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.

Coke-Babies Classics : What Is and Isn’t Acceptable to Give to Trick or Treaters

Posted by robbposch on October 29, 2015
Posted in: Candy, Holidays. Tagged: , , , , . 1 Comment

With Halloween fast approaching, I thought it would be prudent to repost this helpful advice for any last minute shoppers stocking up on whatever they plan on giving out to Trick or Treaters.  Also, it works as an easy update.

In the grand coke-babies tradition of bringing you holiday articles when all the retail stores have their holiday merchandise 75% off, I am presenting a guide on what to give trick-or-treaters.  In all fairness, this time there is a very good reason for the belated topic of the coverage.  I will put Christmas, Halloween, Fourth of July (which I completely forgot to do this year), and other holiday articles up late for a variety of reasons (all of those reasons being laziness).  This time, however, is the result of my post-Halloween discussion with co-workers.

 

And by “discussion with co-workers”, I mean “sitting by myself overhearing two mothers discussing what their children got on Halloween, then giving my uninvited, mildly abrasive opinion, despite never having talked to them before”.

 

The main topic was the idea of giving out non-candy items.  These women were under the delusion that, at a certain point, kids don’t want any more candy.  Huh?  Now, I am trying to be rational about this concept, so I will merely say that any child that complains they are being given too much candy on Halloween needs to be thrown down a flight of stairs.

 

Kids should be out getting candy on Halloween from the minute they are let out of school until the minute it is technically November 1st.  That may sound late, but it is perfectly reasonable.  This time of year, people are still used to being up at midnight watching the 4th inning of a World Series game.  My dad used to have me out in other towns, maximizing my candy gathering potential.  I would have my pumpkin, he would be carrying the pillow case filled the rest of the candy I had gotten.  And when that pillow case was full, we left it in the car and got another one.  The other great part about trick or treating late is that by that time of night, people figure they’re not going to get anyone else at their house, so they would often times give me all the candy they had left.

 

So when a kid is saying they would prefer something besides candy on Halloween, I take personal offense.  The only excuse one can use for this line of thinking is if they are diabetic.  In that case, yeah Halloween probably isn’t as fun.  In which case, I would recommend trick or treating anyway, and when the person goes to give you candy, tell them that you are diabetic.  They will undoubtedly feel bad for your situation, and also slightly guilty for almost giving you candy, that they will look around for anything else they can possibly give you: dollar bills, entire boxes of Ritz crackers, cans of diet soda, whatever is around.  If you follow this routine, you will wind up with the most interesting Halloween haul ever.

 

Do not try this routine if you are not actually diabetic.  You will go to hell where you will spend the rest of eternity having your crotch stomped on by the Budweiser Clydesdale horses.  And yes, the Budweiser Clydesdales are going to hell.  For encouraging ponies to drink.

 

Since apparently there are all of these stupid children running around complaining about getting candy on Halloween, I have compiled a guide to what non-candy related Halloween items are and aren’t acceptable to give out.  I have mentioned a couple of these already in previous Halloween articles, but they are even more relevant to this topic.

 

 

(Also including all types of chips under the Potato umbrella: Doritos, Bugles, etc.) 

Acceptable?: Yes

 

Bags of chips do not approach full size candy bars when it comes to the “size matters” aspect of Halloween.  However, their puffed up bags as well as their uniqueness on Halloween bring bags of chips to a very high level of non-candy desirability.  And of course I am referring to the little bags of chips that normally go in lunch boxes.  If you are trying to cram a “Party Size” bag of Cool Ranch Doritos into someone’s pumpkin, then you have reached an almost unparalleled level of awesomeness. 

Estimated Success Rate: 93%

 

Acceptable?: No 

I personally have no problems with raisins.  I enjoy them, although I would never actively seek them out; also, they are always the weakest link in trail mix.  Actually that’s not true, dried pineapple is.  How they manage to turn something as amazing as pineapple chunks into weird little lumps of failure is almost a miracle in itself. 

 

There’s just something about those little boxes of raisins that brings about an aura of overwhelming depression.  I think what it boils down to is that greasy residue left on the inside of the box after you’re finished ruins any enjoyment you may have already gotten.  Also, the box can easily be opened and closed, so they definitely have a “probably poisoned” vibe. 

I’ve never seen them, but if Craisins come in little boxes, that is definitely acceptable.  Craisins are awesome.

Estimated success rate: 16% 

 

Acceptable?: Varies

 

After discussing raisins, we now come to the other stereotypical “bad” Halloween treat: pennies.  Many (old) people argue that pennies are good because they have value and if you have enough giving them out they will add up to  a significant amount.  This is true.  However, the amount of pennies you would need to collect in order to obtain any value of interest is far too great.  You will be weighing their little arms down, limiting their ability to carry heavy pumpkins long into the night.

On the other hand, any other coin is acceptable.  While a kid isn’t likely to be too enthralled with a nickel,  at least its value to weight ratio is much higher than a penny.  Silver coins will also add up much faster than pennies (shocking mathematics!), so while getting silver change isn’t as fun as candy, it can result in a dedicated trick-or-treater coming away with some decent money.  Which they will use to buy more candy. 

Worst of all are people who pass foreign coins off on innocent children.  If karma exists, people who do that deserve to wake up November 1st with a pumpkin through their car’s windshield.

 

Estimated success rate (Pennies): 6%

Estimated success rate (Silver Coins): 88%

 

 

Acceptable?: Varies, usually no

 

I’m not even going to touch the subject of religion here, except in the capacity of how it can hinder people’s ability to give out good candy.  I have absolutely nothing against the principle of giving out something like this.  This is a passive way of preaching and sharing religious beliefs, which is a lot better than people going door to door, or coming up to you at other places and making you uncomfortable.  And yes, parents might not want their children reading this for whatever reason.  If you don’t like your kid getting something like this then just throw it out, no harm no foul.

 

I am assuming the amount of people who have converted to a religion based on a pamphlet in their pumpkin is in the zero range.  Even still, lots of people still give out religious materials every year, and that’s cool.  If I am trick-or-treating and you give me a Butterfinger and a “Don’t get Trickedby Satan, the Real Treat is Jesus” booklet, no matter what happens with the booklet I still got a Butterfinger out of the deal, so I’m happy.  The problem is the people who give out onlythe reading material.  That is definitely the wrong way to make your religion look appealing.  You are going to make that kid go home and sit in a pentagram made of candles while wearing a goat skull just to spite your candy stinginess.

 Worse yet are the houses that post signs reading “NO CANDY HERE – We do not celebrate Satan’s holiday”, or something to that effect.  When I was in grammar school, my family was very religious, in the weird way.  Even still, we trick-or-treated and gave out candy.  People who put up signs like that are the type of people who won’t let their kids have Easter baskets because the Easter Bunny displays no signs of stigmata. 

Estimated success rate (Religious materials with no candy): 0%

Estimated success rate (Religious materials with no candy, but the religious materials are those little black and white Jack Chick tracts that are actually pretty cool because they are really scary for a kid to read since they’re all about people left on Earth after the rapture, and all they do is cry and murder each other): 30%

Estimated success rate (Religious material plus candy): 40% (can be more successful based on type of candy)

Estimated success rate (Scary religious comics plus candy): 80%

 

 

 Acceptable?: No

 

Getting the little coupons for a free small fries or free cone does have an aura of coolness about it.  However, the amount of effort plus the likelihood of losing it far outweighs the small benefit of a miracle occurring and it actually gets redeemed.  I would get about two or three of these every Halloween, and saying that I redeemed them once would a high estimation.  That doesn’t say a lot about my follow up, admittedly, but almost everyone else is in the same boat as this. 

 

Who even wants an ice cream cone from McDonald’s?  They’re terrible.  And while the fries may be enjoyable, the small size comes in those gross wax paper bags soaked in grease and sadness.  You need at least a medium to promote yourself to the sturdier, more triumphant cardboard fry container.  I don’t know what else was offered on their gift certificates, possibly those stupid cookies.  There isn’t anything inherently wrong with the cookies themselves, I guess; they just have no purpose.  If you’re going to eat unhealthy foods at McDonald’s, why bother with hard, bland cookies?  Bump up those fat and salt quantities, upgrade your order to become a true detriment to your health. 

Plus, the cookie bags are covered with McDonaldland characters, and that is a real hit or miss situation.  While McDonald’s does have many enjoyable mascots (Grimace, Hamburglar, and Mayor McCheese), their horrifying cohorts ruin any enjoyment you could hope to obtain from them.  There is the truly frightening Ronald, the creepy Fry Guys, and Birdy, who is just a terrible, terrible character.

 In defense of Halloween-time McDonald’s, they have done a lot of great things during the holiday.  They had their usually cool Happy Meal toys; and while these tended to be a character in a costume, it was worth it for the possibility of getting Grimace.  Sometimes there would be McNuggets in costumes, which led to a pretty gross McDonald’s commercial where Ronald was hanging out with the McNuggets, and then dipped them in sauce and ate them. 

 

Best of all was when the Happy Meals came in pumpkins.  They started out with a plain pumpkin design, although they came in a variety of emotions, including happy, scared, and villainous.  Later on, they introduced two new designs along with the pumpkin, a ghost and a witch.  Even later on, they made the ghost glow in the dark.  These pumpkins were very small, so their usefulness definitely came into question, but they were cool enough to get away with being essentially useless for transporting candy. 

 

While I always went with the standard non-McDonald’s round orange pumpkin, I always appreciated other people’s use of the variations.  My old neighbors had a truly awesome green pumpkin shaped like Frankenstein’s head.  And when you saw people walking around with the McDonald’s pumpkin, you knew it.  And you knew it was awesome.

 

Unfortunately, the greatness of McDonald’s Halloween past does not excuse the lameness of giving away gift certificates.

 

Estimated success rate: 15%

 

 

Acceptable?: Varies

 

 

While I am not a fan of giving away trinkets on Halloween, there are exceptions.  Spider rings and vampire teeth get a pass, because they are awesome and are Halloween classics. 

This year, I saw bags of little plastic Darth Vader helmets filled with candy at Target.  This is truly great because it is a good toy, it has candy, and most importantly, it’s Darth Vader’s helmet.  The kid wins either way, because even if they don’t want any candy, they still get the amazing helmet.  Giving these out will elevate you to one of the best houses on a child’s route.  You will be elevated to the echelon of houses that give away amazing things.  You will be brushing shoulders with the legendary houses who give away full size candy bars, or those who decorate their yards to a borderline psychotic level.  You will join the Halloween elite.

 

 

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who give a way a lot of bad things.  Do not be one of those people who distributes Halloween stickers, a bookmark that says “Happy Halloween!”, anything involving Halloween safety, or, God forbid, one of those little plastic pinball games where you pull the lever back and it falls off because it is a piece of crap and is terrible.  What am I going to do with these Halloween toys?  It’s Halloween tonight, the shelf life is done, over.  I can’t use these things tomorrow because it is no longer Halloween.  Spider rings and vampire teeth can still be used because they are good year round.  Darth Vader helmets?  Always useful.  When I’m reading a book in November, I don’t want it to say “Happy Halloween!”, because all it will do is depress me when it reminds me of all the stupid people who gave me junk like this.

 

Estimated success rate (spider rings or vampire teeth): 75%

Estimated success rate (other Halloween trinkets): 20%

Estimated success rate (Darth Vader helmets): 98%

 

 

 Acceptable?: No

 

My brother Eric got this in his pumpkin a few years back.  As shockingly terrible as this is, making matters worse is that it was accompanied by nothing else.  All he was giving out to children were advertisements for the business he ran out of his house.  I mean, it was a legitimate practice, not some basement torture chamber.  Putting a folded up piece of paper and nothing else in kids’ pumpkins probably raised some suspicions amongst them.  They most likely assumed it was some strange gift certificate to a local business, since it was far too large to be a McDonald’s one. 

 

Not only is this cruel taunting on innocent children bad enough, another one of its flagrant offenses is making a bad pun, then immediately explaining it.  I’m also not a fan of the passive-aggressive threats that the children must get their spines checked.  Granted, the guy is a chiropractor, and saying “their back” doesn’t sound too clinical.  However, for some reason something just sounds frightening about saying “their spines”.  It makes the guy sound like Sub Zero. 

For all I know, a scoliosis screening could cost $500, and he is offering to do it for free, which is a tremendous gift.  I don’t care.  It’s Halloween, if you can’t make with the candy, you better offer something better than that.

 

Estimated success rate: 0%

Estimated success rate of this inspiring kids to egg your house and/or prank phone call you during business hours: 70%

 

Hopefully, this handy guide will help you make wiser decisions if you decide to go down the (wrong) path of giving away alternatives to candy.  As a final word of advice: every kid always winds up with five thousand Snickers bars every year.  Stop giving them away.

Cereal Review : Pumpkin Spice Frosted Mini-Wheats

Posted by robbposch on September 23, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

In their attempts to rival Special K when it comes to random flavor assortments, Kellogg’s presumably thought, “Wait, we don’t have a seasonal pumpkin spice flavor of Frosted Mini-Wheats?  Fire someone!”

Then, they hired someone new and released a seasonal pumpkin spice flavor.

Pumpkin Spice seems like a pretty natural fit for Mini-Wheats.  While it seems like you can fast track your corporate cereal rise by suggesting “Why not make a pumpkin flavor?”, it won’t work for everything.  Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Pumpkins, Pumpkin Spice Trix, Pumpkin Loops?  Not so much.

01

But Pumpkin Spice makes sense for Mini-Wheats, even aesthetically – the box is very nice.

My one complaint about the box is I hate that “Xg of Protein” thing they’re sticking on the boxes lately.  Four grams of protein indicates they expect you to use half a cup of milk.  This means one of two things : you are eating a “serving size” of the cereal, or you are judicious with your milk usage.  Both of these options indicate cereal failure.

I’m not saying you have to drown your cereal – you might be taking a Life cereal approach, where you cut back slightly to avoid the two-minutes-in-mush conundrum.  But Mini-Wheats require the right amount of milk.  Too much milk, and you’ve got bloated, mushy bales of wheat.  Too little, and the Mini-Wheat sponges soak up all the milk, leaving you with this awkward, half-moistened cereal.

At that point, you may as well go dry.  Dry for cereal is acceptable for handheld cereal eating, though it is certainly not the ideal method.  But dry works very well with Mini-Wheats, so long as you’re okay with a scuffed-up mouth by the end.

Anyway… it’s a good, fall-themed box.

02

What was somewhat surprising was the shade of orange they went with for the frosting.  I was expecting more of a tan frosting, but they went almost straight up Halloween Oreo orange colored.  The pictures, like all the pictures I use, are terrible and don’t do the orange hue justice.  This is legit artificial dye territory.  I’m kind of impressed.

The garish orange coloring gave be a bit of a scare when it came to eating the cereal.  If they went that route with the colors, I didn’t expect much subtlety in the taste category.

To my surprise, the Pumpkin Spice levels are… perfect, actually.  This is honestly one of the most well-balanced pumpkin spice-flavored foods I’ve had in a long time.  It’s no more sweet than the usual Frosted Mini-Wheats, and the pumpkin spice flavors are more there to sing harmonies, not lead.

I’m sort of sorry about that metaphor, as it’s a bit pretentious when talking about cereal, but it is accurate.

This is one of the rare seasonal pumpkin spice foods I will be re-buying.

[insert seal of approval here]

Food Review : Hostess Candy Corn & Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Posted by robbposch on September 3, 2015
Posted in: Food, Food Review, Holidays. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Since the whole “Goodbye forever buy all our stuff on eBay just kidding we’re back now you can go back to not really buying any of our stuff” Hostess incident of a few years back, Hostess has been relatively quiet.  I think.  I haven’t really paid attention.  I’ve always been more of a Drake’s man, myself.

Anyway, Hostess is getting in on the “Should we make a pumpkin variation?  Obviously!  $$$$!!!” train.  What’s surprising is that it’s taken them so long.  It’s odd they’ve never made a Pumpkin Twinkie.

Not content to just bring out one fall flavor, Hostess has two variations – Candy Corn Cupcakes and Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

01

I tried the Candy Corn Cupcakes first, because they seemed like a far more terrifying concept.  Candy corn is okay.  I’m not against it, but it’s just sort of there.  As I’m sure you recall, I have already discussed this.  But in case you somehow forgot that landmark ranking, there you go.

The packaging could probably be better, as upon first glance it doesn’t really look like a special release.  It’s got “Limited Edition” on there, and a few pieces of candy corn – and, you know, it does say Candy Corn at the top – but still… Eh, whatever.  It’s good enough, I guess.  Ignore my previous criticisms.

Also to ignore is my assumption that Hostess doesn’t do many variations of their products.  A quick Google Image search proved me very wrong.  I still don’t think there’s been a pumpkin Twinkie, though.

The biggest downside, besides the potential scary candy corn taste, is that the Candy Corn Cupcakes don’t have that cool frosting circular swirly thing on top.  That swirl is awesome.  Maybe for fall they’re temporarily distancing themselves from their sort of racist looking cupcake man.

01a

The cupcake looks okay, nothing exciting.  It looks slightly burned, which is odd.  But it’s got fall-colored sprinkles and some brown specks in the frosting to indicate spices, so it covers most of the necessary bases.

02

What was most surprising is that the cupcake is actually really good.  This is largely due to the fact that it doesn’t seem to taste like candy corn at all.

03

It just tastes like a Drake’s Sunny Doodle with frosting on top – which is a good thing.  So as a candy corn cupcake, it’s kind of a swing and a miss.  But as a good, normal cupcake – sure.

04

The Pumpkin Spice Cupcake was the more obvious of the two when it came to a potential favorite.  Will it prove to be superior?  Well keep reading and stop interrupting me with questions, and you will find out.

Despite a pretty similar layout, the Pumpkin Spice packaging definitely reads more “limited fall edition” right off the bat.

05

The first thing I noticed was that apparently Hostess doesn’t think the Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes deserve to have a little piece of cardboard to sit on in the wrapper.  The Candy Corn Cupcakes had them, but the Pumpkin Spice get shafted.  They just have to live in their cellophane and deal with it.

The other thing I noticed was that the cupcakes didn’t quite live up to their brethren on the packaging.  Where the packaging cupcakes are fluffy, tall, and doused with sprinkles, the actual cupcake was short with a bad limp, and was suffering from cupcake pattern baldness when it came to sprinkles.

But no one is expecting the actual product to live up to the unrealistic Hollywood standards of the packaging, so we will move on.

06

Taste-wise, it’s what you’d expect.  A middle of the road pumpkin cupcake.  Nothing exciting, nothing weak – it’s just there, and it’s pumpkin flavored.  That will probably be enough to please most people, desperate for their next hit of pumpkin.

Food Review : Carnival Fruit Roll-Ups

Posted by robbposch on July 31, 2015
Posted in: Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

My local Fruit Roll-Up selections have become rather unimpressive, thanks to Blastin’ Berry Hot Colors seemingly being sold only at warehouse stores.  Also, Cherry Orange Wildfire needs to be sold in its own standalone box.  Buying a ten pack variety assortment, and only getting three of them is a shame.

Most new flavors of Fruit Roll-Ups tend to be, “it’s berry, I guess – but in different colors.”  You’ll have the occasional outlier, but “new” flavors don’t tend to be too exciting.

To combat this, Ms. Crocker has whipped up a new assortment based on common (?) carnival foods.

01

Some of the flavors make sense – Cotton Candy and Caramel Apple – but the inclusion of Berry Lemonade and Cherry Slushie seems more like, “We don’t know how to make Funnel Cake Roll-Ups.  Use another food.”  Although I’m thankful for the latter two flavors, as they seem far less terrifying a prospect compared to the first two.

Apparently, I had failed to notice the “and” between the two sets of flavors, indicating they would be sharing the same Roll-Up.  Upon realizing this, Cotton Candy and Caramel Apple seemed even more threatening.

02

Given how much could have gone wrong, Caramel Apple is surprisingly not awful.  It’s definitely not good, it’s just not awful.  As a flavor, Caramel Apple is usually slightly better than Green Apple, Sour Apple, etc.  The caramel smothers the apple enough where the apple flavor’s terribleness still manages to leak through, but just enough to make you say, “It smells awful in here, is the gas on?”  Not enough to actually kill you.

Cotton Candy didn’t scare me as much, but I wasn’t looking forward to it.  Aside from Cotton Candy Bubble Yum when I was in junior high, I don’t recall ever really liking a cotton candy-flavored food.  Except cotton candy, I guess.

The cotton candy flavor tasted sort of like actual cotton candy, but it was more of an unholy matrimony of Strawberry flavor and… uh, Sugar flavor.

03

While the first pairing of flavors failed to impress, I had higher hopes for the second pair.

Cherry is a hit or miss flavor for me – I often get too much of the “cough syrup” aspects of the flavor.  And not even in a good way.  I mean, cherry Luden’s are literally cough medicine, and they still taste way better than most cherry-flavored candy.  Granted, Luden’s cough drops essentially are candy – not using “The candy you can eat in class!” in an advertising campaign always seemed like a missed opportunity.  But still – actual cherry candy needs to step up its game if it’s getting outclassed by medicine.

Cherry fruit snacks are a significant exception to the ‘eh’ cherry feelings.  Most cherry fruit snacks are awesome, because they remind me of Fruit Corners’ Fruit Bars.  If you are forgetting them, they are a fruit snack from the 80’s, whose marketing campaign essentially consisted of people screaming when they saw them.

It also probably doesn’t help your campaign when you have the creepy kid from Children of the Corn passing out your product.

The Cherry Slushie flavor is basically every cherry fruit snack you’ve had, but with the cherry-ness tuned down a bit.  It does read a bit more “sugary cherry snack” than usual.  Though I don’t find this to be an improvement on the flavor at all.

Berry Lemonade is pretty self explanatory.  It tastes like lemonade with a mysterious “berry” flavor in it.  Probably blue raspberry, though I could just be assuming that because of the picture on the box.

Overall, it’s an okay collection of flavors.  I’d buy a box of just cherry and lemonade, but since that’s not likely to happen, this will be a one and done purchase.

Cereal Review : Dreamworks Cereals

Posted by robbposch on July 20, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

In a nice change of shelf-aesthetics pace, Walmart and Malt-O-Meal have teamed up to create a line of cereals based on Dreamworks’ movies.

It’s a good news bad news situation.  The bad news – all the ingredients (I think – more on that later) are just sourced from other existing cereals.  The good news – cheap licensed cereals.  Also, for fans of Malt-O-Meal, you finally get to enjoy purchasing cereal in a box.

There’s four cereals in the line – I’ll go in order of least to most interesting.

01

Dragons – “Dragon Adventure Crunch”

I never saw How To Train Your Dragon.  I heard it was actually pretty good.  I’ve also heard a lot of other movies are pretty good, and I haven’t seen them.  Instead, I just watch Hackers and Demolition Man for the thousandth time.

Also, at some point I guess the movies changed the name to just “Dragons”?  I don’t know.  Sorry for the lack of research – it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I don’t care.

Box-wise, it’s nice enough.  It has a dragon on it, so you can’t claim they’re ripping you off.  It’s also got some Jim Halpert-looking guy in armor.

02

Cereal-wise – it’s Crunch Berries.  I never loved Oops All Berries, because I found that flavor annoying after a while.  It’s a sad state of affairs when you need the already sweet Cap’n Crunch pieces to temper the berries’ sweetness in Crunch Berries, but at least that finds a good, albeit very sweet, balance.

By itself, the flavor reminds me of if you let Hi-C simmer and reduce, then drank that.  If you want fruity orbs, Froot Loops Bloopers are my go-to.

03

Shrek – “Ogre O’s”

This is arguably less interesting than the Dragons cereal, but at least I’ve seen Shrek, so that got it undeserved interesting points.

Box-wise, ugh.  Look at Donkey’s face.  Ugh.

04

Cereal-wise, it’s Froot Loops.  But with more green pieces.  Because Shrek.

05

Penguins – “Operation Chocolate Mix”

I’ve never seen Penguins, but based on their faces, I don’t think I want to.  Except the one on the left – he seems cool.  He looks like Howard the Duck.

06

Cereal-wise, it’s Cocoa Pebbles with little marshmallows.  I don’t know what Malt-O-Meal cereal these marshmallows might have been stolen from, but they’re awesome.  I am not a big fan of real marshmallows, with their creepy softness.  But dry cereal marshmallows, or those little dry marshmallows you get in a packet of hot chocolate?  Those I’m down with.

The marshmallows here are like hot chocolate marshmallows, just slightly larger and less dry.  In the grand scheme of cereal things, they’re not necessary here, but they don’t hurt the cereal at all.

Cocoa Pebbles are awesome, and the marshmallow addition is either easily ignored or kind of good, depending on how you look at it.

And Cocoa Pebbles – sorry, Operation Chocolate Mix – makes probably the best chocolate cereal milk in the business, so it’s good from beginning to end.

07

Madagascar – “S’mores Jungle Party”

As per usual with most of these, I haven’t seen Madagascar.  I hate all these characters’ faces, though.

08

I’d give this cereal way more credit if it didn’t already exist as Malt-O-Meal’s S’mores cereal.  Also, apparently Malt-O-Meal is called MOM Brands now.  I probably should have mentioned that earlier.

There have been plenty of S’mores cereals in the past, to varying levels of success.  Currently, you can find S’mores Krave, and less recently you could get a S’mores Pebbles, Smorz (awful name), and way back when – S’mores Grahams / S’mores Crunch.

Despite just being a rebrand of an existing cereal, S’mores Jungle Party is a solid cereal.  It’s got fake Golden Grahams – which are always great, fake Cocoa Puffs – which are always underwhelming, and marshmallows – which are creepy here.

The marshmallows used are oddly soft for a cereal marshmallow.  For this cereal, I’d have loved the hot chocolate marshmallows from the Penguins cereal.

But overall, this is at least a more interesting cereal than some of the lazier ones we’ve seen.

It’s nice to see some new cereals on the shelf, but I’d say the Dreamworks cereal line doesn’t really need to exist.  It’s got some colorful repackaging, and I guess that’s cool if you like the movies, but cereal-wise it’s nothing new.

I’d say that’s literal and not metaphorical, but I haven’t seen a MOM Brands cereal that is identical to the Penguins cereal.  They make a Cocoa Pebbles with marshmallows, but the marshmallows are larger and shaped, so that’s not exactly the same.  So I’ll say it’s literally the same, but with an asterisk.

Seal of Approval-wise, eh.  They’re a good price ($2.50), and you get a solid cereal with licensed characters.  So don’t go out of your way for these, but the most I can knock these cereals for is being occasionally dull and just repackaged.  Taste-wise, nothing wrong here.

Cereal Review : Ice Cream Pebbles & Caramel Popcorn Crunch

Posted by robbposch on June 30, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

After a few months of silence, two cereal lines that are some of the most reliable when it comes to new varieties have brought out their latest offerings.

01

Ice Cream Pebbles seems like it should be pretty self-explanatory.  But instead of an actual ice cream-flavored cereal, it’s Rainbow Sherbet flavored.  Which, you know, isn’t ice cream.  Oh well, I’m not too bothered by that.  At least they didn’t just repackage Cocoa Pebbles and call it Chocolate Ice Cream Pebbles.

02

The cereal itself is very bright – half neon, half pastel.  The colors are the same as rainbow sherbet, and the color hues and brightness match pretty well.  I don’t know if each color is supposed to taste differently – probably not – but I mostly just got “sugar”.

Overall, the flavor matches sherbet pretty well, but it mainly just seemed to taste like Fruity Pebbles but with something slightly wrong.  It’s like the dialed back on the artificial fruit flavors, and ramped up the sweetness a little bit.  Or it just tastes more sweet because you don’t get as much fruit flavor?  I don’t know.

It’s okay.  I’ll finish the box, and it’s a decent enough one-off novelty, but that’s about it.

[insert shrugging seal of approval here]

Like Pebbles, the good Cap’n is fond of a steady output of new products.  Many come and go, but the variety is always nice to see on the shelf.

03

I wasn’t too excited for Caramel Popcorn Crunch, since I was expecting just an onslaught of caramel flavoring, and nothing else.

04

Surprisingly, the cereal isn’t as completely one note as you might expect.  To be sure, it is one note, just… less than expected.  I don’t get much popcorn flavor, though I think I can get enough placebo effect popcorn-essence if I really try.  There’s absolutely no hint of salt, but that was pretty much a guarantee.

What makes the cereal pretty decent is that, surprisingly, it’s not grotesquely sweet.  But by the end of the bowl, I was thinking, “I kind of wish I didn’t have a gigantic box of this to get through.”

Not in one sitting, obviously – that would be ridiculous.  I only do that with the really good cereals.

[no seal of approval]

Cereal Review : Star Wars Cereal

Posted by robbposch on June 9, 2015
Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

With all the excitement and hype for Episode VII, it’s not surprising that there is a new Star Wars cereal out.

01

What is surprising, however, is that this cereal has absolutely nothing to do with Episode VII, and is just an arbitrary Star Wars cereal.  That’s still cool, though.  It’s Star Wars, after all.

After the surprising twist on Cinnamon Toast Crunch of Minions cereal, here we are with another cereal piece and marshmallow effort.  Thankfully, I assumed no matter how good or bad this might turn out to be, it would have to be better than my previous Star Wars cereal experience.

There are two box designs – a Vader and a Yoda.  I went with Vader because, well, it’s Darth Vader.  That’s all the explanation necessary.  As supplementary reasoning, the Yoda was the CG Yoda, and no thanks to that.  Puppet Yoda is my Yoda.

The box design is very nice, blacks and reds for Vader, and a shot of the cereal and marshmallows at the bottom.  The only real downside is that it’s the Revenge of the Sith Vader suit and helmet, but as a cereal box mascot he still looks as imposing as ever.

Weighing in at a paltry 10.5 oz, we’re back in prime licensed cereal territory.  It’s a small, light box – but at least it has the decency to have an eye-catching design.  I didn’t take a picture of the back of the box because all it is is a game of Star Wars checkers.  Come on.

02

Since most of the time licensed marshmallows tend to look nothing like their “inspiration”, the side of the box provides a handy guide.  Yoda and Stormtrooper look good, but the others are just lazy.  The lightsaber is a decent attempt, but the stumpy shape makes it look more like a tube of lipstick or an ice pop.

I will move on from the marshmallow discussion, because I’m feeling very self conscious about sounding like an Onion editorial.

03

The cereal itself isn’t particularly attractive – the cereal pieces are a sickly shade of yellowish-tan, and feel very light for their size.  The marshmallows look pretty good, most of their advertised shapes held up, and the colors are relatively bright.

Flavor-wise, it’s quite good.  The cereal pieces are very lightly fruit flavored – or, more accurately, “froot” flavored.  The flavor reminds me a lot of Prince of Thieves cereal, or what I remember that cereal tasting like, anyway.  The Star Wars cereal pieces are a lot less phallic than the Prince of Thieves’ pieces, though.

It’s sweet enough, but definitely not overwhelmingly so – almost restrained, given that this is a sweetened Star Wars cereal.

Since this is a temporary licensed cereal, I won’t be too heartbroken when this cereal goes away – especially since a nearly identical cereal probably isn’t too far off.  But this was much better than it needed to be, given its “license to print money” Star Wars lineage.

[insert seal of approval here]