Diet Coke-Babies

To preface this review, I will warn you – this is not a new product.  I don’t mean to alarm or depress you.  But if you are reading this, and have already seen or tried these, I didn’t want you to have any dizzying confusion or deja vu.  (I’m not looking up how to put the little accents on the letters there.)

The packaging still says new, though.  So either these are really old, or they just haven’t bothered making a new box.  They’re still “Best By” for almost another year, so I’m not worried.  (Although I wouldn’t have been worried about eating expired food anyway.)

Dole Banana Dippers take one of the greatest foods in history, chocolate-covered bananas, and slice them up into bite-sized pieces.  Although they’re more “bite-sized” if you eat like a savage.  Otherwise, you can get a good eight to twelve budgeted bites out of the four pieces.

Banana Dippers became especially important to me, as my heroin withdrawal-like symptoms were rising, from my lack of Disney bananas.  As you will no doubt remember, chocolate-covered bananas ranked #2 on my list of Top Snacks at Walt Disney World.  I’m just kidding, I’m sure you don’t remember that.  But you can refresh your memory here. 

It should be noted, since I mentioned Disney World before, that Dole now makes chocolate-covered banana pieces you can eat at home, and also makes Dole Whips, which might literally be the best things in the world.  So I guess Dole has now placed itself atop the list of Best Companies Ever. 

Any pre-packaged food will bring about cries from people – “You can just make these yourself!”  I know I can.  I don’t want to.

I watch hours of Good Eats a week, where the inimitable Alton Brown spends the real-world equivalent of hours to prepare the simplest things.  I am entertained to no end – it is one of my favorite shows ever.  However, the inspiration I am left with is not something books will be written about.  I just think, “Oh, okay.  I’m just going to buy that, instead.”

So if you would prefer to make your own chocolate-covered bananas, go ahead.  For the rest of us cretins, we will continue to go about it the easy way.

Jeez, this review is feeling rather antagonistic.  Sorry.

The Dippers are marketed as a cross-section of dessert, fruit, and 100 Calorie Packs.  Each packet has four slices – not giant pieces, but maybe bigger than you might expect.  They’re about the size of a quarter, although the slices are certainly not evenly-sized.  But I suppose that’s to be expected with a product like this.  If they were all exactly uniformly-sized, like a bunch of mini Peppermint Patties, that would be a bit off-putting for a “real” fruit product.

Regarding the taste – they are fantastic.  Dole was cool, and decided, “We are only doing these with dark chocolate.”  Because dark chocolate is awesome.  The chocolate is definitely a strong flavor here, and given that the chocolate to banana ratio is higher here than in a chocolate-covered banana, you might expect to taste nothing but chocolate. 

Thankfully, the banana flavor definitely comes through almost as strongly as the chocolate.  It’s not a perfect balance, I’d say 60/40 chocolate to banana, but the ratio is good enough where you definitely get a hit of both flavors.  The banana is a good consistency, as well.  Sometimes the bananas are rock hard, and sometimes they’re just mushy.  These are perfect – frozen but a little soft.

The other variety of Chocolate Dippers has almonds on them.  I was more excited for these, since the nuts on a chocolate-covered banana add a nice flavor to them.

At this point, I’m wishing I just copied “chocolate-covered banana” and pasted it when necessary.  Especially because half the time I’m adding an extra “na” to banana.

The almonds don’t really add too much to the flavor, but the definitely don’t take anything away.  You can see the uniformity of the almond placement on the box didn’t exactly translate to the real-world counterpart.

When you read that you should have five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, I recommend making one of those servings a packet of Banana Dippers.  Or just eat five packets, and you’re covered for that day’s fruits and vegetables.  I assume that counts.