If you’re like me, you are interested in hearing about all of the new (disclaimer: most of them are not new) and interesting varieties of unique chocolates on the market.
More than likely, however, you’re just thinking “Hey do you know how I can kill ten or so minutes? I’m really bored.” In that case, I’ve got you covered as well.
Join me on an exciting (disclaimer: well… I’m sure you can figure this one out) adventure as I round up some of the best and worst gourmet chocolatiers have to offer.
Wonka’s Bottle Caps have long been one of my favorite candies. The little paper wrapper packets you would get on Halloween were a rare enough sighting to keep them exciting. Then when you bought a theater sized box and ate them all in one sitting, that worked as well.
Unfortunately, Willy Wonka decided that having a good heart was all it took to be put in charge of the company. Charlie Bucket clearly has no idea what he’s doing, and he’s starting to royally screw up.
Sometime in 2009, Bottle Caps changed their beloved shape.
(Picture stolen from puddingstore.com. I had permission, so it wasn’t actually stolen, I just think it sounds cooler to say.)
Do you know why they are called Bottle Caps? Because they are shaped like bottle caps. This seems reasonable enough, no? Tell that to whoever it was at Wonka that decided to change the shape from a Bottle Cap to an oversized SweeTart.
When they were shaped like actual bottle caps, they were perfect. They resembled their name sake, and it gave them a very unique texture. There’s plenty of disc-shaped sugary candies, but none shaped like these. No other candy had that indentation on the bottom. And if another candy did, it doesn’t matter, because Bottle Caps wore the indentation best.
Now Bottle Caps are soulless, flat-bottomed sellouts. They still taste good, but something is off. They seem harder than they used to be, possibly because the lack of the indentation gives them too much structural integrity. They’re definitely smaller than they used to be.
Coca-Cola admitted they screwed up with New Coke. Tropicana changed its packaging back after they realized the new one looked like store brand orange juice. So now the logical thing to do would be for Wonka to admit that the new Bottle Caps are vastly inferior to their actual bottle cap-shaped predecessors.
Look, Charlie is clearly in over his head. I don’t know whether he thinks this cost-cutting measure will help the company or what, but this kid has no business acumen. Maybe because he had a terrible education. His math teacher couldn’t even figure out what percentage two bars was out of a thousand bars, so when this unqualified hack is the one responsible for educating Charlie, it’s no wonder the kid grew up to be an idiot.
It’s like they always say, “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted – he inherited a great candy company and proceeded to muck up the proceedings.” Get it together, Wonka, and fix this mess.
Like the last article, in order to read this update you will have to take a magical journey to another site. Now, when you happen to stumble upon this site, you can exclaim with overwhelming indifference, “Oh… an update.”
One important thing to note is even though the article went live on June 28, it still took me almost two weeks to update coke-babies with a link to the article. Let me repeat that. It took me almost two weeks to update this site with work that was already done.
I hope I can shake this timing funk by the time I’m a father. Otherwise I’ll be putting together the crib when the kid is getting ready to go into fifth grade.
Anyway… the new article is a wonderful experiment in what happens when you eat a bunch of questionable foods under the powerful hallucinogenic effects of the miracle berry. Or miracle fruit. I need to put both in order to suck up as much Google search result power as I can. Also, the effects aren’t hallucinogenic. Although it can seem that way when you discover that you are eating lemons and drinking olive brine.
The experiment brought to you by mberry, who sponsored this event. Okay, it wasn’t actually sponsored at all. I had to pay for it. But I figured if I said I was sponsored I’d look cool like a NASCAR driver, and maybe get some free beef jerky. Or Tide. But the guys at mberry did contact me (they were faster to contact me than I was to update this site), and were very awesome, so that’s almost the same as being sponsored.
Now, stop wasting time here and go over to Zug.com to read the full exploits of…
Since my inhumanly frequent updates on this site make me something of a modern day Martin Luther, I thought it would be in this site’s best interest to have its next update elsewhere. I wouldn’t want to spoil that wonderful “every month or so” updating prowess I’m known for.
So here’s a breakdown of the situation. Since there’s no pictures on this page, I figured it would be in everyone’s best interest to break up the text as much as possible.
Good News: There is a new article! I guess that’s good news, anyway. Depends who you ask.
Bad News: It’s not here!
Good News: Finding the article will be like a scavenger hunt!
Bad News: No it won’t. I’m going to provide you with a link.
Good News: The article is on Zug.com!
In all (some) seriousness, I do find it pretty awesome that I was actually asked to write an article for Zug. I’ve been reading that site for well over a decade, and it literally is the first comedy site ever on the web. They say it is, anyway, and I trust them. Because if I didn’t trust them, I’d have to go research who actually was the first comedy site, and that could take like, at least three or four minutes.
So now, off you go. You must now leave the warm confines of this domain onto another, more successful, site:
I don’t think I could handle the mental strain if I ever wrote for a site that people actually read. What I write for this site, I consider mostly goes into a vacuum. Hopefully, all of my uninformed “facts” and opinions fall largely on deaf ears. Or blind eyes, I suppose is the better metaphor.
What brings this up is a result of my previous article, the now-infamous fruit rolls exposé. The emails I get for this site usually fall into two categories. The first category is actual comments from readers, usually just a compliment on a certain article (I don’t think this site is important enough to garner much hate email, thankfully). The second category is scattered emails with subjects akin to “banana laffy taffys is good wut ru talking aout”.
So I was a bit surprised that one of the companies I wrote about contacted me. When I saw that someone from the company that makes Jovy fruit rolls contacted me, I was a bit nervous. I assumed I said something in the article that was blatantly incorrect, and they were contacting me to inform me I was being sued for libel.
Instead of a legal assault, Jovy simply informed me that if I ever wanted more information on their company, to let them know. I would assume the reaction of most people would be “Uh, no thanks… I’ll just keep eating the food.” Although those people wouldn’t have put their opinions on fruit rolls online in the first place. I believe this is what is referred to as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or maybe it’s not; I occasionally throw phrases around that seem like they would be correct, without paying much attention to whether or not they are actually applicable. So, catch 22.
If you know anything about me (and if you don’t, it’s not worth starting), you already guessed that I replied to the email with sentiments of “YES PLEASE”. Although I didn’t use all caps. Come on, I do have some decorum.
They sent back information on the history of the company, as well as information on the machinery they use in Jovy’s production. Now, many people would consider getting an email with PDFs detailing the specs of a fruit roll’s production to be uninteresting, akin to homework. Not me.
The biggest revelation to come from this information was that the Sunkist rolls, which I said were almost identical to the Jovy rolls, were produced in the same manner, after Sunkist was bought out. Or something like that; I’ve already forgotten some of the information. And apparently my old emails aren’t saved for as long as I blindly assumed they would be, so I don’t have this information anymore. But that’s another topic I’m enraged by, so we’ll leave that alone.
Do you see what that means? I said Jovy rolls are almost identical to Sunkist rolls… and they are. I made a sort of informed but mostly opinion-based declaration on this site, and I was actually correct! This sets a bit of a dangerous precedence, as I might find myself more freely spewing “facts” on here.
So if you ever come to this site, and it has been turned into a promotional site for Pepsi, this will be the result of my giving them the only real asset I have, after they sue me for some wrong statement or other. Such as suggesting the only possible explanation as to why they would decide that Diet Pepsi With Lime should continue while the infinitely superior Diet Pepsi Twist gets cancelled was a result of a marathon freebasing session.
But, just to play it safe: The aforementioned statement has not been confirmed as fact, and is only an assumption. Although I really can’t think of any theory that makes more sense.
So as thanks to Jovy for their unbelievably awesome customer service, I felt I would pay them back in the only way I know how: reviewing their fruit roll line.
As you can probably tell from most of my food reviews, I’m not that good at actually describing the products. Most of my reviews are 95% introduction and filler, while the actual review part is never too impressive. This is easily explained: I’m bad at it. Even if I could give a description of a fruit roll like “contains high notes of pear and grape, with undercurrents of lemon zest” (which I can’t), no one wants to read that. Fruit Roll Afficianado is not a niche even I am prepared to fill.
To avoid just having a list consisting of “Grape – this was good, Strawberry – this was pretty good”, they will be divided into three groups.
The Best
My two favorites, without a doubt, are Orange-Cherry and Apricot. Apricot tends to be my favorite fruit roll flavor for two reasons, first of all because it’s one of my favorite fruit flavors. The second reason is that Apricot-flavored foods never tend to never be overly sweet. If I want a very sweet fruit snack, I’ll go with a Fruit Roll Up. Fruit rolls are all about the restraint.
Orange-Cherry was a bit of a surprise when I first had it. The combination, while it didn’t sound bad, didn’t really seem like a very natural match. But the flavor is great, a nice balance of the two flavors, and not too sweet.
Grape being one of the best flavors wasn’t a surprise. I love the flavor, and the only way they could have messed it up was by making it sickly sweet, which it isn’t.
Mango is borderline between being classified in the Best category and being demoted to the Better category. I like the flavor a lot, but it is a bit overpowering. Although natural mango flavor is fairly overpowering, so the Jovy roll does have that accuracy. Also, I already took a picture of Mango with the Best flavors and don’t want to have to re-take it, so it stays.
Better
The first flavor in the Better category isn’t pictured: Cherry. I only had one, and I ate before taking its picture. My journalistic integrity took a hit with that mistake, but oh well. I tend to dislike cherry as a candy flavor (cherry Starbust – blech), but usually love it as a flavor of fruit roll. Jovy’s cherry is a solid effort, but a bit sweet. It’s a halfway point between a more understated cherry flavor like Stretch Island’s, but never approaches the creepy cough syrup-esque Starburst. I also didn’t want to have too many flavors in the “Best” category, and with Mango remaining, Cherry got bumped.
Strawberry is a good, if somewhat safe effort. You know what you’re going to get with a strawberry fruit roll. Which, of course, isn’t a bad thing, but it didn’t have enough to differentiate itself and make it a great flavor, just a good one.
Strawberry-Kiwi was too sweet. It wasn’t too sweet to the point of being bad, far from it. It’s a good flavor, but I’m grading all the flavors against something of a fruit roll benchmark. Granted, that benchmark is made up and not a real thing; it’s really just a mental expectation of the sweetness I want in a fruit roll. I apologize for not being able to quantify it.
Watermelon, like Strawberry-Kiwi, was very sweet. Although almost everything watermelon flavored tends to be overly sweet, so this makes sense. The flavor is spot on though, so the overall roll is quite good.
No
It is probably unfair to put Green Apple in the “No” category, since no matter how good it might be, I won’t like it. I hate green apple-flavored sweets. This is why I named the category “No” and not “Bad”. Because I can’t truly say if it’s bad or not. I can’t judge what’s good quality black licorice… they’re all disgusting to me. Same thing with green apple.
While I have most flavors here, I am unfortunately missing two: Peach and Raspberry. This is extra unfortunate because Peach is almost always my favorite flavor of any candy or sweet. Raspberry is a shame as well, since that tends to be a great flavor of fruit roll.
And there you have it: Jovy’s excellent fruit roll assortment. If you’ve read this far, you’re obviously interested. So go out and buy a ton of them, either online or at a supermarket if you can find them. And tell them Robb sent you. Although only tell Jovy, not the supermarket cashier. They won’t care.
As one of the leading economists of our time, Neil Hamburger, has said repeatedly, “Times are tough.”
I’m one sentence in and already grammar check is giving me the squiggly green line of shame. This is off to a worse start than usual.
Don’t worry, I’m not even going to start off with the almost mandatory numerous paragraphs of semi-relevant blather, which eventually leads to something sort of resembling a segue into the actual point. There’s no time for that. My rage has been building, and I need to just get this off my chest.
Why are fruit rolls so damned expensive?
I’m not talking about Fruit Roll Ups, which can always be found for a reasonable price. Especially if you get the 48 pack at your local BJs, Costco, Sam’s Club, whatever weirdo warehouse club you go to if it’s not one of those three, etc. Even better is the fact that the 48 pack is usually the Blastin’ Berry Hot Colors flavor, which is the best Fruit Roll Up flavor. Cherry-Orange Wildfire is second.
Unfortunately, I can’t sit down with a box of Fruit Roll Ups like I used to. As I continue to mature, my tastes become so refined that the idea of eating an entire box is no longer appetizing. Okay, it is, but I guess now it’s even more blatant that I shouldn’t. So I usually limit myself to six at a time.
I have long since been a fan of the classier fruit rolls, but as my palate matures, my desire for a higher end fruit roll increases as well.
I think my first exposure to fruit rolls was the Sunkist ones. These were the mythical fruit rolls in the supermarket for two reasons: they were amazing, and they were expensive. I don’t know how much they were back then, probably like fifty cents, but that’s a lot when you consider you can either get three of those or an entire box of Fruit Roll Ups. Or if you wanted, you could get the arguably superior Fruit Wrinkles or fruit bars.
For the life of me, I can’t remember who made fruit bars. What I remember most about them was they were basically a bar of highly compressed Fun Fruits, and in the ads people would scream when people held up a fruit bar. I’m pretty sure Sunkist made them, since Sunkist made Fun Fruits but… never mind, this is boring.
Point being, Sunkist fruit rolls were my first foray into fine compressed-fruit dining. Sunkist rolls seemed to go away around the end of the 90’s. I definitely know that my Waldbaum’s had them back then, but after that I stopped seeing them and haven’t since.
Presently, I usually have three options for fruit rolls. The first of these is Joray. These have an extremely tough, plastic-like consistency. And when describing them to people, my go-to description is that they look like fake vomit. Which I know is not the most appetizing description of food. I only use it because it’s pretty accurate. But this appearance and texture is largely responsible for what makes Joray so good.
While many fruit rolls will have a chewiness or gumminess, Joray has a vaguely tough texture. Just enough to make you work for the enjoyment. Because they are a little tougher than other fruit rolls, they take slightly longer to eat than the competition. Which is a very good thing for someone like me. If I didn’t have Joray’s texture telling me “Hey, easy there”, I’d plow through the roll in two seconds flat.
On the other hand, the texture makes removing the fruit roll from the cellophane very easy. Which doesn’t seem like it would be a bad thing. But with other fruit rolls, the fact that they can prove resilient to removal at least adds a few extra seconds before I can eat them, thereby extending the time of my fruit roll experience.
Very rarely do I see Joray in supermarkets, and usually I have to get them in that store in the mall that sells dried apricots and gummy bears in clear plastic bags. This store is almost never in the same location twice, and seems to move into another location in the mall once a month, presumably to where the rent is cheapest.
I love looking around these types of stores, but I hate being in them, because I will invariably be the only person in the store. This leads to either them talking to me, or staring at me from behind the register because they think I’m going to steal from them. I think I actually prefer for them to think I’m going to steal, since at least that way I don’t have to talk.
These ritzy fruit rolls tend to be a dollar each, or for the special bargain price of five for $4. Now, that may not seem that expensive, but when you consider that I will eat them in the span of about eight seconds, it adds up fast.
If I had a gun to my head and was forced to pick a top three, I’d go with Apricot, Grape, and Pineapple. Although being forced to eat only three flavors of fruit rolls isn’t that bad of a punishment, considering the gun and all.
The second fruit roll option, probably the closest to the Sunkist ones, is Jovy. The name is similar to Joray, and I don’t know why. I guess in the high stakes world of fruit rolls, you can’t afford to have varying names. Of the three type of fruit rolls here, Jovy are probably the sweetest. Not anywhere near Fruit Roll Up territory, but a nice bit of extra sweetness to straddle the line between “all natural” and “dessert”.
One advantage Joray (the fake vomit ones) has over Jovy (the not-fake vomit ones) is the packaging. I appreciate the simplicity, and more important, the lack of a child on the wrapper. I like the message they’re sending: “You don’t have to be a little kid to be eating these. Although you probably should be.” The Jovy rolls retail for about sixty cents where I get them, but that price is probably a good thing. Because if they were much cheaper, I’d probably wind up eating twenty of them a day. Especially the Cherry-Orange.
Finally, we have a fruit product that isn’t even a roll… it’s leather. Oohhh, fancy! Stretch Island’s fruit leather might be the best of the three, but have the disadvantage of probably being the most expensive. They’re similar in price to Joray (fake vomit), but are like half the size. Which makes matters worse, since these are harder to budget bites from, I usually just eat the whole thing in two bites.
Ah, but the few bites you get are fantastic. The texture of Stretch Island makes them the Two Face of the fruit snack world. One side is smooth, and a little bit sticky. So whilst eating them, you must be careful to clean your hands in the most dignified way possible (licking your fingers), otherwise your keyboard or anything else you touch immediately after will become like something akin to fly paper.
The second, evil side of Stretch Island is the dry side. This side seems much tougher, dryer, and has a somewhat rough texture. In an effort to make the fruit leathers last longer, I’ll often leave a bite in my mouth, using my tongue to rub the rough part of the fruit leather against the roof of my mouth. I don’t know why I do this, because it almost invariably leads to my mouth getting irritated.
Now I realize that describing a snack as being like fly paper and possibly hurting your mouth doesn’t sound like a great sales pitch. This is probably because I would be a terrible pitch man. I don’t think that description of the products would have people rushing to my booth at the international sugar expo.
Unrelated, but I’ve always wanted to go to one of those candy/snack expos. I always see them on The Food Network or The Travel Channel, and they just look amazing. Unfortunately, my credentials of “writing for an infrequently updated web site that I don’t think anyone even read, even though I often write about snacks” just hasn’t been enticing enough to inspire anyone to offer me an invite.
Phew! Back to Stretch Island. They were one of the companies that made me realize that cherry can actually be a good flavor. As I’m sure you remember, I have mentioned my dislike for cherry in the past. Cherry Starbursts are vile. A while back, my wife got me a big box of these as part of my birthday present. I’m easy to shop for. But the box was a multi-pack, including cherry, which I was saddened about, chalking it up to a flavor I’d wind up giving away.
I figured I should try at least one, and lo and behold, it was awesome. It was a cherry much more reminiscent of the old fruit bars from the 80’s. I was impressed. It didn’t have that gross, cough syrup cherry flavor that a lot of cherry snacks have. Making that multi-pack last longer than a week was the result of some of the most restraint I think I have ever demonstrated in my life.
Fruit leather even made an appearance in a recent episode of The Office, which is becoming quite the taste maker in food trends. For further proof, see my old report on their support of Cup Noodles.
In the episode, Michael has a disparaging remark for the apricot flavor, which is foolish since apricot is certainly the best fruit leather flavor. But any support of fruit leather in general is cool in my book (which would be a book with a lot of pictures).
So it appears I didn’t really get to the heart of the matter: the unfortunate prices for fruit rolls. Also, I’m starting to think maybe they aren’t that expensive. When you spend all this time talking about how awesome something is, I guess you see their value a bit more. Oh well. I guess I’m like one of those charities that just raises “awareness” of an issue. Feel free to donate.
One common accusation I assume anyone who has been reading this site for a while would have is, “Why doesn’t this site ever look any better?” I would say that’s a fair point. There have been some changes made to the site, but I’m not sure if I am able to use the term “improvements”. In all fairness, I don’t really have much of an idea what I’m doing when it comes to web design, formatting, and the like. Most of the best changes weren’t even done by me.
And sure, the likely retort to that is, “Then maybe you shouldn’t have a web site.” And that is true as well. But then where would you read ill-informed, poorly written, opinionated writings about pop culture and other entertainment minutia? Oh, the other ten thousand sites that are dedicated to the same things? Good point.
In my defense, as unpleasant as much of the designs here look, they actually used to be significantly worse. For example, take the first two things I ever wrote online. Exhibit A & Exhibit B. Are you kidding me? One is a huge wall of text in bright turquoise, and the other… well, its flaws don’t explaining.
And yes, starting an article with multiple paragraphs insulting the web site you are reading probably isn’t the best start. But I’m awful with introductions, and this sort of segued into the topic at hand. Sort of.
Sadly, one of the things I have written that is without a doubt one of the most popular things I’ve done is something I put the least effort into. This is the aforelinked to Home Made Cereal Reviews.
These were born from (no surprise here) extreme boredom, as well as access to someone else’s food that I didn’t mind ruining by pouring milk on it. Despite these being what I think were the only things that people actually requested I do more of, I never really wanted to. Because they were stupid.
But, as I’ve already shown, I’m not above doing stupid things with free food. A while back, I was on the Cheerios web site, where they had a request form for a free sample of one of their Snack Mixes. Which are basically Chex Mix, replacing the Chex with (shield your eyes from this blindingly obvious revelation:) Cheerios.
To answer any possible inquiries, no I don’t know why I was at the Cheerios web site.
I mean, I like most forms of Cheerios. Frosted and Multi-Grain are awesome, and Honey Nut is very good as well. Although Honey Nut Cheerios are one of those cereals you’re only happy about while you’re actually eating them. When you’re pouring the bowl, it’s usually because there’s nothing left in the Awesome Cereal category. Even regular Cheerios are pretty good. The Fruity, Yogurt Burst, and Berry Burst are all solid choices. The only one I’ve tried that I can safely say are gross are Apple Cinnamon. Apple Cinnamon Cheerios are disgusting. And I’m not even going to attempt Banana Nut.
When my sample arrived, I was distressed to learn that the random flavor I had been chosen to receive was Cheddar. Most “cheese” flavored snacks disgust me. Cheez-Its are good, but the vast majority like Nacho Doritos and those horrid party mixes are just wretched.
But hey, free snack. After two bites, it became clear that this mix was gross. Luckily, I worked out the math in my head that Cheerios actually are cereal, so this would make a logical, triumphant return to a home made cereal reviews.
Terrible, off center picture taking aside, there you have it. Look at that sickly orange hue. I’m already filled with dread.
Aaaaand, now it’s worse. I figured I should work quickly, since the only way this could get worse would be a soggy cheese flavored cereal. As for the experience itself, there’s not much to say. I already reviewed Cheez-Its, a snack I actually like, over a decade ago (jeez), and those were disgusting. Since I didn’t even like Cheerios Snack Mix in the manner in which they were intended (not submerged in milk), they were only likely to get worse. Which they did.
Don’t let that image fool you. The milk was not the kindly, Golden Graham tan hue that you see here. It was a far more sinister shade of orange, like a French Vanilla ice cream that just couldn’t seem to get the color right. I’m not sure why I even need to tell you this, since it should be painfully obvious, but the milk was even worse than the cereal. It was like drinking from the drain of a Cheetos factory after they hosed the floor down.
And there you have it. the retro revival of home made cereals. I’m not sure when the next one will be. I’m assuming there won’t be another ten year wait. But come on, you should be familiar with the frequency of my writing. Ten years doesn’t actually seem like too bad of an estimation.
As helpful as it is, I think the internet is a bit overrated. Sure, you can find out all sorts of useful and, mostly, non-useful information. However, a while back my sister Judith brought up the fact that she was unable to find a picture of a Fat Frog ice cream bar online. My first thought was one of arrogance. “Maybe you can’t find it, but I can.” But I couldn’t. All I could find were pictures of actual fat frogs. Which are certainly interesting, just not what I’m looking for.
If it doesn’t contain easily found pictures of Fat Frog bars, what good is the internet?
Another failure of the internet is its inability to provide any help when searching for information on Disney World. When you go to Google and search Disney World, there’s just nothing. It’s bad enough there’s no television advertising. Disney currently has a promotion where you get free park admission on your birthday. With an idea this great, you would think they would want to place an ad during every commercial break of every show on TV.
Since it is impossible to find any web sites with Disney information, either official or fan made sites, I thought I should at least offer some insight.
One thing you might not be aware of when it comes to Disney World is that there are actually a lotof ways to spend money while on vacation. If you pay enough attention, you will be able to find the occasional shop that sells a few assorted items emblazoned with the Disney logo or Mickey’s head. The gift shops aren’t easy to find, but they are there. Trust me.
If you look even more closely, you will be able to find some places where you can purchase food and beverages. There are a lot more locations than you might expect, if only because Disney does such a good job of hiding them.
As a reward for reading this, I am going to let you in on a secret. If you want to find one of the gift shops or food stands in a Disney park, just follow this method. Stand anywhere in any park, and look either three feet to your left or right. There you go!
Now that you are aware of where to get food, the bigger question is, what to eat? That is a surprisingly tough question to answer, for a couple reasons. Mostly, it is because Disney World has literally hundreds of places to eat. Also, it is because I always get the same things every time, and am too much of a wimp to try new things.
So this isn’t going to be any sort of “Official Best Snacks at Disney World” list. For one thing, I don’t even know how to get a list made official. Another reason is that there probably are better things to get, I’ve just never gotten them.
I wasn’t sure whether I should do top ten, five, or what. I then thought I would settle on seven, in a tribute to the best show on TV in Florida, “Top Seven Must Sees: Walt Disney World”. However, I’m pretty mad at them. The last couple of trips have nearly been ruined by the new host, Stacey. She is the worst. At everything.
When Kryssa was hosting, it was wonderful. She was the best. Exhibit A:
Now, whenever you want some Top Seven action, you are subjected to the worst human being alive: Stacey.
Ugh.
So I’m not going to do a top seven list, in protest. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to do a top five, because I had at least six things I wanted to mention. You’re in for a treat, lady and gentleman. You are about to witness one of the rarest feats in the fast paced world of making lists: the elusive Top Six.
Is that not the worst title logo you have ever seen? I’m rather proud of its awfulness.
6) Churros
The good thing about writing about Churros is that they have already done all the work for me. I don’t have to explain why churros are good. Unfortunately, they’re also not very exciting to write or read about. They’re essentially an extra crispy, long donut. Except with that cool ridged surface. And with cinnamon sugar. So forget about reading this description, just close your eyes and imagine you were eating a churro instead.
5) Any Beverage That Isn’t From the Water Fountain
I’m not picky with water. Of course given the option, I’d rather choose bottled or filtered water. However, I’m usually fine with some tap water if that’s all there is. I don’t know what the deal is with the water in Disney World’s fountains.
The water is like that weird “unfiltered” apple juice, the cloudy stuff. I mean, I don’t like apple juice anyway; but that unfiltered juice is just creepy looking. But the Disney water is just awful. The tap water in the rooms isn’t terrible, so I don’t think it’s the water source.
I’ve heard people recommend that you can save money in Disney World buy only buying one bottle of water and just refilling it in the fountains. Don’t do this.
As far as the beverage I’d suggest as a replacement, it doesn’t matter too much. I usually have soda around the way a baby has a bottle around, so I’d probably say go with that. Or if you’re in Epcot, go into the Club Cool and get some free soda. And if you’re one of those people that think you “shouldn’t drink soda all day long”, buy a bottle of water. Just stay away from the fountains. Stay far away. You don’t even want to step in the puddle that forms near them.
4) Cinnamon Glazed Almonds
Nuts are one of those foods you’re never sure if they’re okay to eat or not. You know they are ridiculously high in fat, but you’ve also heard that it’s “good fat”. Here’s a good way to take out all the guesswork: to make it clear that they are something not okay to eat, just take a handful of nuts, and coat them in a thick layer of sugar. Problem solved!
Because come on, who wants to eat “real food” at Disney World? Okay, probably a lot of people. Other people. Oddly enough, I had never actually bought these at Disney World until my last trip. I have had them before, and am a big fan. You always see these carts in New York City, which is sort of the Disney World of real life.
Once my goth friend Dersh bought a bag of cinnamon glazed coconut pieces from one of these vendors. They were quite good, but were one of those foods you’re glad someone else bought, since one piece was pretty much all you could imagine eating. This sickly sweet flavor stuck with me, and kind of turned me off to ever buying “cinnamon glazed” anything.
During our last trip, Amy and I were on line for a ride, behind someone who had bought them. So the entire time we were waiting, this intense scent surrounded us. After getting off the ride, we decided we wanted to try them, possibly due to the subconscious suggestions from our clothing, which most likely still smelled like cinnamon glaze.
This is definitely one of those Disney World snacks that you can’t justify having too often. I guess most snacks are hard to justify having too often, but I’ve gotten pretty good at that.
3) Jelly Beans
This is one of my most cherished Disney World traditions. Every trip, I get a bag of Jelly Belly beans from one of the candy stores, and try to stretch them to last me the whole trip. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten any smarter when it comes to buying them.
As anyone who has ever bought pound candy knows, that price goes up fast. “$2.50 for every one sixth of a pound? That seems reasonable, I’m probably only going to get like a tenth of a pound anyway.” Then you go and weigh your bag and it comes to like fifteen dollars.
I do know this, and it doesn’t help. I know that in order to get all the jelly bean flavors I want, I have to only take a little of each. And yet there I go, right to Juicy Pear and dump a ton in my bag. Then I look two flavors to the left, see peach and throw more in. After putting too much in the bag and walking away, I see that I didn’t notice they had pineapple, and put more in the bag.
Considering I’m probably paying about thirty cents a bean, I need to figure out a better system for picking them out.
2) Chocolate Covered Frozen Bananas
I have discussed these here before, and every time I mention them the news gets better. The last time I brought them up, it was to share the joyous news that you could now get them at a few select carts around the Magic Kingdom. Now I am pleased to announce that they can now be found at every ice cream cart in Disney World.
The doubters have been crushed. If anyone knows that progress can’t be stopped, it is Walt Disney. So the only two plausible reasons for the influx of bananas is either that Walt Disney is reaching out from beyond the grave, or that my web site has the power to influence the Disney company’s decisions. Which option sounds more possible? That’s right, ghost Walt Disney is getting things done.
Not only are chocolate bananas an incredible snack, they are so easy to write off as not even that bad for you. Yes, they are covered in chocolate and crushed peanuts. Just ignore that part. So basically you’re just eating a banana. Also, they might just help you avoid a frightening encounter with a bathroom stall in the park.
While I know that ghost Walt is the main reason for bananas now being available everywhere, I couldn’t help feeling some pride. Every time I would see someone walking around eating one, I gave them a silent “You’re welcome.” And yeah, they might have found it odd that I was staring at them while mouthing words. But deep down, they felt gratitude.
1) Dole Whips
Pineapple Floats are alongside frozen bananas on this list in the category of “Things I’ll be angry if I don’t get.” I’m not really sure how often you can have a pineapple float, since as snacks go, they’re pretty epic. They’re also one of the more expensive snacks, so you might have to limit your consumption to ten or so a day.
These cups of love are certainly the most refreshing snack you can get. The hotter and more disgusting the weather, the better they taste. Not only do you get the incredible pineapple soft serve, it comes atop a deep pool of pineapple juice. Juice!
So really, you can have as many of these as you want, since they’re high in vitamin C. And as the nearby Pirates of the Caribbean attraction should remind you, you need that vitamin C to ward of scurvy.
And thus concludes our hard hitting exposé on Disney snacks. Unfortunately, as far as my writing is concerned, “hard hitting” is just another way of saying “less lazy and poorly thought out than usual”. So I recommend every item on this list; they all have my personal seal of approval (which is a drawing of me giving a thumbs up done in MS Paint).
That said, I’d recommend trying everything you can in the parks. There are tons of legitimately good things to eat, and it is an easy way to get rid of all that money you’re always complaining you have too much of.
It has been mentioned before that the basement of my old house contained some strange things, usually pertaining to food. The most famous example (and by “most famous” I mean the only one I can remember) would be the awful assortment of soda I was able to unearth from there.
When my family was moving to another state, I did my best do help them out. This mostly consisted of me rummaging around the house looking for things I wanted to take. My ransacking was limited mostly to the basement. Digging through the shelves of food long since forgotten about, I felt like an explorer. I was Indiana Jones, except instead of digging for crystal skulls with which I would disappoint my fan base, I was moving dusty jars around looking for mysterious edibles.
From doing so much food shopping now, I realize how much I took this basement for granted. Have you seen how much wheat germ costs? Of course you haven’t; no one buys wheat germ besides my family and probably twelve other people. Well, it’s expensive.
What made the basement’s goods so plentiful was the fact that my dad never has the slightest idea of what we have in the house. When he would go to BJ’s, he would buy another 12 pack of paper towels, another gallon of shampoo, another 100 pack of “Good News” Razors (that name being rather ironic given the fact that my neck never receives the news as such), and so on.
Another object taking up room in our basement was a rather large blue barrel. It was supposed to do something related to water: filtering, removing iodine, or another cleaning-related function. The reason this large blue obstruction was in our basement was so that we could survive in a post-apocalyptic world after Y2K.
Oh yeah I should mention that he bought into the Y2K fears, big time. If you weren’t paying attention around this time (the year 2000), no nuclear wars broke out as a result of computer errors, and no civilizations had to result to cannibalization due to the ConAgra plant’s inability to produce Kid Cuisine.
I’m not quite sure what level of chaos he thought the world would be brought to. We would need to survive on food rations as a result of nuclear explosions, yet we didn’t need a bomb shelter?
Regardless, I got used to seeing the big blue barrel in the basement, and never really questioned why we kept it. When helping my family move, I saw the other Y2K emergency supplies we had, including pills that helped cure radiation (which I’m assuming didn’t work), as well as emergency food rations.
I’ve always been kind of interested in dehydrated camping or MRE type foods. Those things that promise delicious pot roast just by pouring boiling water in a bag, yet probably wind up looking like what happens when you forget to reduce the power to 50% when cooking TV dinners.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have any delicious dehydrated beef stew, or even Astronaut ice cream that you know is disgusting but still think is pretty cool. All we had were frightening blocks of “Emergency Rations”. Even though they weren’t pretty, they were still emergency food, so I felt compelled to try them. For science.
The rations come packed in a vacuum sealed, red package. In a large font is the company’s name, DATREX, which is pretty frightening. It sounds like the name of a company that would be pumping raw sewage into lakes.
In case you wouldn’t be willing to eat something that was not approved by the US Coast Guard, don’t worry, this is. All other approvals are currently pending, which really makes the Coast Guard seem a bit loose with their approvals, but I guess that’s just how they were raised.
The label also has instructions on how to eat a bar of food. In case you were unsure.
Another fun fact the label offers is that we should not drink sea water. I realized I should never do this when I was about six, and got some in my mouth at the beach. I also realized this later on when I was in Hawaii, and didn’t really have a choice as the violent waves forced about a quart down my throat, forcing me to later vomit. So don’t worry about the sea water warnings. I’m good.
You are also told not to drink water in the first 24 hours after an emergency, unless you are sick or in a desert. Or if you are thirsty, I guess, although it doesn’t specify. It also says it is best to not to drink more than two cups a water a day. So I’ll be fine during an emergency, since I normally don’t drink this much water. As long as there’s soda, I’ll be fine.
Upon opening the package, I am met with a rather gross looking block of “food”. It looks sort of like those healthy breads you see, that are very compressed and are almost like chewy melba toast. Sorry for the awful comparison. I don’t know much about what I’m comparing it to, but I know that it looks like whatever it is I’m talking about.
It also sort of looks like when you eat a bowl of cereal from the bottom of the box. Since you pour in all the cereal crumbs and powder, the milk at the end turns into this muddy slop. That is what this looks like. So feel free to ignore that terrible healthy bread comparison.
One thing that is immediately noticeable is a greasy, slimy texture to the block of food. It also smells like coconut. Not real coconut, more like a coconut shampoo. I’m not too worried about surviving the night, so instead of dividing it into the correct serving size, I just dig in and take a bite.
It is at this point that I realize the food is sealed in cellophane.
In all fairness, if the food is still sealed, why is the outside greasy? To aid removal from the foil wrapper? Now to get to the food, I need to use a knife to open the block. I’ll need a knife in an emergency anyway, to fend off coyotes and hobos, so I’m not worried about the tricky ration packaging.
The fairly appealing smell is still pretty unexpected. I don’t know what smell I was expecting, but it wasn’t coconut. When you are desperate for just enough calories to live another day, who is expecting a tropical delight?
After inspecting the ingredients, the reason for the smell becomes apparent. The list is also refreshingly short: wheat flour, vegetable shortening, cane sugar, water, coconut, and salt. No weird chemicals, everything seems normal.
The entire block of food isn’t that big, and each serving measures about 1.5 inches by 2.5 inches, and .5 inches thick. Like a novelty size deck of cards. And at 200 calories, I don’t know how long you would be surviving by eating this. I don’t know what I was expecting, I guess some crazy scientific marvel that packed 2,000 calories into a single bite.
When I tasted the ration, I immediately wished there were more chemicals and artificial flavorings. While it smelled like coconut, it certainly didn’t taste like it. It tasted like how Jack Johnson music sounds. Is that a current reference? I haven’t noticed if he has gone away yet.
The taste wasn’t bad, it just tasted… there. It was no coconut granola bar, but at the same time it wasn’t human flesh. As far as survival food goes, it wasn’t bad.
I certainly don’t envision DATREX bars replacing Kudos in lunch boxes any time soon. It may be all natural, but even the most strict parents probably won’t force their children to make the switch.
The nutritional facts don’t make it seem like this would last very long in your system. It seems like you’d get the same benefits from eating a handful of All Bran and a couple spoonfuls of Crisco. Whether or not that is more convenient to keep in your glove compartment or bomb shelter is up to you.
Hm. When scanning the label to get inspiration for a closing statement, I noticed the expiration date was 9/04. I just assumed that emergency rations last indefinitely, I certainly wasn’t expecting it to expire five years after production.
I’m pretty sure that the Creme Savers I have in my car have been in there for at least ten years, and they still taste good. Let this be a lesson to you all: natural food is inferior to chemicals and artificial flavors.
Now I don’t fear a nuclear war as much. At least I would finally be able to finish that bag of Creme Savers. I’m kind of sick of the strawberry flavor.
During a recent return to Smuggler’s Notch, Vermont, the fact that many of my personality traits are indeed genetic became even more clear. If you weren’t paying attention, Smuggler’s Notch is where the much lauded Cool Pack came from. Smuggler’s Notch is a truly wonderful place that has things for everyone and every age. For children, it has all sorts of activities. The trips to Smuggler’s Notch as a kid were some of the most memorable I’ve ever been on.
Unfortunately, many times things that held your interest as a kid no longer entertain you when you grow up. I personally can’t speak from experience, since I still love most of the activities, movies, food, etc. that I loved as a child. However, I assume that for a normal person, you grow out of most of your childhood things.
Luckily, Smuggler’s Notch has a lot of activities to hold the interests of adults. From mine and my family’s experience, these activities seem to mostly be walking around, swimming, overeating, and drinking alcohol. This trip, my mother wasn’t going to be able to come; she claimed she had “work responsibilities”. Although I assume she just felt that sending my dad across the country would be more than enough of a vacation for her.
I won’t get too much into the details of our week. It can be summed up pretty much in two ways, the first being the shopping trip. When we arrive in Vermont, we go to the supermarket to buy food for the week. This usually winds up in three carts full of food. Actually, that’s not even true. One of the carts is usually wine and beer. This trip was much more reasonable: only two and a half carts. Besides the fact that there were less people, this was mostly due to the fact that since this was the first year my dad flew in, he wouldn’t be able to take the leftovers home with him in the car. Every year, we buy WAY too much food. This isn’t too much of a problem, since we wind up just taking the 5-10 boxes of cereal and countless cans of food home. The real challenge is using up all the perishables. As a result, the last night before we leave winds up being this gloriously gluttonous challenge. Can we eat these containers of ice cream, boxes of ice pops, TV dinners, and the rest of the crap? One way to find out!
The other example of our high cuisine and mature taste buds would be our first trip to the Smuggler’s Notch market. Amy was making dinner this night, because we figure that not eating out every night somehow cancelled out the overabundance of food we took in when we went out. In order to not delve completely into the realm of dirt bags, we needed fabric sheets for the dryer. So, my dad, my brothers, and I went down to the market. And what we came back with was this:
We got the Bounce sheets, and my dad even picked up some cheap shampoo, so it was almost a legitimate shopping trip. However, the remainder of the trip consisted of buying:
Ritz crackers, chocolate covered cherries, grape soda, Bit O’ Honey, fruit Tootsie Rolls, and a box of donuts.
Keep in mind, this was AFTER we got a load of junk food from the supermarket.
The final items on this receipt caused a bit of controversy. My brother Eric and I got some watermelon Laffy Taffy, because they’re awesome. However, while eating them, they had no chocolate chip seeds! Is this a common occurrence? I’ve had one of these recently, and they had the seeds. Every candy site still lists them with the seeds, yet none of our three packs had them. The watermelon taffy is still good, but it’s just… not the same.
Now that I have painted a picture (I’d say if it was a literal painting, it would be watercolor) of our truly American pig out week in Vermont, it’s time to burn off those calories. And what better way to burn calories than by getting outside and having a Boy’s Play Day?
Despite the fact that the name of this bagged collection just sounds strange and/or creepy, it does get you pretty pumped up. When’s the last time you’ve had a good play day with the boys? I wait, it’s “Boy’s”, not “Boys'”, so it’s meant to be enjoyed by those who have no friends or don’t like going outside. I’ve had plenty of those play days.
The name gave me high hopes for the excitement within. Not to ruin the surprise, but this collection did not live up to the glorious promises of its title. The bag looked jam packed with fun. After all, it is “King Sized”. However, once the bag was opened and emptied, you realized that most of the space was taken up by this big purple thing.
The “Super Sonic Disk” promised a wild adventure filled with spinning plastic, lights, and sounds. It sort of delivered on two of the three. Basically, you grab the handles, and flip the disk around until the cords get wound up and tightened, then you pull away and the disk spins. That does happen, except in order to make the disk get any sort of legitimate spin, you have to flip the disk for like three minutes. This play day is exhausting!
The “sound” comes in the form of little slits cut into the plastic, so when the disk is spinning, it whistles. This high-tech feature has been seen before, like on those Nerf balls with the huge tail, that you could throw for like forty blocks, and it would whistle the whole time. I loved those footballs, since I couldn’t actually ever throw a real football more than ten feet. Which I guess is why I am here playing with the Boy’s Play Day collection.
As far as the lights go, I’m pretty sure they just made that up. There were no lights, and I saw nowhere that even had the potential to light up. I’m sure they figured that no one would ever call them out on their lie. Maybe if I complained, they’d send me a complimentary Girl’s Play Day.
Wow, I really can’t pull off saying the names of these collections without sounding creepy.
The next toy inside involves another sport I am terrible at: basketball. The first sport was football, in case you didn’t notice the connection. I like to try to keep sub-themes running within these articles. It’s that kind of writing quality that people who enjoy reading about bargain priced bags of children’s toys have come to expect here.
Compared to the Sonic Disk, the basketball hoop was a smashing success. You use it exactly how you would think you do: tap on the little green lever, and it shoots the ball a foot past the hoop. Then the second time you tap lighter and it sort of hits it on the backboard. I never managed to get it to go in the hoop and stay. Apparently I am as good at a plastic game of basketball as I am at real basketball. Which explains why most of my basketball games consisted of me pushing people while they were in the air going for a lay up. Which also explains why no one wants to play basketball with me.
Still, the basketball hoop was pretty awesome, and the backboard is bad ass. NBA backboards should have these pictures on their backboards.
Next we have the edible part of the Boy’s Play Day. (Ugh, stop using the name.) First, we have a repeat from the Cool Pack, which were basically Pixie Stix in a plastic tube. These were all solidified like the Stix from the Cool Pack, which leads me to believe these came from the same batch as when I bought the Cool Pack two years ago.
Not that I had much hope anyway, Pixie Stix suck. Everyone thinks they’re good, because they think it’s funny to essentially eat just sugar. And they’re right; it is funny, to be sure. However, the sheer laziness of the effort Pixie Stix make to taste good aggravates me. The exception to this rule are those Pixie Stix from the ice cream man, the ones that are like three feet long, and come in a tube that looks like a Wiffle Ball bat. Those get credit for just being ridiculous.
I was really happy for the second snack in the collection, which appeared to be a fancy Pop Ice. Even the wrapper gave great promise: colors EVERYWHERE, essentially dizzying you if you focused on it for too long. It had an anthropomorphized Pop Ice man playing the guitar. This Pop Ice man was naked, except for his belt and boots. Although in this case, does the pop wrapper count as clothes or skin?
The pop was called a Jelly Ice Bar, which did raise some concern. Did it taste like jelly? Were there going to be raspberry seeds in it like a good jam? I never understand when people get jam without the seed, they make the eating experience so much better.
After the pop was frozen, I cut it open and took a big bite. Man, I sure wish I at least took a smaller bite to test the waters. The creepy waters. The texture of the pop was so, so discomforting. It was slick, like it was coated in fat, and had the texture of a gummy worm fetus. You know that scene in X-Men when Senator Kelly is dying, and right before he turns into a puddle of water, he’s just that weird blob thing? I imagine that is the same texture as the Jelly Ice Bar.
I honestly don’t know how it tasted, because I was just in utter shock and fear from the texture. I did eat the bite, but never noticed a flavor. It might not even be flavored. I couldn’t go on. I dumped the rest of the bar in the sink. And when I went back to the kitchen two hours later, it hadn’t melted. It was still completely solid, but was now curled up. It was so disgusting. I hate the Jelly Ice Bar.
I couldn’t understand how this all went wrong. I checked out the ingredients list, and things began to make sense. Water… sugar… seaweed extract…. locust bean gum. Awful.
The last toy, which oddly enough was the same texture as the Jelly Ice Bar, was a rubber blue lizard. Honestly, there’s really not too much to do with this. I tested this out on my cat Figaro, and he was a big fan.
Cats will go after anything anyway, but the fact that this thing was rubber was a big plus. Since after it was moved, the legs would continue jiggling, it looked like a real lizard (well, to a cat… I knew it wasn’t real). So I give the lizard a high rating; it may not be that much fun for a person, but its cat entertainment value is high.
Unfortunately, the Boy’s Play Day was a big disappointment after the Cool Pack. Less stuff, more dumb stuff, and more Jelly Ice Bars. I didn’t even get a full day’s worth of enjoyment out of it. Luckily, I hope to have this disappointment erased with the other collection I got: the promisingly named Fun Pack. Is it better to be cool or fun? We’ll find out soon!
Diet Coke-Babies 