Category: Spotted on Shelves

When I was in sixth grade, I opened a lemonade stand in my neighborhood to make money so that I could buy Choose Your Own Adventure books. Unfortunately, not a lot of foot and car traffic went through my neighborhood, it’s a pain in the ass to squeeze lemons, and I didn’t understand the concept of ratios. My lemonade ended up being either too sour, too watery, or too cavity causing.

If only I had the new MiO Lemonade and Blueberry Lemonade Liquid Water Enhancers back then…or Countrytime lemonade powder mix…or the courage to shoplift, then I would’ve had all of the Choose Your Adventure books.

Like the other MiO flavors, these two new varieties have 0 calories and can make 24 eight-ounce servings per bottle. But more importantly, there’s no seeds to worry about or lemon juice flying into my eyes. Just squeeze the instructed amount into eight ounces of water and voila!

New products are released all the time and here are some we found on our most recent shopping trips. We may or may not review them, but we’d like to let you know what new items are popping up on store shelves.

With the right PVC tubing, these jumbo marshmallows would make wonderful ammunition for a double barreled marshmallow shotgun. Also, I want to buy a bag just so I can see how silly it would look to place one of them in a mug of hot cocoa.

I thought Tupac has released a lot of things posthumously, but Paul Newman has him beat. These Newman’s Own Complete Skillet Meals are meant for two and come in five flavors: Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo; Chicken Florentine & Farfalle; Chicken Parmigiana & Penne Garlic Chicken, Vegetables & Farfalle; and Italian Sausage & Rigatoni. Just pour the contents of the bag into a skillet, heat it up for 10 minutes, and enjoy.

Newman’s Own isn’t the only company that recently put out bagged frozen meals. Stouffer’s Farmers Harvest line now comes in microwaveable steam bags. There are five varieties: Cheesy Southwest-Style Chicken, Chicken Florentine, Creamy Shrimp Scampi, Five Cheese Tortelloni, and Garlic Chicken. You provide the plate and utensils, and Stouffer’s will supply the food that will force you to wash the plate and utensils.

I learned about these in February, thanks to a Fatguy Food Blog review, and I’ve been looking for them since. Recently, they popped up at my local Safeway. While I did buy a bag, a part of me doesn’t think it’s very creative to make a potato chip flavor that tastes like something else that’s made with potatoes.

Photo via Impulsive Buy reader Travis.

These have just started to roll out nationwide at Walmart stores, but were released in February in certain markets in the Midwest, Texas, and Western U.S. If only the Hispanic population here on these rocks in the middle of the Pacific Ocean made up more than nine percent of our total population, then we could’ve gotten Doritos Dinamita earlier. Here’s a review of the Nacho Picoso flavor from our friends over at Review Spew.

If you’re out shopping and see a new product on the shelf, snap a picture of it, email it to us at theimpulsivebuy@gmail.com, and you might see it in our next Spotted on Shelves post.

Update: Click here to read our Mountain Dew Dark Berry review

Mountain Dew is planning to release a new flavor this summer, Dark Berry. The new flavor is a movie tie-in for the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises, which is scheduled to be released July 20, 2012. ComicBookMovie.com has images of the packaging.

According to BevReview, the caffeinated beverage will be mixed berry flavored and isn’t a renamed version of any previous Mountain Dew flavors. It will be available sometime in June and hang around for eight weeks.

I’m excited about this Dark Berry flavor, but Mountain Dew would excite me even more if they held another DEWmocracy election this year. They did one in 2008 and 2010, so if my math is correct, it’s about time for another.

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Update: Click here to read our International Delight Iced Coffee review

Since I’m not a regular coffee drinker, I don’t follow what International Delight Coffee Creamer puts out. Actually, to be honest, before I did research for this post, I was confused between International Delight and General Foods International. But I learned one produces creamer, while the other produces coffee.

Oh wait, that’s no longer the case because International Delight is now offering ready-to-drink iced coffee, which is made using 100 percent premium Arabica coffee and comes in three flavors – Mocha, Vanilla, and Original.

So no longer do you have to walk into a Starbucks, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Dunkin’ Donuts, or independent coffeehouse to pick up an iced coffee. Instead, you can walk up to your fridge, take out the half-gallon carton of International Delight’s Iced Coffee, and pour yourself a glass…or drink it straight out of the carton.

A cup serving of International Delight’s Iced Coffee has 150 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, 23 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein. A half-gallon of International Delights Iced Coffee has a suggested retail price of $3.99.

It’s getting harder for me to find a TCBY location. The closest one folded and was turned into a Chinese hot pot restaurant. A few years ago, there used to be three locations on this rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but now there’s just one. But who knows how long that one will remain open. If that one closes, how will I satisfy my biennial TCBY craving?

TCBYGrocery, that’s how.

This month, TCBY announced a new line of pre-packaged frozen yogurt quarts, pints, and novelties to be sold nationwide at stores like Walmart and Super Target.

TCBYGrocery Quarts come in four flavors: Supreme Cookies & Cream, English Toffee Crunch, Strawberry Swirl, and Classic Vanilla Bean. TCBYGrocery Pints come in six flavors: Strawberry Swirl, Chocolate Chocolate, Mint Chocolate Chunk, Supreme Cookies & Cream, Tropical Mango Peach, and Cookie Dough. A 1/2 cup serving of all flavors contain less than 140 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, and 18 grams of sugar.

TCBYGrocery Novelties include Chocolate Fudge Bars (80 calories, 1.5 grams of fat, and 13 grams of sugar), Strawberry Swirl Bars (100 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, and 15 grams of sugar), Orange & Vanilla Bars (110 calories, 2 grams of fat, and 18 grams of sugar), and Frozen Yogurt Sandwiches (180 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, and 18 grams of sugar).

All TCBYGrocery products are made with low-fat frozen yogurt with probiotic yogurt cultures.

Photo courtesy of A Sweet Score