Category: Reviews

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.

REVIEW: Campbell’s Chunky Fully Loaded Rigatoni & Meatballs Soup

Ace 14 Comments

Oh, football season — the most masculine, yet homoerotic of all seasons. Think of all the Sundays spent shouting while in the vicinity of drunk and rowdy men. Ponder the countless hours debating whether those feelings you have for Tom Brady are natural admiration or unfettered lust. There is really nothing else quite like it.

For years, the folks at Campbell’s have capitalized on the season’s excitement by using football players to promote their Chunky Soup. I have no problem with sports leagues promoting products, but I can’t quite make out the connection here. After all, this is a brand of soup based solely on the premise that large men enjoy a steaming hot bowl of soup after a grueling practice. Who needs a frosty Gatorade or a sandwich when you can have a boiling hot bowl of soup with processed meats and vegetables that melt in your mouth? While this may seem surreal and absurd, nothing is quite as insane as what they are pitching with the Fully Loaded soup variety.

Apparently Chunky Soup, the soup that eats like a meal, wasn’t meal-like enough to satisfy the hunger of football players after they were done frolicking in mud as rain poured down on them. Instead of wondering who the hell pitches these commercials, I’m going to try to decipher exactly why this thing product is considered soup. I suppose the Chunky Fully Loaded takes after athletes and is a soup on steroids and human growth hormones. However, they have taken their approach way too far and have created a proverbial monster. You see, this is clearly rigatoni and meatballs, and unless I have been mistaken for my entire life, pasta is not soup. In fact, unlike crock pot meals and shepherd’s pie, it’s not even close to being soup. You might as well sever your own testicles and call it chicken cordon bleu. It really makes absolutely no sense.

Speaking of testicles, Campbell’s has finally accomplished what they have always strived to do — give soup some serious balls. While that statement is indeed a terrible joke, it’s also what I think this “soup” is really made of. The meatballs have an abnormally chewy texture that I could only assume mirror the texture of a certain questionable organ meat. Maybe this is to appeal to the people with giant Oakland Raiders vinyl decals and metallic ballsacks hanging from the back of their trucks, but nobody knows for sure. I understand that they can’t use the finest cuts available, but this is bordering on unappetizing and disturbing.

Luckily, I am less than picky about canned pasta and can safely say that I would much rather eat this than Chef Boyardee. The rigatoni is not mushy like many canned pastas and actually has some texture to it. They are also large enough to make me feel like a really big man while I’m eating them, which is probably worth the price of purchase on its own. The meatballs, strange texture and all, are not completely awful and are edible enough. The tomato sauce, which I suppose would be the soup in this case, has actual chunks of tomato and has a good acidic bite that is a refreshing change from the saccharine taste of the tomato sauces in other canned pastas.

What I appreciate most is the fact that the soup has a pop-top lid. Most of the people that buy this type of food do not own a can opener, so I like that they are saving us from the humiliation of stabbing it with a knife and jamming a spoon in to get it open. Even still, I can’t forgive them for completely messing with my sense of reality. When certain things in my worldview become distorted, I can’t help but feel despondent. If I ever go to Olive Garden and get “Fettuccini Alfredo” as the soup of the day, you will know why I tried to hang myself with the noodles.

(Nutritional Facts – 1 cup – 220 calories, 8 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 20 mg of cholesterol, 800mg sodium, 24 grams of carbs, 6 grams of dietary fiber, 8 grams of sugar, 13 grams of protein, 4% Vitamin A, 8% Calcium, and 10% Iron)

Item: Campbell’s Chunky Fully Loaded Rigatoni & Meatballs Soup
Price: $2.00
Purchased at: Ralph’s
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: A lot of food for a decent price. Rigatoni and sauce taste pretty good. Not mushy. Tom Brady.
Cons: Meatballs have strange texture. Eating soup after strenuous exercise. Raiders fans with truck nuts. Things that aren’t soup being called soup. Trying to hang yourself with noodles.

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.