NEWS: Starbucks Goes Donald Trump On Old Ice Cream Line And Replaces It With Younger Ice Cream Line

Marvo 8 Comments

Starbucks recently launched a new super-premium ice cream in flavors that will be familiar to those Starbucks junkies who know the coffee giant’s menu better than the back of their hand. Of course, for those addicts it’s hard to see the back of their hand without spilling the Starbucks coffee it’s holding.

The new, perky ice cream line replaces the old, saggy ice cream line made by Dreyer’s. Unilever will produce it and make the ice cream with milk that’s free of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), just like Ben & Jerry’s — another company under the Unilever umbrella.

Again, if you have Starbucks running through your veins and exiting you through your urethra, the flavors that make up the new ice cream line will be familiar to you:

Caramel Macchiato – Swirled coffee and vanilla ice creams with ribbons of golden caramel.

Mocha Frappuccino – Swirled coffee and chocolate ice creams.

Java Chip Frappuccino – Coffee ice cream with dark chocolaty chunks.

Coffee – Swirled coffee and espresso ice creams.

Pints will be available at your favorite grocer, convenience store or superstore monstrosity for a suggested retail price of $3.99.

(Update: Read our review of the coffee flavor here.)

REVIEW: Raspberry Goji Jello with Antioxidants

Marvo 18 Comments

Jello with Antioxidants

The Raspberry Goji Jello contains the antioxidants vitamins A and E.

Oh, I remember a time when those two weren’t known as antioxidants. I can’t quite recall what they were called. Let me think for a moment. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

Oh yeah, that’s right, they were just called vitamins.

When did vitamins A and E become antioxidants? I thought antioxidants were scientific sounding things with names that are made up of ten or more letters, like polyphenols, flavonoids, and carotenoids. If vitamins A and E are antioxidants, then the Skippy Peanut Butter that contains vitamin E can technically be called Skippy Peanut Butter with Antioxidants and the fortified milk I drink that has vitamin A could also be called Fortified Milk with Antioxidants.

Those names would not only be silly, but they would also make it much harder to sing the 1980s ABC Public Service Announcement “Quickfast” by The Bod Squad.

A piece of toast and one of these:
Some Skippy Peanut Butter with Antioxidants or a slice of cheese.
Fortified Milk with Antioxidants or juice to wash it down.
It’s the fast fast quick fastest breakfast in town!

(Note: For those of you who are too young to know what I’m referring to here, please listen to this MP3 of PSA history. For those of you who are old enough to know what I’m referring to, your mother told me to ask you when are you going to get married and/or when are you having children?)

The Raspberry Goji Jello may have antioxidants but it seems it doesn’t get them from the raspberries and goji berries, which are known to be high in a variety of antioxidants. One of the reasons why I believe they don’t provide any antioxidants is because are both great sources of Vitamin C, but according to the Jello packaging it’s not a significant source of it. But the more obvious reason is because, according to the ingredients list, the Jello gets its vitamin E via vitamin E acetate, while the vitamin A comes from added beta-carotene. So it seems the raspberries and goji berries provide flavor, but no antioxidants, which is kind of deceiving.

Speaking of the Raspberry Goji Jello’s flavor, it had a sweet, pleasant taste. I could taste the raspberry, but the Jello wasn’t at all tart. I’m not sure what goji berries taste like so, I’m not sure if I could taste them. But combined it created a nice flavor, with a hint of an artificial sweetener aftertaste, thanks to the aspartame and deceit in it.

Each container of the Raspberry Goji Jello with Antioxidants is a good source of vitamins A and E, if you consider 10 percent of your daily recommended intake of them “a good source.” It’s also fat free, sugar free and contains only 10 calories per serving — making it a guilt-free snack. But just don’t expect it to be your main source of antioxidants.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 container – 10 calories, 0 grams of fat, 45 milligrams of sodium, 0 grams of carbs, 0 grams of sugar, 1 grams of protein, 10% vitamin A and 10% vitamin E.)

(Note: Gigi also reviewed them. Also, I’m boycotting the hyphen that’s in the name Jello because I think it serves no purpose.)

Item: Raspberry Goji Jello with Antioxidants
Price: $5.49
Size: 6-pack
Purchased at: Star Market
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Sweet, pleasant flavor. Only 10 calories per serving. Sugar free. No fat. No preservatives. Reliving the 1980s.
Cons: Raspberries and Goji berries don’t appear to provide antioxidants. Despite what the packaging says, it’s not really a good source of vitamins A & E. Slight artificial sweetener aftertaste. Pricey for what you get. Being asked silly questions by your parents.

NEWS: Ziploc evolve Bags Are Eco-Friendly Until You Throw Them Away

Marvo 4 Comments

The new eco-friendly Ziploc evolve sandwich and storage bags are made from a new resin that uses 25% less plastic than their regular bags, are manufactured using approximately 50% renewable wind energy and packaged in a 100% recycled box, with at least 35% postconsumer content.

While all of this might be fine and dandy to the casual environmentalist, the maniacal, Captain Planet costume-wearing treehugger would point to the fact that if these bags are so evolved, why is the E in “evolve” lowercase and why don’t they have powers like the characters on Heroes?

A level-headed (not crazy) treehugger who doesn’t dress up in tights and paints their skin blue would probably wonder why Ziploc didn’t do more, since most of their bags probably end up in landfills and are difficult to recycle because they’re made out of #4 plastics.

The Ziploc evolve bags seem like a step in the right direction, but it would be more impressive if all of their bags were made this way.

The bags are available in sandwich ($2.49), quart ($3.49) and gallon ($3.49) sizes.

NEWS: Ben & Jerry’s Latest Flavors Causes Sweet Tooths to Rejoice and Nut Allergy Sufferers to Shake Their Fists in Anger

Marvo 16 Comments

Ben & Jerry’s recently introduced two new flavors to their lineup of creamy creations: the creatively named Mission to Marzipan and the unimaginative Chocolate Macadamia, which a Chunky Monkey armed with a typewriter could’ve named. Both flavors contain nuts in some shape or form.

The Mission to Marzipan flavor is made up of sweet cream ice cream with almond cookies and a Marzipan swirl. Marzipan is a sweet, yellowish paste of ground almonds, sugar, and egg whites. And knowing what it is will impress your foodie friends. The Chocolate Macadamia consists of chocolate and vanilla ice creams with fudge covered macadamia nuts. While Mission to Marzipan has the creative name, the Chocolate Macadamia can brag about the fact that its macadamias, cocoa and vanilla are Fair Trade-certified.

The Mission to Marzipan has 260 calories, 13 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 32 grams of carbs and 25 grams of sugar per 1/2 cup serving. The Chocolate Macadamia has 270 calories, 18 grams of fat, 12 grams of saturated fat, 25 grams of carbs and 22 grams of sugar per serving.

(You can read a review of the Chocolate Macadamia flavor here.)

REVIEW: Nabisco Oreo Fun Stix

Marvo 13 Comments

Oreo Fun Stix

I’ve yet to have any fun with these Nabisco Oreo Fun Stix. I should be having a blast with them because, after all, the word “fun” is in its name, but I’ve gone through almost the entire box and I haven’t gotten any entertainment out of them; not even by trying to light them or sticking them into an orifice. It’s so boring that I consider it the snack version of The Hills spin-off The City.

Each box comes with eight packs of two cylindrical chocolate cookie wafers lined with Oreo creme that measures six inches long and half an inch in diameter. They’re hollow, so they’re just like those cereal straws that allow you to slurp up milk with them, except you won’t find these in the cereal aisle and because they’re not labeled “cereal straws” they won’t go down as one of the most absurd packaged food ideas that our future alien overlords will point to as the reason why it was so easy to enslave the human race.

But maybe it’s not the fault of the Oreo Fun Stix and I’m not using them correctly or my body is numb to fun after years and years of consuming Oreos in every possible way and the saturated fat they provided has blocked the “fun juice” from reaching my brain. So maybe the fun comes from trying to unblock the “fun juice.”

The Oreo Fun Stix continues the long list of items that haven’t given me the same satisfaction as regular Oreo cookies. The cookie shell was crispy, but perhaps too crispy since some of the Fun Stix were broken when I opened their packs and they easily left a bunch of crumbs on my table, which I guess could be entertaining if I had a penchant for hearing the sucking sound from a 1980s Black & Decker DustBuster.

The Oreo cream tasted very much like the sweet whiteness that we’ve all grown to love and lick, but because the cream lining is inside the wafer stick I can’t get any pleasure from licking it, unless I’m supposed to get delight from a surgical procedure that turns my tongue into a snake’s tongue. The cookie shell combined with the Oreo cream didn’t quite taste like an actual Oreo cookie, which was disappointing. For roughly the same price as these Oreo Fun Stix you can get actual Oreos and, I think, more of them.

I still don’t know what exactly is so fun about these Oreo Fun Stix and I’ll probably never find out. I guess just because it has the word “fun” in it, doesn’t automatically make them fun, after all, the word “fun” is also in words like defunct, dysfunctional, funeral, fungus, malfunction and nonrefundable.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 package – 90 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 50 milligrams of sodium, 30 milligrams of potassium, 13 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 9 grams of sugar, less than 1 gram of protein and 4% Iron.)

Item: Nabisco Oreo Fun Stix
Price: $3.49
Size: 8-pack
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Crunchy. Oreo cream. 90 calories per pack. DustBusters.
Cons: It’s basically a cereal straw, one of the downfalls of the human race. Not fun at all. Didn’t quite taste like an Oreo. Wafer was a little too fragile. Pricey for the amount you get. Makes crumbs. The MTV executive who green-lighted The City. Having alien overlords in the future.