I don’t review gum on here for one main reason – there’s not that much to be said about gum. In fact, after some exhausting research (hit ctrl+f on home page, search for “gum”), there has never been a gum review on here.
Because really, unless it’s some novelty gum introduction, like if this site had been around when Big League Chew or Bubble Tape came out, gum reviews seem like a two paragraph review and that’s it. I don’t have the gum-writing experience to make an interesting review out of gum on a regular basis. I leave that to the experts over at “Chewing” and “Gum Action”. Although as I get older, I begin to appreciate the vintage aspects of “Chewers Illustrated” more and more.
Extra’s Pumpkin Spice became the first gum review ever for a couple reasons. First, it’s pumpkin flavored and it’s October. So I think I’d be breaking some sort of unwritten agreement with society if it was ignored. Second, I felt like personally giving it a shot. I was interested to see if they could pull it off, or if it would be a terrifying cacophony of spices – which is what I was assuming would happen.
I never really bother with the more complicated flavors, like the ones designed to taste like completed dishes. No Key Lime Pie, no Strawberry Cheesecake, and no Hungry Man Fried Chicken with Mashed Potatoes, Corn, and Brownie Dessert.
So I wasn’t really looking forward to Pumpkin Spice-flavored gum.
As part of their “Seasonal Edition” collection, Extra also had an Apple Pie flavor, but I didn’t want to attempt that. I will follow along with the rules that we all have to talk about pumpkin, but no one ever said apple was required.
I was a little disappointed in the color of the gum itself. I was hoping for more of a novelty color with all sorts of orange and tan artificial coloring – a shade more similar to the color on the packaging.
The scent of the gum was troubling. It didn’t smell like pumpkin pie or other pumpkin spice-flavored foods. It smelled like pumpkin Febreze or a pumpkin-scented candle. And not even like, a Yankee Candle – more like the Yankee Candle ripoffs from that big candle shelf in Walmart.
Thankfully, the taste is a bit more normal. It’s worrisome at first – the onslaught of spices hits you immediately. After about thirty seconds, the spice levels drop to normal levels, and actually offer a good flavor. The flavor lasts a really long time, or maybe it just seemed really long because I don’t know how long I actually want to chew pumpkin gum for.
(I’ll restrain myself and not put a picture of the chewed gum here.)
Overall, Extra’s Pumpkin Spice gum was much better than expected. But at the same time, it’s still pumpkin gum and, well, I don’t really want or need that. So if you’re perversely into pumpkin spice as a flavor, then go for it.
Somehow, Pumpkin Spice Oreos weren’t a thing until now. Despite the fact that anything that can be pumpkin-flavored will be pumpkin-flavored, Oreos has been slow to catch up.
This is especially odd, considering how Oreos practically make up an entire cookie aisle by themselves now. We as a society didn’t keep an eye on Oreos, and without any security measures in place, all sorts of ridiculous and awful flavors have sprung up. We don’t need Berry Oreos, Caramel Apple Oreos, or any of the dozens of flavors loitering on cookie shelves.
Oreos: you are awesome, but you are testing my good will. You are allowed four options: Regular, Double Stuf, Golden, and some rotating seasonal flavor. I’m being generous by allowing Golden to remain, since Vienna Fingers stomp all over Golden Oreos.
Pumpkin Spice Oreos get a pass, because like I said, everyone apparently gets a pumpkin option. It’s the free space in food bingo.
Somewhat surprisingly, the packaging goes for a yellow theme. Sure, leaves turn yellow, and the cookies involved are the Golden cookie variety, but it’s still odd. The yellow reads more summertime. Fall-themed food packaging seems to fall into two category options: “spooky” – black, purple, and green, or “autumn-y” – orange, red, yellow and tans. But yellow needs to be part of a team to play in the fall season.
With their power having grown insurmountable, thanks to their seemingly hundreds of varieties on store shelves, Oreos has bucked the trend and just said, “Nope – yellow! It’s an ironic reminder of all the sunshine you won’t be seeing once we fall back!”
If I thought the color palette of the packaging was a bold move by Nabisco, I found out they played by even less rules inside the package.
One was missing!
Actually, the first thing I noticed was how sloppy the insides look. This seems to be due to a softer filling than normal Oreos. Some of it was stuck to the top of the packaging, and some of it was smeared over the Oreos inside the packaging.
After the shock of what looked like a frosting murder scene, then my eyes fixed on the empty slot. Again – one was missing!
Oreos have just reached such a level of “We can do whatever we want and you’ll just have to deal” that they don’t even feel the need to fill up their entire package with cookies.
Looking back at that picture of the cookies, and the soft, sloppy filling, it made me realize that I kind of want to fill the two cookies with sweet potato pie filling. That seems like it could be amazing – can someone do that and send me a few? Thanks.
Once the sting of Nabisco’s betrayal subsided, I investigated further. For a brand new package of Pumpkin Spice Oreos, the smell wasn’t as horrifyingly sweet and artificial as you might expect. I mean, the smell was horrifyingly sweet and artificial – just not as much as you might expect. Small favors.
Tasting the cookies themselves, I went with the “whole then segregated” method. The first cookie was eaten as a sandwich, to get the balance of subtle flavors and perfect levels of sweetness that all blend together to form the exact eating experience Oreo intended. I’m just kidding. I ate one that way because they’re a sandwich cookie and that’s how they come.
The second cookie went – cookie piece, frosting, cookie piece – the proper way to eat an Oreo. This also let me see something I was curious about – if the cookie pieces were flavored as well, or if they were just Golden cookies. The answer to that is – I think they’re spice flavored. It’s hard to tell what is flavor from the creme, and what’s flavor from the cookie. And unlike normal Oreos, these cookies didn’t break from the middle very cleanly – it was tough to not wind up with some creme on the cookie.
They seemed to have a spice flavor, even without the frosting’s influence. But I can’t be sure. Also, I am aware that I’m seemingly swapping “frosting” and “creme” with no rhyme or reason, but there is actually a very good reason – I keep forgetting which term I’m going with. Normally I wouldn’t ever call the inside of an Oreo “frosting”, but the texture and taste of Pumpkin Spice’s insides is exactly the same.
As for the inside – I just mentioned it, but in case you forgot – it’s different than regular Oreo creme. Whereas normal Oreo creme is a dense, fit-for-space-travel consistency, Pumpkin Spice Oreo creme is the consistency of cake frosting. It tastes fine when you eat the cookie like a sandwich, but when going with the cookie-creme-cookie method, it’s not particularly enjoyable. Double Stuf Pumpkin Spice Oreos would be absolutely revolting.
Overall, Pumpkin Spice Oreos are good. The math of adding pumpkin flavor to Oreos didn’t result in what you might expect. The end result is a decent taste, but a much less enjoyable consistency than a normal Oreo. Also, I had two and don’t want any more right now, which never happens with Oreos.
As for you, Nabisco – that’s enough. You can put your new flavor queue to rest for a while, the market is more than saturated. I’m especially concerned given the upcoming Christmas season. Because if I see Egg Nog Oreos on store shelves, I’m going to lose it on you – badly.
One aspect of childhood that will fall by the wayside in this “everything on the internet” time is the concept of only having vague memories of some form of media from when you were younger.
There won’t be any more “there was this movie, and there was this guy in it and I think he had an eye patch or a hat or something. Anyway, it was weird.” Because now you can Google “movie weird eye patch” and bam, there it is.
Which isn’t to say this is a foolproof plan. I’ve long been trying to find the name of this series of books I had as a kid. The main character was a lion (or some other big cat) with a Cap’n Crunch-esque sailor hat, and he had a rodent friend who put ketchup on his ice cream. And yet, searching “children’s book lion sailor ketchup” has not helped me one bit. No Google, for the thousandth time I am not looking for “Ketchup On Your Cornflakes” – stop showing me this result!
So if you know what those books are, let me know.
Searching for stuff from your childhood can be a rewarding task, though normally it just sends you into some weird, vertigo-inducing spiral of deja vu which ultimately just ends up with an indiscernible feeling of sadness.
But pre-internet, talking about stuff from your childhood that no one else remembered just turned into some stoner-esque conversation, where the two sides of the conversation are talking to each other, but neither side knows what the other is talking about.
I had this phenomenon for two main movies from my childhood. One was less vague, because I knew the title – “The Peanut Butter Solution”. But I’d only seen it once or twice, so my pieced-together memories didn’t help explain the movie, and instead made it sound like a truly horrific thing to watch. Now, in the internet age, I can watch a VHS-rip of it, to realize that the movie actually kind of sucked. Oh well.
The second movie achieved a far more legendary status in my childhood. All I remembered about it was some teacher and her class getting kidnapped by some guys wearing creepy children’s masks. Then, at some point about ten years ago, I looked up “movie creepy masks teacher” and there it was – “Fortress”.
Fortress used to air on HBO a lot in the mid-80’s. And I’d watch it all the time. In retrospect, this was a really weird movie for a child to watch, which you’ll understand more when you see how the plot unfolds.
The creepy masks really were the movie’s selling point. They had a variety of movie posters, I guess for different video, TV, and movie theater releases. This is why I had to specify “1985 / 1986” as the release year(s) – 1985 was the TV movie release, 1986 was its theatrical release. But they knew what the public wanted on this box:
What’s odd is that my situation was not unique – every time I’ve mentioned this movie online, I get the same response from numerous people. “I used to watch this as a kid, and I can’t believe my parents let me.” This isn’t to say this is some depraved horror movie, or something truly terrifying – it’s just a weird movie for kids to watch, and a weird movie for so many kids to have watched.
And while it didn’t entirely hold up to this mythical movie my memories had turned it into (that was a lot of “m” sounds), it does hold up as a “Well, that certainly was… something” type of movie.
The movie starts off employing the concept of “scary music makes things scary”, as we pan across a farm while creepy music plays. This is, presumably, to lure you in, because the next five minutes or so just involve a rural Australian family eating breakfast. The school teacher also lives with them, for some reason.
We find out that the reason she lives with them might be because she isn’t getting paid much, because she is a terrible role model. She is walking two of her students to school, walking on train tracks, which are clearly in use. She finally steps off the tracks as the train passes her, literally less than two seconds behind her.
The movie keeps playing creepy music, as a hint to not turn the movie off, despite the fact that all we’re watching is Australian school children, of a variety of ages, playing in a school yard.
I’m not sure how the school actually works, since they are multiplying fractions, despite the fact that half the class appears to be made up of five year old children.
Fortress decides that ten minutes of watching rural children discussing killing foxes and classroom antics is enough, and gets things going with a cut to…
BAM! Creepy duck mask guy!
I’m sure there were a lot of things I was afraid of as a kid, but there are two things that vividly stick with me. That shot of the duck mask guy, and when Ronald Reagan’s head comes out of the water in the video for “Land of Confusion” by Genesis.
The creepiness can be found at 3:30 in. Well, the creepiness can be found in the entire video, but that part was traumatizing to me as a kid. I’d look away every time it was on. I’m much better now that I’ve grown up – now when I watch it, I’m only a little scared of that part.
Honestly, this movie doesn’t even need a plot.
Just give me ninety minutes of creepy-masked guys scaring children while that stressful 80’s synth music plays, and I’d be happy.
But, for some reason, they felt a plot was needed on top of the awesomeness that is little kids being terrorized.
The children (and the credits) name the masks as Dabby Duck, Mac the Mouse, Pussy Cat, and Father Christmas. Looking more into the movie, I wondered if these were Australian cartoon characters, or just ripoffs of the name Daffy Duck and Mickey Mouse. I didn’t find anything regarding the characters, so I assume they’re just for the movie.
What kind of insane grammar school is this?
Given how many people apparently saw this when they were little, I don’t understand how we didn’t all grow up absolutely terrified of Santa Claus. All of the masked men in this are creepy, but Santa is far and away the worst. Especially since he’s the one tasked with riding in the back of the creepy kidnapper van with the teacher and the kids.
When the teacher suggests the kids all sing, Santa threatens them with a gun, screaming “SHUT UP!” to them. Which, really, is fair. Who wants to be stuck in a van with nine singing kids? The mask will only muffle your ears so much.
When they stop the van to go to the bathroom, the teacher suggests one of the kids, named Tommy, hide in the bushes then run for help.
Kids being kids, they blow the plan within two minutes.
On the bright side, the news gets better when the kidnappers reveal where the kids are off to next:
Despite the imposing entrance, the cave they are shuttled into isn’t so bad. So now, they’re in a cave. Which is still better than stuck in the back of that creepy van with evil Santa. And you could even make an argument that it’s better than their classroom. Actually, forget it – no argument needed. That cave is awesome.
Oh…
wait…
I must admit, the cave is decidedly less awesome now.
After eating lunch and starting a fire from paper and books they had, which will surely last at least four minutes, the teacher tells the kids to gather around so they can have a “council of war”. None of the kids asks what that means, which implies that they’ve already had a council of war before, which is… odd.
Their plan of action is to move the boulder blocking them in. The two older boys start making boasts about moving the boulder, and that they’re not just a bunch of kids.
So after not being able to move the boulder, they make a new plan.
After realizing one of the kids has a bottle of oily salad dressing, the teacher puts a shoelace into a can filled with the oil. I thought, “oh cool, they’re going to make a Molotov Cocktail to throw at the kidnappers.” Instead, it turns out they’re making a lamp. That works too, I guess.
They go off to explore the cave, and come upon a pool of water. Since they see daylight on the far end, the teacher decides to swim over to see if it leads out. But not before stripping to just her underwear in front of a little kid.
The whole group heads to the water to swim out. Now we’ve got a bunch of almost naked little kids, which is rather off-putting.
After a bunch of slow motion footage of the kids swimming underwater (in their underwear, which is now wet, which is now much worse), they all escape the cave.
Now, the most logical course of action would be sneak towards society and find a phone, right? Well first, they decide to have a picnic to eat more lunch. After they eat, the teacher encourages the kids to take a nap. Huh? They couldn’t have been swimming underwater for that far. You know, because of the possibility of drowning, and all. So they have no idea when the kidnappers will return, they couldn’t have gotten that far from the cave’s entrance, but sure – time for a nap!
My plan of going to the first house they can find turns out to not be as solid as I thought…
… since the first house they come upon results in this.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
So, they’re kidnapped again.
Besides the inherent creepiness of the Santa kidnapper, one other wild thing about him is – just how big are his eyes? They fit the mask perfectly, he just looks like a scary Santa cartoon character. Like, he’s got his eyes pressed right up against the mask – that can’t be comfortable. Kudos to you, Santa, for going the extra mile. You’re a good guy.
The teacher asks for something to eat, and Santa tells her that their food is back at the cave, where they were bringing it to them. So he tells them that they can go without food. He then tells the lady of the house to serve up four plates. Four – you know, like the number of kidnappers. Faced with these facts, one of the kids declares, “I hope she gives us lots of spuds!” I know they’ve been through a lot today but jeez – these kids are stupid.
In case you’re wondering which kid uttered the line about spuds, it’s the one at the bottom right. You know, the only one smiling.
The man of the house gets mad because Santa hit his wife, so he attacks Santa and Santa gives him a shotgun blast in the chest. As Santa is wont to do.
The shot breaks the fish tank, spilling fish everywhere. So the oldest girl starts picking up the fish. Really, that’s your go-to first priority? Although I guess they are hungry.
While stuck in a barn, the group hatches a plan to get free. This plan seemingly relies on one of the kidnappers being dumb as rocks. They invite the cat to sit next to them by the fire, offer him cookies, while the older girl (who has apparently gotten over the fish trauma) flirts with him. And the cat kidnapper thinks this is all status quo.
One of the older boys hits the cat, knocking him out, shooting Tommy in the process. Tommy isn’t dead, but he did take a shotgun to the shoulder, so he’s probably not that good, either.
While escaping (again), the teacher comes across the duck kidnapper, whose head is tied to a fence. Very soon after, his head is not attached to his body, which is even less good than getting shot in the shoulder. It’s also worse than being tied to a fence while your head is still attached to your body.
Presumably, the other kidnappers killed him, because one of them was heard earlier yelling that he wanted out. I’m going to rule out suicide, since decapitating yourself whilst attached to a fence is tough to pull off.
Keep in mind – this movie aired on TV.I know it was HBO, so maybe I should add some extra details – this movie aired on TV in the daytime. When kids get home from school and watch TV.
Fun Fact: the guy who plays the duck also played Bennett in “Commando”. He would also go on to star in another movie in 1992 named… “Fortress”.
After escaping the barn, they hide out in another cave. I guess the director really wanted to get his money’s worth from the cave set they already paid for.
The next morning, the teacher finds Santa wandering the woods, so she shoots him in the head. That would be too easy, so it turns out she just shot the mask. The remaining two kidnappers are elsewhere in the woods, shouting taunts to the kids.
The teacher decides that they need to fight back, pointing out that they outnumber the kidnappers four to one. She’s forgetting the fact that most of their numbers involve little kids, but okay.
We are then treated to a montage of the kids making lots of spears, setting deadly traps, and doing all sorts of other fun activities.
Oh, and putting on war paint. The “Lord of the Flies” ending this movie is about to reveal just wouldn’t be complete without it. That little kid is a total Jack in the making.
I’m assuming the final battle takes place two weeks after they started, since that would be the minimum amount of time needed to make the hundreds of spears and traps they created.
The oldest girl, Narelle, tells the teacher that she got her period, then proceeds to disappear in the woods, as teenaged girls often do. While wandering in the woods, she is chased by the mouse kidnapper.
After dropping boulders on a fighting teacher and mouse, the kids watch them as they fall on the spears, where the mouse dies. The kids have also taken to calling the teacher “Sally”, as a very (cough) subtle way of showing that this experience has forced them to grow up.
We get our first glimpse of an unmasked Santa, with his mask-eye-hole-filling eyes. You can tell he’s a villain because he’s got an earring.
And Santa gets his first glimpse of the dead mouse.
Everything I know about shooting guns, I learned from video games, so I’m certainly no expert. But this isn’t a normal way to fire a shotgun, right?
Santa finds his way into the cave, where he trips and falls into a campfire, and somehow it gets worse from there.
Sally and the kids proceed to stab Santa with spears, hit him with axes and rocks, and just generally make Santa’s life not great for about five minutes, while they repeatedly beat and stab him to death.
Also they hit him with rocks. Don’t forget the rocks. Come to think of it, this might be overkill.
Back at the school, it appears they finally decided to go dig Narelle out of the woods. Nice of them.
Some policemen show up, following up about why their kidnappers wound up stabbed seven hundred times and mutilated. The kids encircle the policemen, in a vaguely threatening manner, and the policemen decide that they’d rather not piss off the group of killer Australian outback kids that stabbed a man seven hundred times and mutilated him.
Tommy, a boy who has no idea what the term “too soon” means, decides it’d be hilarious to stand in the window with a Santa mask on. Good job, Tommy. Spook a teacher who is now a hardened killer, and is very likely armed in the classroom at this point.
You might think, “Oh, they killed the kidnappers because they had to. It was a one time thing and they took no joy in it – they’re not hardened killers.” I could buy that, if it weren’t for the fact that the last shot of the movie is Sally smiling at a glass jar, which contains the Santa kidnapper’s heart.
I mean, yeah, that’s an awesome classroom decoration, but that’s still some macabre stuff.
And there you have it – Fortress. A movie that countless children watched countless times. It sure beats most daytime entertainment for kids being aired these days.
If you’ve recently thought to yourself, “I love peeling bananas, but I don’t actually like eating fruit or even taking in nutrients, for that matter.” – you’re in luck!
Presumably after their mind had been altered by a trip on the terrifying chocolate river ferry, someone over at Wonka came up with the Peel-a-Pop. This is an ice cream confection where you peel the “skin” off the ice cream, to get to the “fruit” within. Sure, why not?
By the way, I apologize for using the term “ice cream confection” – it sounds too grown up. But it’s not an ice pop, or even a bar, so I didn’t know what else to do.
Unlike bananas, unless you are eating them incorrectly, with the Peel-a-Pops, you are expected to eat the peel. You probably won’t want to (more on that in a minute), but you can and are encouraged to do so.
The Peel-a-Pops come in Vanilla Grape and Vanilla Banana. I didn’t buy the Vanilla Banana flavor because that sounded vile. But in case you require a review of both flavors, here is my review of Vanilla Banana: No.
On the back of the box is where things take a bit of a turn. This is mostly due to some very creepy terminology being used.
Wonka advises you to stay fit by balancing tasty treats with oodles of active play. First, “oodles” is an inherently unpleasant word. The only time it is acceptable to use that word is when you are referring to Oodles of Noodles. Otherwise, you sound like a pervert.
And speaking of perverts, I can never hear “Tasty Treats” and not immediately think of this:
Apologies for the atrocious quality but the show likes to take down everything of theirs from Youtube, so I had to make do with what was available.
In case your interest is piqued by the “fantabulous fact” that the pops are 70 calories each, the box also rewards you with twice the nutritional facts.
Apparently Wonka assumes that people who are enticed by foods that you can peel will not be good at math, so they felt the need to not only tell you the calories for two bars, but for one instead.
Fret not – you don’t have to do all the complicated “dividing by two” here – Wonka’s got your back. Although some of the numbers, when compared, do show off that nutritional fact information rule of “if it’s less than half a gram, let’s just pretend it’s not there. (shrug)”
I was surprised by the size of the pop itself. I wasn’t expecting it to be the size of a banana, but it was still much smaller than I expected. (Insert Michael Scott .gif here.)
The pop also reminds me of the exogorth (AKA space slug, for those of you who go outside) from Empire Strikes Back.
After breaking out a ruler, since writing “about this big” while cupping my thumb and fingers into a rough estimation of size doesn’t translate well into text, the pop is about four inches tall.
The peeling, while not effortless, works fairly well, and results in sort of a banana-looking thing. It’s at this point where much of the appeal (no pun intended) falls apart.
I was expecting the peel to be sort of like Fruit By The Foot. It obviously needed some sort of chewy texture to peel like that, so I figured that made the most sense. Instead, it had the texture of what I assume that wax you peel of Babybel cheese would be like, if it was left outside to soften. And tasted about as good as that, as well.
The peel is simply awful. The texture is horrifying, and it has a taste not unlike children’s cough medicine.
The ice cream itself is good – the vanilla flavor tastes similar to vanilla Jell-O Pudding Pops, with a very light hint of grape flavor sucked in from the peel through osmosis. But in the end, you realize that the only edible part of this pop is a few inches of vanilla ice cream, and decide that’s not a very exciting treat.
Don’t get me wrong – Wonka products are awesome… usually. This was just a miss for them. I appreciate the idea of adding a novelty factor for absolutely no other reason than adding a novelty factor. They knew it wouldn’t make the product taste better, and that it would just make it harder to eat. But they still made it just to have this strange product thrown out there, and I respect that.
But when my dog, who literally eats feces out of my cat’s litter box if given the chance, refuses to eat the peel, it’s not a good sign.
It’s possible that this was one of the products that Charlie green-lit after taking over, so maybe Willy isn’t at fault for this. If the Peel-a-Pop was a song from the movie, it would be “Cheer Up Charlie” – not good, off-putting, has a weird grape flavor, and dogs don’t like it.
Well, most of those attributes apply to both the Peel-a-Pop and the song, anyway.
In the first paragraph of my first article ever for this site, when it somehow looked even worse than it does now, I mentioned Raisin Mini-Wheats.
This was always one of my favorite cereals, which is sort of surprising. When you poll kids for what they love to eat for a snack, “wheat” and “raisins” wouldn’t rank very high. In order to answer “wheat stuffed with raisins”, you’d have to go with the “Other – please specify” category.
And still, when Raisin Mini-Wheats went away, I was depressed. When fruit-stuffed Mini-Wheats made a return a few years back, I was very happy. They didn’t have my beloved Raisin flavor, but what we got would suffice. The fact that they came back “Frosted” was a bit worrisome, but they were so lightly frosted that it didn’t alter the flavor much. But surely Kelloggs figured the only people who wanted non-frosted wheat cereal would be old people and health weirdos. So they went with the “Sugar = $$$” theory.
Seeing the return of Raisin to the fruit-stuffed Mini-Wheats lineup was a glorious day. Unless they completely forgot the recipe, it was almost guaranteed to be awesome.
For some reason, the “Raisin” Mini-Wheat person is female. I don’t want to go down that weird M&M’s “Do they have sex? How?” rabbit hole, so moving on…
There’s not too much to say. This cereal is awesome. Since the frosting is very light, it doesn’t affect the flavor very much, so as far as I can remember the overall flavor is very similar to the original.
Even with the frosting, it’s only very mildly sweet. By default, raisin isn’t usually one of the sweeter flavors, unless they’re coated with sugar like Raisin Bran’s raisins. So there’s a little sweetness, a little… uh, wheat-ness, and a “just enough” raisin flavor.
The one thing with the Touch of Fruit In the Middle line that seems different is, which makes sense given the name, there seems to be less fruit inside than the original line. The ratio seems a little less satisfying than I remember, but it’s still awesome.
[insert recommendation with the strength of a thousand minotaurs here]
Kellogg’s Krave has been one of the new-ish cereals that I liked, and that liking hasn’t really died out. With a lot of new cereals, I’ll really be into the first bowlful or two, then the excitement is gone. I don’t by the box of regular chocolate Krave anymore – I found it a bit blah. But Double Chocolate Krave is still awesome.
The potential to expand the line, either with permanent additional flavors or rotating flavors, is huge. The idea of “cereal pouches stuffed with some random flavor” is limitless. For their first new flavor, they went with S’Mores.
I was hesitant about this, because fake marshmallow usually creeps me out. I don’t like real marshmallows, either, unless they’ve been lit on fire and become encased in black carbon. But that marshmallow stuff they put in Rocky Road ice cream, etc? Blech.
One thing that is immediately clear when looking at the cereal is that they took a little poetic license with how full their cereal pieces are. Biting one in half, you can’t really see anything that’s supposed to be chocolate or marshmallow. The other thing you immediately notice is the incredibly strong graham cracker smell.
Thankfully, the marshmallow flavor isn’t too intense. There’s enough where you know what the flavor is, but it’s more of a background player. The cereal is really the graham cracker show, with guest appearances by chocolate and marshmallow. The overall cereal-eating experience at first seems like it may be a bit too intense to enjoy for long.
But after a few bites, the graham-octity calms down a little bit, and it settles into a nice flavor. I was wondering if I’d even get through a whole box of it, but once you “get” the graham flavor, it’s very good. The graham isn’t really like Golden Grahams, where that’s sugar and honey and a little graham action. S’Mores Krave tastes like little graham crackers pressed into cereal pieces.
Like regular chocolate Krave, the cereal doesn’t want to give up any of its flavor into the milk. You get a very light graham flavor if you are really looking for it, but otherwise its just slightly sugared milk.
I don’t think this is a cereal that could become a staple, but it’ll be a nice plug-in once in a while. Until it’s inevitably discontinued, anyway.
The Great Southern Trendkill by Pantera might be the best song you could ever add to a running mix for two reasons:
1) Motivation. If you’ve been running for a while, you might think, “I’m going to take a breather and walk for a bit.” If that line of thought occurs when this song starts, you are immediately forced to go back to running.
First, because the song is too intense and awesome, you feel like you’d be letting the song down by walking (somewhat ironic, given their track “Walk”).
Secondly, no matter how irrational this fear is, you can’t help but shake the thought that if you give up and stop running, Phil Anselmo will run up from behind and beat you to a pulp.
2) It makes for some of the best shuffle transitions ever. I’ve got over a thousand songs on my running mix, of all varieties. So it is quite a jarring change when ending of some light, poppier song like Interesting Drug by Morrissey or Emergency! Emergency! by The Promise Ring is immediately interrupted by the guttural opening “bbghghghghghAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!” opening scream of Trendkill.
I know I’m a few weeks late for this – but since so many people make losing weight their New Year’s resolution, I figured this would be a handy tip. Add Great Southern Trendkill to your playlist and watch the pounds melt off!
Eager to shed their reputation as a boring, healthy cereal, Fruity Pebbles decided to take the next logical step – add candy.
The description of Poppin’ Pebbles makes it sound like Fruity Pebbles mixed with Pop Rocks. This either sounds amazing, or horrifying. Or both, I guess.
The “Fizzes in your mouth” description puts me off, a bit. It immediately reminds me of Lotsa Fizz, that candy you’d get from the ice cream man. It was a strip of five or six hard candies, filled with “fizz”. I’m not sure what the effect was supposed to be – it wasn’t like Pop Rocks, it was almost like a very weak Alka-Seltzer going off in your mouth. It tasted like that, too.
What is immediately noticeable upon opening the box is that the cereal smells terrible. I thought the “poppin'” pieces would be “Burstin’ Berry” flavored, and the cereal would be its normal, Fruity self. Instead, the Pebbles pieces themselves are berry flavored, as well. And it smells awful – like children’s medicine. And not the good, chewable grape or orange baby aspirin, either. Like the medicine they try just hard enough to make appealing to kids, but you still can’t avoid the fact that it’s medicine.
Pouring the milk in, I was disappointed with the silence I was greeted with. Your box brags of all of the “Poppin'” that’s going to be happening, yet your cereal would easily be drowned out by the cacophony of Rice Krispies? Amateur hour.
The cereal doesn’t taste as bad as it smells, but it doesn’t exactly taste that good, either. It’s that awkward middle ground where you think, “I can make it through the rest of the box.” – but you’re not thrilled about it.
As for the “Poppin'” aspect, it’s interesting. It’s not overly distracting, but it’s definitely noticeable. I am not disappointed that “Poppin’ Basic 4” doesn’t exist, but for what it is, it’s a nice novelty. When you bite one of the green “rocks”, you don’t get an immediate burst of Pop Rocks-esque crackling. It’s a delayed release, so when you get a green rock every few bites, it keeps a steady, mild popping throughout.
Poppin’ Pebbles mostly does what it claims, but the weird flavor puts me off getting another box. I’d definitely buy Poppin’ Regular Fruity Pebbles – and that emboldened text would be required on the packaging. But for these Poppin’ Pebbles – buy a box for the novelty, but that will probably be the only one you buy.
I’m sure General Mills’ goal was achieved, with my reaction to their new release. When I saw Chocolate Toast Crunch, my immediate reaction was, “Oh.”
I initially really liked Peanut Butter Toast Crunch, but got sick of it pretty quickly, and haven’t bought it since. I’m all for cereal companies trying brand extensions, but for a cereal like Cinnamon Toast Crunch – come on. It’s one of the best cereals ever. Let its greatness stand on its own without sullying its good name with brand dilution, and say “Enough!” to these weak Toast Crunch brethren.
So I bought a box of Chocolate Toast Crunch.
There’s nothing much exciting about it to say, so jumping right to the cereal…
The cereal has a somewhat artificial chocolate flavor – not bad, just not “real”. Like a strange chocolate milk mix.
Chocolate Toast Crunch actually has a pretty solid chocolate flavor. But there’s this one note of flavor that doesn’t sit right. It’s 95% good, then there’s this strange aftertaste that somewhat turns you against what you’ve been eating. Overall, it’s good. But that’s really all I can say about it – I probably wouldn’t get it again, if only because there are so many better options for a chocolate cereal.
And it did nothing to turn the milk into chocolate milk. Ridiculous.
One of the things I look forward to most during Christmastime is seeing what new candy will be released. I haven’t had much luck this year, due to two swing-and-a-miss Gingerbread chocolates, but I still kept my eyes open.
I would say that the lessened importance of receiving presents is some sign of maturity in myself, but there is also the fact that I introduced this by saying that finding new candy is basically the most important thing to me. So we’ll call it a wash.
In what can only be described as a Christmas miracle, I found three new (to me, anyway) chocolate bars that have redeemed the previous lackluster candies this year. Only one of them is “Christmas-y”, but all three were in the same display box, so I’m counting them.
According to the packaging, Wild Ophelia is younger sister of Vosges Haut-Chocolat. Or, in less pretentious terms – “Vosges Fancy Chocolate”. I assume the Vosges part is the same in both cases.
I had included two Vosges bars in my chocolate bar assortment review a few years back. Both were very good. Hopefully, their sister company’s output would be as solid.
To be honest, I wasn’t super excited for these three bars. I’ve had plenty of dark chocolate with chilis, peppermint chocolate is usually underwhelming, and the “BBQ” aspect of the chips sounded disgusting.
With that exciting intro out of the way, let’s dig in!
First up was the New Orleans Chili. I would have preferred a red beans and rice chocolate bar, but chili bars are usually very good. Some err too light on the chili pepperss, some too much, but even when companies get it wrong, it’s usually enjoyable.
The bar itself is… not exciting at all. No fancy design, no chunks of pepper, so strong chili smell – it just looks like a standard bar of chocolate.
Thankfully, the chocolate itself is very good. Personally, the aftertaste is the weakest part. The packaging describes it as “underlying tones of earthy red pepper.” The “earthy” part is accurate – I get a very mild aftertaste of what can only be described as “dirt”.
Which isn’t to say this bar isn’t good – the chocolate itself is fantastic And it’s got just enough heat where the spice is rising in your mouth and you think, “Okay this is getting spicier, hopefully it stops…” and the heat stops rising just when it seems like it should. The dirt flavor does compliment the slightly bitter 70% chocolate, so all in all the dirt aftertaste works out.
Wild Ophelia has my full permission to include my dirt comparisons on any future packaging, should they choose to do so.
Despite being mildly creeped out by the “BBQ” aspect, I was looking forward to the Smokehouse BBQ flavor the most of the three.
The “chocolate & potato chip” aspect wasn’t creepy, in fact it’s awesome. Chocolate-covered potato chips are fantastic. I know that the sweet and salty go together wonderfully. But adding the barbecue flavoring to the mix raises my suspicions.
It seems like similar logic to if Klondike thought, “Boy, those Cool Ranch tacos are selling like crazy over at Taco Bell. Call up Doritos and ask them to let us make Cool Ranch Choco Tacos!”
Looking at the bar, you’d be hard pressed to tell there were chips in there. It looks more like crisped rice. Although I knew there wouldn’t be entire chips in there, so I’m not actually sure why I feel the need to specify they’re small pieces. Ignore this last paragraph.
They use the same 70% dark chocolate from the chili bar, so I already knew the chocolate would be good. What was shocking was just how well the barbecue chips work.
I was expecting more of a sweet and salty flavor, with either (hopefully) a hint of barbecue or (no please) a large, gimmicky barbecue punch to the face. Most surprising is there isn’t even much of a salty flavor to the chocolate. I don’t know if they just used mostly barbecue chip spices and didn’t salt them, or what.
In the reviews of the two previous gingerbread chocolates, I complained about a strange, savory aspect to them. In the Smokehouse BBQ bar, there’s no strangeness about them, because the savory flavor belongs, and somehow makes sense. There’s not a lot of barbecue, but just enough to mix well with the chocolate, and leave you with a surprising, and possibly shameful, very enjoyable aftertaste.
The last bar is the one I was looking forward to the least. Chocolate and mint bars usually just taste like peppermint extract, and the ones with candy cane pieces are annoying to chew. According to the packaging, this bar contains both peppermint oil and candy cane pieces. Yay!
What is immediately different about this chocolate is the texture. Where the previous two bars had a snap to them, and a nice tough bite, the Peppermint Bark bar is much softer. It’s like a firmer version of Ice Cubes chocolate.
Despite my not liking candy cane pieces in chocolate, it can’t be denied that it makes this bar very nice to look at – especially compared to their other, simple bars.
While I wouldn’t choose this as one of my desert island foods (metaphorically speaking, any chocolate would be a terrible choice for a hot and unrefrigerated climate), their Peppermint Bark bar made me come around to this flavor more. The fact that the peppermint didn’t taste fake, and somehow the candy canes didn’t get stuck in my teeth definitely helped.
After trying all three bars, I went on their site to see what other flavors they have. Unfortunately, most of their other flavors that sound awesome are white chocolate based – AKA they don’t sound awesome anymore.
But they have two varieties of chocolate bars with beef jerky in them, both of which must be immediately acquired by me. Given my overwhelming journalistic integrity, I will let you know the results of those bars. Unless I forget.
Diet Coke-Babies 