-you-up quality I was hoping for.

Since I am apparently going to eat peanut butter candy every day, I went with Reese’s Peanut Butter Bells. Then after snacking on Nestle Crunch Bells, Gobstopper Snowballs, Christmas SweeTarts, and gummy reindeer, by night time it was becoming somewhat clear: candy isn’t very filling.

It’s filling enough to ruin your appetite for a meal, but it doesn’t work that well as a meal replacement. I’m thinking the key is just to eat more of it. So I ate a giant plastic candy cane filled with Reese’s Pieces. It was only about two hours later that I realized I had already eaten Reese’s Pieces for breakfast. Maybe the candy was starting to affect my brain.

Day 3 Results:
Hunger Level: 3
Mental Stability: 9
How much do I still like candy? 9

Day 4: Sunday

Sunday, the day of rest. But not for my taste buds! (Insert commercial jingle here.)

You know what would have been a good idea? If I had saved the chocolate football for when I was actually watching football.

I filled up on Dove Dark Chocolate snowflakes instead. The dark chocolate was a good decision, since it’s good for your heart. And if there’s anything that this week’s experiment is intended to do, it’s emphasize the importance of good nutrition.

The rest of my day consisted of eating little foil-covered chocolate snowmen, “Candy Cane” Pop Rocks, gummy gingerbread men (which were root beer flavored [?]), about two weeks’ worth of chocolate from an Advent calendar to catch up, and Christmas-colored jelly beans. Well, really just the red, which were cinnamon. The green were sour apple, so I threw those away. I mean, I have standards.

Day 4 Results:
Hunger Level: 4
Mental Stability: 8
How much do I still like candy? 8

Day 5: Monday

I’ve passed the halfway point! I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but that could also be symptoms of early-onset blindness from the sugar.

Most of my day will be made up of this monstrous box of chocolates, which came stacked in four mouth-watering trays.

My biggest worry is that they didn’t include the map. Luckily there are no revolting flavors in a Zachary candy box, so it’s not as risky as a Whitman’s Sampler. But still, I don’t want to bite into maple, expecting lemon.

After the first few it’s pretty obvious: these aren’t very good. Good thing I only have about sixty more to go! They may not taste great, but it should provide the energy to keep me going. 3,800 calories’ worth of energy, in fact.

It didn’t keep me full for very long, but on the plus side it did give me enough of a violent stomachache that I didn’t feel the need to eat until bedtime. Then I polished off a forest of Reese’s Peanut Butter Trees.

Day 5 Results:
Hunger Level: 6
Mental Stability: 7
How much do I still like candy? 7

Day 6: Tuesday

The almost complete lack of nutrition was taking its toll. I drastically overslept, despite the fact that my alarm was blaring in my ear. The next thing I remembered was sitting down at work. No lie: it was a complete candy blackout.

Assuming these mental roadblocks were a result of a lack of Omega-3s, I thought it best to start the day off with some fish.

I don’t actually think the hat-wearing is scientifically accurate.

I really, really hate fish. Any kind, except Swedish. But I figured an eight inch, crispy chocolate fish wearing a Santa hat would taste okay.

Maybe it would be better with tartar sauce.

It still didn’t taste that good, but it was still better than a real one.

Is that bear in the corner drunk?

Later on, I devoured a bunch of foil-covered chocolate Santas. I kept trying to figure out why the Santa in the middle was smelling a pine tree air freshener, until I realized it was his glove. He is making a “shh” gesture. Which normally wouldn’t seem so threatening, except in the other wrappers he has a pimp cane, is grabbing at his belt, and in the last one is in mid-bitch slap. So if this Santa is telling you to be quiet, you’re in for something unspeakable.

After mentally refusing little foil-covered Santa’s sexual advances, the next meal was appropriate: coal.

Chocolate coal, that is. As I chewed the coal, I realized my week of sugar was shutting down all kinds of systems in my brain. The coal was covered in black foil, which was now in my mouth, zapping my fillings.

For my last big meal of the day, I went with something I knew how to operate: a Pez dispenser.

The Pez didn’t get off to a great start, since I got screwed and only got one pack of grape out of about twenty packs. But it was okay. Because any food that comes out of Santa’s trachea is automatically delicious.

Day 6 Results:
Hunger Level: 8
Mental Stability: 4
How much do I still like candy? 5

Day 7: Wednesday

This was it: the final day. I woke up exhausted again, since having a blood sugar content of 1.7% results in terrible sleep. You’d think that my near-permanently shaking legs would wear me out, but it doesn’t work that way.

After the previous day being filled with a lot of crappy chocolate, I wanted to get off to a good start. So my breakfast was a bag of Dark Hershey’s Kisses, chased with a bag of Almond Hershey’s Kisses.

Little known fact: the flags are actually inedible.

When I had the gigantic candy cane, it got tiring pretty quickly. So I figured the problem must lie in fact that it was one candy cane. This time, I tried a bunch of smaller candy canes. Sixty of them, to be precise.

My calculations were incorrect. By the third candy cane, I didn’t want any more. But since the box was already open, might as well polish off the other fifty-seven.

Is there such a thing as having breath that is too fresh? My eyes were practically watering every time I exhaled.

Hours later, my breath was still too minty to jump back into chocolate. To ease the transition, I went with a box of ribbon candy. You might know it by another name: “Old People Candy.”

These and Werther’s Originals are the Batman and Robin of senior candy.

Eating this was probably the most annoying food of the week. My mental faculties were as sharp as a Fisher Price knife. So when grabbing a piece of the candy, I forgot how to maintain a grip, and dropped it on the carpet.

Remember before when I said “carpet”? That didn’t stop the ribbon candy from shattering into eighteen thousand pieces. Oh my GOD, I hate this stuff.

As something of a reward, I saved two of the best candies for last. Almond Roca is fantastic, I think because it’s mostly just butter and sugar.

I devoured these, as my body was craving food, and butter was close enough. Then for my last meal, I went with the most elegant of dining experiences: Ferrero Rocher (which sounds like an Italian lingerie company).

That one in the top row is shy.

I don’t know if eating these was so enjoyable because they’re so good, or if because I knew that after this I could eat real food again. It’s a chicken or Cadbury Creme Egg situation, I guess.

Day 7 Results:
Hunger Level: 9
Mental Stability: 3
How much do I still like candy? 5

Conclusions

After a week of candy, a few things became clear. I should specify only a few things became clear, because by that point a large portion of my brain had been starved to death.

First of all, candy is not filling. Sure, it may spoil your appetite, but that’s about as far as it goes. Secondly, it probably eats away at your brain faster than it does your teeth. This week certainly put me on the mental road toward becoming a mongoloid. Finally, apparently candy is really good for you.

To see just how much destruction this week had done to my body, I had weighed myself before starting. Somehow, I lost four pounds. I believe this is because candy is the new miracle weight loss secret! You might argue that it is due to violent malnourishment. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

All I know is, I am very grateful to be able to return to the world of normal food. So if you’ll excuse me, there are some Christmas cookies I’ve been putting off for far too long.