Reviews – Page 552 – The Impulsive Buy

REVIEW: Hot Pockets Limited Edition Buffalo Style Chicken

Trevor / May 22, 2014 / Reviews / 5 Comments

There have been more than a few moments throughout my life when I thought I may be going crazy, and most of them revolve around one thing: Hot Pockets.

I’ve been eating the things since they were first introduced, and, while I enjoy them, I’ve never found a flavor I fell in love with other than the four cheese one. Ugh, Four Cheese. So greasy. So bad for my stomach. BUT SO TASTY!

I would try picking up different flavors and giving them a chance, but after awhile it started to seem like an insane game to be playing, as no pocket could ever equal Four Cheese.

Four Cheese may have to worry though because a new competitor, Limited Edition Buffalo Style Chicken, has stepped into the ring to contend for the Trevor’s Favorite Hot Pocket Championship title belt. Or plaque. Or trophy. It’s a metaphorical award so you can picture it whatever way you want, Okay? Geez.

With my hometown being an hour away from Buffalo, NY, I’ve had every buffalo wing that’s worth eating, so it should come as no surprise I’m kind of a buffalo snob.

When I first glanced the buffalo chicken pockets, I gave a “pff,” as in, “yeah, like THEY know how to do buffalo sauce.” I usually don’t judge a book by its cover but instead the preface. In this case though, I was cover judging pretty hard. I decided to give them a chance. At the least it would provide me with a good laugh.

As is normally the case with a Hot Pocket, I got pretty enraged after it came out of the microwave. The crust broke at the side and a good-sized glob of sauce spilled out onto the plate. I swear, every goddamn time!

A pocket is supposed to hold something, yet a Hot Pocket never can seem to hold onto its contents. If my pants pockets were as reliable as a Hot Pocket, I would probably be down a good twenty dollars in change this year alone.

They should be called “Hot But Not Always Reliable Pockets, or “Hot Pocket With Holes in it.”

Damn, I should’ve considered a career in marketing. Those are genius names! Moving on.

The first thing I noticed before really paying attention to the inside of the pocket was how good the crust was. I don’t know if this has a special crust since it is limited edition but they really outdid themselves on this one. It’s very buttery and flakey, almost approaching biscuit levels in those respective categories.

At first, the sauce did not seem all that spicy to me. I remained snobbish for a few bites, listening to Chopin, reading the current edition of The New Yorker and sticking my pinky out whilst holding the Hot Pocket.

Once I reached the middle though, I silenced Chopin, closed the magazine, reunited my pinky with his its finger brethren, took a breath and said, “whoa.”

The buffalo sauce seemed more spicy/sweet than spicy at first but once you ingest enough of the sauce it really hits you. The best part is it tastes like real buffalo sauce, not some sad attempt at buffalo sauce, which I was fully expecting.

And I’m not kidding when I say it’s spicy. My forehead started getting hot towards the end of the pocket. It didn’t sweat but I think if I ate a second one it may have.

The box puts emphasis on the fact that the pocket contains white meat chicken, and I will say the chicken was actually very tender. Not once did I encounter a piece of grizzle that I’ve found in other Hot Pockets with chicken in them.

The one big complaint I have, other than post-microwave pocket breach, is that the pocket seemed to be under-stuffed. When I eat one of my precious four cheese pockets, it is PACKED with filling. There was easily room for a little more. Maybe some type of cheese, like a blue or provolone?

Well, I guess finding another Hot Pocket I can enjoy along with Four Cheese proves my sanity! I have to go stick it to my Yu Darvish bobblehead. He always calls me crazy and hurls insults at me like, “Hey, Trevor. Can you hear me? Of course you can! Your big ears could pick up radio signals!”

Damn talking bobblehead. I’ll show him. I’m not crazy. Crazy cool, maybe!

(Nutrition Facts – 1 sandwich – 280 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 730 milligrams of sodium, 38 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 3 grams of sugar and 10 grams of protein.)

Item: Hot Pockets Limited Edition Buffalo Style Chicken
Purchased Price: $1.87
Size: 2 sandwiches
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Top-tier crust. Buffalo sauce was very tasty with a nice spicy kick. Yu Darvish bobblehead. Being totally sane.
Cons: Could’ve had more filling. Post-microwave pocket breach. Mean big ear jokes.

QUICK REVIEW: Nabisco Sweet Barbecue Rice Thins

Marvo / May 21, 2014 / Reviews

Purchased Price: $3.00 (on sale)
Size: 3.5 oz box
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed these and they satisfy my taste buds as much as any Wheat Thins. Bold, sweet barbecue flavor, with a very slight kick, that made me forget I was eating something called Rice Thins. Better for you than Wheat Thins. If you’re allergic to gluten and want a crispy snack that’s full of flavor, you can’t go wrong with these.
Cons: The negative rice snack stereotype I created in my head thanks to being fed rice cakes as a child. Picking up a box will make you think you’re packing on some muscle, but it just that this snack is super light and airy. It’s a bit too easy to eat through an entire box.

Nutrition Facts: 13 pieces – 120 calories, 20 calories from fat, 2 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1 gram of polyunsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 160 milligrams of sodium, 24 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.

Crackers Nabisco

REVIEW: Pepperidge Farm Dessert Shop Chocolate Brownie Cookies

Kevin / May 21, 2014 / Reviews / 1 Comment

Hi, my name is Blade and I’m here to review some cookies.

You may have heard of me. I am also known as the Daywalker—I am a vampire. Well, I was born half-human, half-vampire. So I have all their strengths and none of their weaknesses, except for the blood thirst. But I manage to keep that in check with a serum, and I can walk around in the sunlight like all the rest of you. I’m basically a regular human being with super strength, reflexes and a healing factor.

To be upfront, I think some of those qualities make me superior to human beings and perhaps transcendent to human rules, but the IRS doesn’t agree, and subsequently I’ve run into tax problems, which explains why I’m writing about baked goods on a website. And I’ve eaten human flesh, which means my tastes are more adventurous than yours, I’m sure.

However, I do have a sweet tooth. Love those snacks. They come far second on the list of cravings, though, behind human blood. To recap: Number one craving with a (silver) bullet, human blood. Number two, baked sweets. My aunt used to make these snickerdoodles that were sublime. You guys tried cronuts yet? The real ones from New York. Amazing, right? Dominique Ansel done changed the game! How about pureed frozen bananas? Stuff tastes just like ice cream! Yeah, I love sweets. Number three is probably gas station Spam musubi, believe it or not.

Being half something and half something else, the folks at this site thought it would be a good idea for me to review the Pepperidge Farm Dessert Shop Chocolate Brownie Cookies, because it’s half a cookie, half a brownie. Here is the question: Does this product combine the strengths of the cookie and the brownie? Or is it all weakness, like those new Spider-Man films? The short answer is no, this cookie is not awesome like me. It is just okay.

It is soft, so soft and chewy, like the best cookies. The initial bite has a light, bitter cocoa sting with a hint of sweetness, like a brownie! It’s pretty good. And the cookie never gets too sweet, either. I like my chocolate on the bitter side and I like my Avengers movies quippy. The problem is that the cookie doesn’t go anywhere else. There’s no depth of flavor. It’s not rounded out by a torrent of butter or balanced with any other sensation. It just keeps hitting the bitter note over and over, which gets tiring. It’s also chewy but not gooey, like a brownie would be. The density is of a supermarket mass-produced cookie, and not of a deep, cakey, homemade casserole-dish brick of cocoa goodness.

You can see chocolate chips in the cookie, but you can’t really taste them in the product. The chips get lost in the shuffle somewhere, overshadowed, so seeing them there is like being teased. I bet it’s sort of like being imbued with an unquenchable thirst for human blood and seeing humans walking around literally everywhere, walking, dancing, taunting, necks exposed, welcoming, and never once taking a sip. Or maybe like a chocolate lap dance. It’s disappointing that the cookie does not live up to the Frankenstein potential of a cookie-brownie, but the flavoring spins so far out of control in one singular direction it doesn’t even function that well as a cookie-cookie.

The Pepperidge Farm Dessert Shop Chocolate Brownie will not be making it into Blade’s cookie rotation. It’s a valiant attempt at combining brownie powers and cookie powers into one thing, but it’s a little bit of a reminder that the X-Men are special, and, really, most genetic mutations end in early death and not in telekinesis or the power of flight. I guess against all odds companies will always try to harness the warm, homey goodness of a brownie into items. “Motherfudgers always trying to ice skate uphill.” That’s a quote of mine that I altered to appropriately fit into this piece.

Thanks for reading, folks. And a quick reminder I am immune to garlic so I am available to review non-Olive Garden Italian cuisine. And vampires don’t sparkle! Gosh, Twilight is my Madea. I guess Madea is also my Madea. Shout out to Joss Whedon. I’m available for the next Avengers. Or Ant-Man! I’ll take Ant-Man! Edgar Wright, I loved Shaun of the Dead. It should have been vampires and not zombies, though. Everybody check out Let the Right One In. Check out all my movies too. I’m not in Blades of Glory, though. That’s not me. Hmm, actually, also, I’m only half human, so I should only pay half human taxes. Okay, I’m going to go re-fill out my W-9. Bye.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 cookie – 140 calories, 50 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 90 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 11 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fiber, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Pepperidge Farm Dessert Shop Chocolate Brownie Cookies
Purchased Price: $2.50
Size: 8.6 ounce bag
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Not too sweet. Chewy, soft. Not terrible.
Cons: Flat flavoring. No depth. Goes nowhere. Boring.

Cookies Pepperidge Farm

REVIEW: Harvey’s Strawberry Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich (Canada)

Michael / May 20, 2014 / Reviews / 4 Comments

Harvey’s, a popular Canadian burger chain, recently came out with an ice cream sandwich made with Strawberry Pop-Tarts; this is not to be confused with the Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich, also made with Strawberry Pop-Tarts (and thanks to Harvey’s’ lawyers, Hardee’s is actually not allowed to call themselves Hardee’s in Canada, and instead must go by Carl’s Jr., which is basically the same restaurant, just with a different name).

What was I talking about? Oh yes, Pop-Tarts, ice cream, and the sandwich born from their union.

It was actually better than I thought it would be. For one thing, I was afraid the sandwich would be made with untoasted Pop-Tarts. There are two types of people in the world: people who like their Pop-Tarts toasted, and people who are wrong. I don’t know what the afterlife entails, but I know that those raw Pop-Tart eating maniacs will never get there — they will be condemned to wander for all eternity in a horrifying purgatory, cursed with the terrible knowledge that it was their ill-advised opinion on Pop Tarts that brought them there.

Thankfully, the Pop-Tarts here are toasted — lightly toasted, but enough to remove that doughy flavour and texture that uncooked Pop Tarts have.

I thought that perhaps the sandwiches would be assembled on the spot, however they are actually created in advance and frozen, Pop-Tarts and all. A sandwich made with a warm Pop-Tart, with the ice cream starting to get melty, and with a satisfying contrast between hot and cold would have been nice, but alas.

Though I was afraid that the freezing process would make the filling of the Pop-Tart unpleasantly hard, I was again happy to be proven wrong. The deep freeze actually gives the filling a pleasantly toothsome chew; this worked quite well in the context of an ice cream sandwich.

The ice cream itself was fine. It has a generically sweet, creamy taste, without much vanilla flavour. But it’s smooth and not icy at all, and honestly, if you were expecting much better than that from a Pop-Tart sandwich from Harvey’s, then you clearly have your own issues you need to work out. It is what it is. If you’ve ever had those budget ice cream sandwiches from the supermarket, you know what to expect from the ice cream.

The whole thing results in a dessert that’s actually fairly satisfying. It’s not overly sweet and there’s a little bit of tartness (Pop-Tartness?) from the filling. There’s a good contrast of textures between the Pop-Tart and the ice cream, and the price feels right at two bucks.

(Nutrition Facts – Nutrition facts not available on Harvey’s website.)

Item: Harvey’s Strawberry Pop-Tart Ice Cream Sandwich
Purchased Price: $1.99 CAN
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Harvey’s
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Contains a Pop-Tart that is toasted rather than raw. Decent quality vanilla ice cream. The frozen Pop-Tart has a satisfying chewiness. Only two bucks.
Cons: The ice cream isn’t exactly gourmet. A sandwich assembled fresh with a hot Pop-Tart would have been nice.

Fast Food Harvey's

REVIEW: Doritos Jacked Test Flavor 404

Jeff / May 19, 2014 / Reviews / 18 Comments

I’ve always been a huge fan of Doritos’ test flavor gimmicks. From the cheeseburgery reveal of Doritos X-13D to Doritos The Quest, which turned out to be Mountain Dew and was surprisingly good. I’m glad Doritos brought back this stunt, even if it’s for their stubborn sibling, the Jacked line.

I have to say the packaging really piques my excitement. I’m not sure if it’s the silver faux-futuristic bags that echo Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or maybe it is the words “TEST FLAVOR” themselves. Either way, the people that designed this get my high fives.

When they were first announced, it was 2007 all over for me again where losers were wearing blinged out pseudo ripped jeans, had fauxhawks, put on aggro printed t-shirts and topped off their ensemble with Von Dutch caps. And the damned music…Daughtry and Paramore were overplayed (why they were played at all, I am unsure), while all of us geeks swooned over Morgan Webb and discovered the Midnight Juggernauts.

Feverishly, I went to various Walmarts, Targets and Publixes to no avail. After a couple of weeks of looking, I gave up and decided to do something more productive and level up my monk in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls.

One afternoon at lunch, I needed to buy some three ring trading card nine-pocket plastic sheets for my Wacky Packages (another reason why the ladies love me). Ironically, the Target I found them in was the one I’ve avoided because it’s near a huge university and seriously…I don’t have time for that bullshit.

There they were in neatly stacked piles. The last time I gawked stupidly at foil packaging was when a past girlfriend asked me, annoyed, what’s taking me so long to get a rubber. They were all the 404 version and although I was sad that the other two test flavors were not there, I grabbed two packages and gleefully ran out.

Upon ripping open the bag, I buried my nose into it like it was the 80’s, Miami Vice-style, and inhaled. There was a deep and earthy molasses/brown sugar scent that is immediate. It then faded into cumin-like tones with a light fake-citrus smell. I can compare the earthy wafts to a fresh out of the oven baked sweet potato if you squeezed a lemon on it.

The chips themselves had a burnt orange “spray tan look” that were a few shades darker enough to let you know that it meant fucking business. You could see the seasoning flecks as if your eyes had microscopic vision and the chips felt heavier.

I know it sounds crazy but I like the lighter feel of normal Doritos chips and think the more rigid Jacked chips take away from the crunch experience. However, those powdery flavor dustballs have enough heft that they shake off your hands easily.

Eating one, the smoky tortilla corn chip was the most prevalent flavor at first. Then a rich sweetness with garlicky notes washed my tongue as I chewed. There was an unidentifiable complexity in the chip that almost tasted like five spice powder. Last, a citrusy tart zing that tasted of key limes and kumquats grabbed my taste buds and doggy styled it into submission. There was also a faint tinge of heat, which was nice.

I couldn’t really say what the flavor was except that it definitely had this Asian Thai sweet chili sauce thing going on. Looking at the ingredients, I saw lime juice solids and orange juice solids, which may explain the slight tartness that sort of made my cheeks tickle.

The bold flavors joined in a symphony that demanded you pay some friggin’ attention. These chips were the aces! I was impressed and surprised that Doritos was able to bring a flavor that I had not really tasted yet or could truly compare to another flavor. In fact, my only gripe is that the chips seemed too heavy and stiff (thanks Jacked) but who cares once you get to that flavor.

If Frito-Lay wants to make any one of the three a regular flavor, they will probably pick the safest route and these will go the way G4TV did (damn you Esquire channel). If you can find Doritos Jacked Test Flavor 404, I highly recommend picking these up because I doubt they will be made again.

I have to commend Frito-Lay for really pushing the envelope on its Doritos flavors, even if it’s a limited time thing. Sure I may never get a second round of Doritos Mr. Dragon’s Fire Chips but these 404, if they become a regular offering, will satiate my wants.

(Nutrition Facts – 6 chips – 140 calories, 70 calories from fat, 8 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 200 milligrams of sodium, 16 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Doritos Jacked Test Flavor 404
Purchased Price: $4.29
Size: 10 ounce bag
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pros: The Asian-like complex flavors that are earthy, tart and sweet. The flavor dust easily shakes off your hand. The Doritos line has brought back the test flavors gimmick. G4’s Attack of the Show!
Cons: The heavy stiff chip is not the best. It’s hard to find these in my area. Blinged out faux ripped jeans. Esquire Network’s Lucky Bastards.

Chips Doritos