Author: Marvo

Pomegranate 7UP

Marvo 33 Comments

Since when has pomegranate ever been festive?

When I think of Christmas, I don’t think about pomegranate, but according to the snowflake covered packaging of the limited-time-only Pomegranate 7UP, it might be the second coming of mistletoe. I can think of many things more festive than pomegranate. People waking up at 3:00 a.m. on Black Friday to wait in line at 4:00 a.m. for a slim chance to get a $399 laptop or $10 DVD player, but when they get there, there’s already fifty people in line wanting the same stuff is more Christmassy than pomegranate.

I don’t know of anyone who adds the pomegranate berry to trees, wreaths, or holiday centerpieces. I can’t think of anyone who uses its juice to either permanently stain all their clothes to holiday readiness or to paint a Santa suit on their skin. There also isn’t anyone who thinks pomegranate makes Rudolph’s nose red or adds color to Santa’s cheeks. So how can pomegranate suddenly be holiday-ish?

When I found out about the Pomegranate 7UP, I didn’t think to myself, “Move over, egg nog, I’m going to get fat off of another beverage this season.” But wait, now that I think about it, how would I get fat off of pomegranate? After all, it’s healthy and full of antioxidants.

Thankfully, the wonderful folks at 7UP have solved this dilemma for me, because according to the ingredients list on its packaging, the Pomegranate 7UP has no pomegranate in it and enough sugar to replace the fat content of egg nog, which will help me if I want to become a shopping mall Santa without the need for a fat suit. I know it says “100% Natural Flavors” on the label, but when there’s no juice in its ingredients to give this soda its flavor, you’ve got to wonder whether it’s as natural as Demi Moore’s face.

There definitely is a pomegranate flavor to it, although it’s kind of light. Its overall flavor is good and not sickly sweet, despite the 31 grams of sugar per cup. However, unless you love the taste of pomegranate, I don’t see any real reason to purchase this variation of 7UP. The whole point of putting pomegranate into something is for its health benefits, but when there’s no pomegranate to be found, it’s like a golddigger sleeping with MC Hammer in 1996 and then finding out that he’s bankrupt.

Oh, how I miss Pepsi Holiday Spice.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 cup – 120 calories, 0 grams of fat, 35 milligrams of sodium, 32 grams of carbs, 31 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 0 grams of caffeine, and 0 grams actual pomegranateness)

Item: Pomegranate 7UP
Price: $1.49 (2-liters)
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Tastes good. Not sickly sweet. Pepsi Holiday Spice. Getting a $399 laptop on Black Friday.
Cons: Seems like there’s no actual pomegranate. HFCS. No sweet, sweet caffeine. 31 grams of sugar per cup. Golddiggers. Not getting a $399 laptop on Black Friday.

REVIEW: Snapple Juice Drinks

Marvo 24 Comments

Fuck! Shit! Goji!

I ♥ profanity — probably a little too fuc…I mean, kiwin’ much. It’s so bad that I think I make dirty sailors blush. I can’t help it because using certain four-letter words seem like the only way I can express what I’m truly feeling. When the cops are about to knock down my door, the words, “Oh, snarf” just doesn’t seem right. Or if I’m ever in the heat of passion, the words, “Oooh, baby. You like the way I fudge you?” are probably the least erotic words I could say in bed.

But as I get older, I realize that I need to cut back on my swearing for the sake of my future children and because I’m slowly replacing every noun I know with the word “shit.”

“Did you see that shit?” or “Can you get a shit of shit from the shit?”

So I’ve tried to quit swearing in numerous ways. The first shit…I mean, goji I tried was using a swear jar, putting a certain amount of money in a jar every time I used profanity and donating that money to a worth cause. That didn’t work very well, but some UNICEF kid got really lucky this past Halloween with his orange box. If the commercials on television are correct, I think I gave him enough shi…I mean, goji to feed a third-world village for a year.

Then I figured if I’m doing it for the children, I should surrounded myself with young children and hang out at Chuck E. Cheese. You would think being around easily impressionable young minds might make me want to hold my tongue, but being around hyperactive, annoying children, who do nothing but cry and complain, had the opposite effect on me. Now those children are not only hyperactive and annoying, they also have a few more words in their vocabulary that I’m sure their parents don’t appreciate and I’ve been banned from Chuck E. Cheese.

So now I’m trying to substitute all my swear words with names of exotic fruits and so far it’s kind of working. Why names of exotic fruits? Because they sound like profanity in foreign languages. Guess which of the following words are names of exotic fruits and which are foreign swear words: salak, gunggong, skila, goji, merde, pajuo, matisia, vlaka, rambai, kuso, rambutan, goumari, noni, salaud, luntao, santol, hako, tassepe, kiwi, culone, jaboticaba, putanginamo.

I fuck up…I mean, I kiwi up once in awhile, but slowly and surely I’m becoming less dependent on profanity. How did I come up with this idea? I have to thank the new Snapple Juice Drinks I’ve been drinking, which come in four flavors, but I only tried the Noni Berry, Kiwi Pear, and Goji Punch. The juice drink label is a little misleading since according to the bottles they each contain between 5-10 percent juice.

Each flavor in the new Snapple Juice Drink line has a health benefit. The low-calorie noni and kiwi flavors help with metabolism, while the not-so-low-calorie goji one aids with immunity. So boys and girls, if you want to kill someone, drink some Snapple Goji Punch before you do it.

Oh wait, the other kiwin’ fighting germs-type of immunity.

The 40 grams of sugar in the Goji Punch might not help with either definition of immunity, since sugar is known to weaken the white blood cells in your body. As for helping with metabolism, it might seem a little more realistic since according to the bottle, studies show that consumption of 300 milligrams of EGCG antioxidants per day with caffeine helps boost metabolism and each bottle contains 30 milligrams of sweet, sweet caffeine and 55 milligrams of EGCG.

As for taste, the Noni Berry flavor tasted like the strawberry-kiwi Vitamin Water; the Kiwi Pear flavor had a strong pear scent, but had an equal balance of pear and kiwi flavor; and the Goji Punch tasted like berry, berry watered down berry vodka. The first two were good despite a very slight artificial sweetener aftertaste, while the goji one was really fuckin’ shitty…I mean, kiwin’ shitty…I mean, fuckin’ gojity…I mean, kiwin’ gojity.

Oh, fuck it.

(Nutrition Facts – Noni Berry & Kiwi Pear – Serving Size: 1 bottle – 20 calories, 0 grams of fat, 70 milligrams of sodium, 2 to 4 grams of carbs, 2 gram of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 30 milligrams of caffeine, 55 milligrams of EGCG, and 50 grams of non-sexy exoticness.)

(Nutrition Facts – Goji Punch – Serving Size: 1 bottle – 180 calories, 0 grams of fat, 60 milligrams of sodium, 40 grams of carbs, 40 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 20% Vitamin A, 20% Vitamin E, and 25 grams of non-sexy exoticness.)

Item: Snapple Juice Drinks
Price: $1.19 each (17.5 ounces)
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Despite being low calorie and containing artificial sweeteners, the Noni Berry and Kiwi Pear tasted pretty good. Sweet, sweet caffeine and antioxidants in the noni and kiwi flavors. Using exotic fruit names to help cut back on swearing. Helped a third-world village this Halloween.
Cons: Not much juice in these juice drinks. Goji Punch has a lot of sugar. My inability to hold back my swearing. Being banned from Chuck E. Cheese. You like the way I fudge you?

Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars

Marvo 20 Comments

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen something shimmer like the Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars. Its glistening reminds me of a sweaty, chiseled beefcake working on his fine, defined, Zeus-like body at Muscle Beach in a spandex bodysuit that hugs every hump and lump on him sexy, tantalizing, glowing sunbathing beauty with curves like a roller coaster in a very revealing Wicked Weasel bikini that leaves very little to the imagination covered in a seductive-smelling cocoa butter suntan lotion.

The Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars consist of mostly nuts and its shine is probably from the same things that keep all those nuts together in bar form — corn syrup and sugar.

Speaking of ingredients, the number of ingredients for these nut bars are small, like the bow ties around the necks of attractive, well-oiled Chippendale dancers gyrating and thrusting their hips to the beat of dance music causing me to stare at their black spandex pants covered crotches a foxy Hooters Girl uniform that conforms around the voluptuous bodies in them causing their beautiful breasts in the tight white tank top to stretch out the word Hooters, making the owl’s eyes open wider and my eyes stare in a totally inappropriate way at the white spandex covered breasts as I order a platter of their famous Hooters Buffalo Wings.

Each of the two Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bar flavors have only six ingredients. The Peanut Crunch contains only peanuts, sunflower seeds, sugar, corn syrup, salt, and almond flour. The Almond Crunch consists of only almonds, peanuts, sunflower seeds, sugar, corn syrup, and salt.

If you read carefully over the ingredients, you probably noticed that the ingredients for both flavors are almost identical and because of this, both flavors also taste very similar. Each one tasted kind of like honey roasted peanuts, so if you blindfolded me and had a hunky, strong fireman gorgeous, curvy female flight attendant straddle me and feed me each flavor, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

Because they’re made out of nuts, these bars have a good crunch to them, but because everything is being held together with just the tasty adhesives of corn syrup and sugar, they’re kind of fragile. So if I stick it in my fanny pack laptop messenger bag, it will probably break into several pieces as I walk from my car to the office. If it does break, be very careful when opening the foil packaging because nuts will drop.

Overall, I liked the Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars. They’re tasty, contain healthy fats (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats), and each bar has seven grams of protein, which helps if I want to build muscles without going on “the juice” so that I can perhaps one day be a sweaty, chiseled beefcake working on my fine, defined, Zeus-like body at Muscle Beach in a spandex bodysuit that hugs every hump and lump on me.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bar (varies per flavor) – 190 to 200 calories, 12 to 14 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat, 0.5 to 2.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 10 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 to 180 milligrams of sodium, 11 to 14 grams of carbs, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 6 to 7 grams of sugar, 7 grams of protein, and more nuts than a NFL locker room.)

(Editor’s Note: Cheap Eats and The Message Whore also reviewed the Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch. which means I know of three pairs of nuts who reviewed these nuts.)

Item: Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars
Price: FREE (Retails for $3.39)
Purchased at: Received from nice PR folks
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Tastes like honey roasted peanuts. Lots of nuts. Crunchy. Shiny. Seven grams of protein. Good fats. No ingredients with names I can’t pronounce. Wicked Weasel bikinis.
Cons: Fragile, like my ego. 200 calories per bar. Both flavors taste similar. Me in a spandex body suit. Fanny packs. Sexual harassment. The use of corn syrup as an adhesive.

Burger King Bacon Double Homestyle Melt

Marvo 36 Comments

The new Burger King Bacon Double Homestyle Melt is so greasy that if I wanted to experience puberty all over again and have my face break out into pimples, I would rub my face liberally with this burger.

I know what you’re thinking, pretty much all fast food burgers are greasy, but I felt this limited time only burger was so greasy that if I were in prison and the burger was a bar of soap, I would feel the need to tie a rope around it.

So what makes the Bacon Double Homestyle Melt so greasy?

It’s the Killer Bs: bacon, burger, and butter. It’s got slices of crispy bacon, three slices of Swiss cheese, two flame-broiled hamburger patties, and a creamy garlic cheese sauce all between a buttery flat bun. It was probably the buttery bread that made this burger seem almost as greasy as two used car salesmen in a bikini baby oil wrestling match.

The bread portion of the burger didn’t have enough butter to make Food Network personality Paula Deen cream in her pants, but there’s enough to make my hands just as greasy as the hands of the hairstylist for The Sopranos.

On paper, the Burger King Bacon Double Homestyle Melt looked like a really good burger, but unfortunately the grease from the burger soaked the paper and it fell through.

The burger was small — a little bit bigger than a Whopper Jr. — and I wondered if to compensate for its size, it drove either a Corvette or an Escalade. I thought the creamy garlic cheese sauce would be as artery-hardening good as it sounds, but the garlic was either very faint or non-existent in all of the bites I took, which again wasn’t many, since the burger was Lilliputian in size.

The combination of meat, bacon, and cheese is a great foundation for a burger, which the Burger King Bacon Double Homestyle Melt had, but its weak sauce and buttery bun cracked through that foundation. I thought about risking diabetes, heart disease, and the sight of my penis to try another, but in the end I was all greased out.

(Nutritional Facts – 810 calories, 58 grams of fat, 20 grams of saturated fat, 2 grams of trans fat, 135 milligrams of cholesterol, 1370 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbs, 1 grams of dietary fiber, 5 grams of sugar, 39 grams of protein, 10% Vitamin A, 35% Calcium, 25% Iron, and 25 grams of bigassness.)

Item: Burger King Bacon Double Homestyle Melt
Price: $5.49 (Value Meal)
Purchased at: Burger King
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: Lots of protein. Lots of grease…if you love grease. Lots of sodium…if you love heart disease. Meat, cheese, and bacon is a good burger foundation.
Cons: Small burger. Seems extremely greasy. Couldn’t really taste the creamy garlic cheese sauce. Buttery bun made the burger even less enjoyable. Paula Deen creaming in her pants.

REVIEW: Snapple Classic Black Teas

Marvo 12 Comments

When I was young, I used to have elegant tea parties. I would put on my Sunday’s best and bring out my finest China plasticware. Some of you may think that tea parties are “girly” and my parents may have “wondered” about me at that time, but when the party guests included Megatron, hooded Cobra Commander, Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter, Kikaida, a 1983 Topps Steve Balboni baseball card, and Tenderheart Bear it automatically became a manly tea party.

Unfortunately, tea was never served at my parties, since my mother wouldn’t let me near the stove due to my pyromaniac tendencies and my dad wouldn’t let me pour hot water due to being prone to what he called “Bill Buckner hands.” So I served room temperature tap water at my tea parties, which is much like the equivalent of having wine coolers at a wine tasting party.

Sure my tea parties were sausage-fests, but it was less about who was there and more about what we talked about. In those days, we would discuss democracy in Eastern Europe, the pros and cons of both VHS and Betamax tapes, the rise of the Japanese Yen, and ask each other whose double-Ts were hotter, Smurfette or Scarlett.

Now that I’m grown up and over my pyromaniac and Bill Buckner tendencies, I could have tea parties with actual tea, but most of my tea party friends are no longer with me. I sold Megatron on eBay for $75, hooded Cobra Commander is lost in the yard somewhere, Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter is in its original box sitting on a shelf at my parent’s house, Kikaida was sold at a garage sale, and my 1983 Topps Steve Balboni card was attached to my BMX bike to make fake motorcycle sounds. Thankfully, Tenderheart Bear still sleeps with me every single night, so I wouldn’t be faced with the ways of the alcoholic and drinking alone.

Recently, we tried the Snapple Classic Black Teas, which come in three traditional black tea flavors: English Breakfast, Earl Grey, and Orange Pekoe. Each of them are lightly sweetened and all-natural. They also contain less than 100 calories per bottle, have antioxidants, and should be served chilled.

I shared some with Tenderheart Bear as we discussed the rise of the Canadian dollar, the impact of Wal-Mart on small business, how mediocre the TV show Heroes is this season, and the likelihood that a woman would get an STD from a member of an 1980s hair band…including the drummer. We also gave our thoughts about the Snapple Classic Black Teas and Tenderhear Bear, a connoisseur of teas, didn’t care for them too much.

He thought each of them tasted like someone made tea, forgot they made tea, left it on the kitchen counter for a day, realized they made tea the day before, was too lazy to reheat the tea, was to cheap to throw out the tea, and added a couple of lumps of processed sugar to the tea. He thought they all captured the essence of the flavors, but felt that serving them cold didn’t do them justice and the sugar did kind of ruin the flavor of the tea. He admitted that he’s a purist and would prefer to drink these flavors as hot tea.

It was nice catching up with Tenderheart Bear even though we see each other every night. That quality time spent together got me thinking about starting up tea parties again. I could invite Tenderheart Bear, my iPod for musical conversations, my black pinstripe dress shirt from Banana Republic for fashion topics, my laser printer for literary subjects, and maybe condom tin to talk about why I’m still not getting any.

(Nutrition Facts – One bottle (varies per flavor) – 70 to 90 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 to 5 milligrams of sodium, 17 to 22 grams of carbs, 17 to 21 grams of sugar, and 0 grams of sugar.)

Item: Snapple Classic Black Teas
Price: FREE (Retail price – $1.39)
Purchased at: Given by nice PR people
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: Antioxidants. All-natural. Made with real sugar and honey. Less than 100 calories per bottle. Scarlett (I dig redheads).
Cons: Tastes like cold tea that someone accidently threw in sugar. The sugar kind of ruins the flavor of the tea. These flavors taste better hot. Drinking alone. Steve Balboni’s ability to strikeout.