Coinstar

Coinstar

There’s a container on my shelf that I specifically use for loose change and the occasional button. Recently, that container became full and I needed to figure out a way to get rid of the loose change.

I could’ve taken them to a bank and have the teller who helped me dream of shoving an adding machine down my throat. Or I could’ve given them to the panhandlers that hang outside of the convenience store down the street and watch them drown out their problems with alcohol. Or I could’ve stuck them in between my couch’s cushions, so that I can finally say I found loose change in between a couch’s cushions.

I eventually decided to cash them in using a Coinstar machine, which can count my coins for me. Sorry, drunk-ass panhandlers.

First, I had to find a Coinstar machine, which I did by visiting their website. There, I just inputted my zip code and the site told me where the nearest Coinstar machine was.

The nearest machine was at the locally-owned grocery store down the street that I hardly step into because their prices are slightly more expensive than the national grocery store chain I usually shop at.

I grabbed my container of coins and walked to the store. Unfortunately, this was a bad idea, because I had to pass the convenience store, and guess who were hanging out there. Yes, the panhandlers.

Now, when they’ve ask me for loose change in the past, I’ve told them that I didn’t have any. This time, I couldn’t say that with ten pounds of loose change in a container that was impossible to hide.

I really hoped they were too drunk to notice the Fort Knox of loose change I held in my hands. Fortunately, they were.

When I got to the store, there already was a guy unloading a small cooler of pennies into the Coinstar machine. I waited for 15 minutes as he dump over 5000 pennies into the machine.

After waiting and being amazed that 5000 pennies could fit into a small cooler, I began to dump my coins into the machine, which accepts pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollar coins, and dollar coins.

One cool thing I read about the Coinstar machine is that it can detect if you’ve accidently slipped in buttons, Japanese Yen, Canadian coins, other foreign coins, or those stupid penny souvenirs that are worth less than a penny. If you happen to stick in non-American money or crappy penny souvenirs, it will drop it into the slot labeled “Coin Return,” which seems kind of ironic to be called that.

When the machine was done counting my coins, it spit out a receipt that showed me how much money I put into it. My gross total was $50.06, but the machine subtracted an 8.9 percent processing fee. So my net total was $45.60.

After I got my receipt, I headed to the cashier with the shortest line to cash-in the receipt. For me, the shortest line was the four-items-or-less line, which also had the prettiest cashier. When I got to the pretty cashier, I handed her my receipt and she opened her register to get the money.

While counting the money, she asked me, “What are you going to with the money?”

Internally, I said, “Well, how about you and I spend it on dinner at a nice restaurant?”

Externally, I said, “Uh, I dunno,” and then walked away.

(I’m such a pussy.)

As I walked out of the store, I began asking myself questions to figure out how to spend the money.

“How many products can I review with this money?”

“Could I really feed an entire village in Ethiopia for just 25 cents a day?”

“Could I use an iPod Shuffle?”

“How many tricks can I get with this scratch?”

I eventually decided to use the money to help with the purchase of an iPod Shuffle.

Thanks, Coinstar.


Item: Coinstar
Purchase Price: FREE to use (8.9 percent fee for every dollar of coins counted)
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros: Easy to use. Convenient. No need to roll coins. Takes all types of coins, except those stupid penny souvenirs. Can turn your loose change into an iPod Shuffle.
Cons: Noisy. Drunk panhandlers. I am a pussy.

REVIEW: Cookies and Cream Pop-Tarts

Cookies and Cream Pop-Tarts

Being the number one source for quasi-product reviews, the Impulsive Buy get several hits a day from people looking for reviews of products via search engines. Recently, the top products that have brought visitors to the Impulsive Buy have been Chocolate Lucky Charms and the Motorola V180.

However, we do get the occasional visitor looking for things other than product reviews. Numerous people have visited the site looking for Terra Reid boob shots (I know Tara is spelled wrong, but that’s how they spelled it).

Another person was looking for a way to make tea from ganja, which I believe is a total waste of ganja. It’s great for brownies…not so good for tea.

Finally, we had a person looking for Kids Next Door porn. For those of you who don’t know, there’s a cartoon called Codename: Kids Next Door on the Cartoon Network. Now I don’t know if this person was looking for porn involving the characters from the cartoon, but I hope that person isn’t a teacher…or a priest…or Michael Jackson.

Despite all the reviews we’ve done, the most looked at reviews by those visitors that come by via the Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL search engines are Pop-Tarts reviews. Oh wait, that reminds me, there was this one person who was looking for, and I’m not making this up, doo-doo Pop-Tarts.

Anyway, here at the Impulsive Buy we’ve reviewed five flavors of Pop-Tarts and we add another today, Cookies & Creme Pop-Tarts.

One of the great things about these new flavors of Pop-Tarts is the ability to eat them, not only, toasted and straight out of the box, but you can also eat them frozen. However, I wouldn’t recommend freezing the Cookies & Cream Pop-Tarts, because for some reason they tasted kind of funny.

Now I don’t know if they tasted funny because they weren’t meant to be frozen or because of the abundance of year-old frozen fish in the Impulsive Buy freezer.

When I ate one that wasn’t frozen, I really liked them, especially when it was toasted.

Despite enjoying Cookies & Cream Pop-Tarts, they still weren’t good enough to knockoff my undisputed heavyweight champion of Pop-Tarts flavors, Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tarts.


Item: Cookies and Cream Pop-Tarts
Purchase Price: $3.00
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Cookies & Cream. Great tasting, but still doesn’t beat out Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tarts.
Cons: May taste weird frozen, if you have an abundance of frozen fish in your freezer. Doo doo Pop-Tarts?

Fuze Mega Energy Drink

Fuze Mega Energy Drink

(Editor’s Note: I recently upgraded to WordPress 1.5 and things are probably not looking right. If things are looking really weird, try emptying your browsers cache. I’m trying to get my old theme back, but then again the site could use a new look. Plus, I don’t think my RSS feeds are working.)

Energy drinks are like cookie-cutter boy bands, they all look alike, none of them stand out, there are, annoyingly, waaay too many of them, and it would be nice if 90 percent of them didn’t exist.

The Impulsive Buy has reviewed several energy drinks over the past seven months, like this one, this one, this one, and this one. All of them were greenish in color, almost tasted the same, and had some aggro name like “Adrenaline,” “Pit Bull,” “Rockstar,” or “Monster.” They also all contained the same energy inducing ingredients of caffeine, ginseng, inositol, taurine, carnitine, Ovaltine, and other things that end with “-tine.”

The Fuze Mega Energy Drink doesn’t deviate from any of that. It’s just like any other energy drink you’ve had.

Well folks, with the review part out of the way, we can now focus our attention towards this month’s prize drawing. Unfortunately, this time the prize won’t even be close to being as kick ass as last month’s 100th review prize. (If you want to know what the prize was for the 100th review prize drawing, click here.)

We thought about giving away the 50 Gmail invitations we recently received from Google, but most of you probably already have a Gmail account and also have 50 Gmail invitations that you’re trying to get rid of. So it would be pretty lame if we gave away Gmail invitations. (But if you don’t have a Gmail account, just email us and we’ll send an invitation your way.)

So this month, the Impulsive Buy will be giving three lucky readers each a pack of Denytne Fire, which we reviewed yesterday.

But that’s not all…

Those three winners will also each receive a pack of Dentyne Ice.

Why are we including a pack of Dentyne Ice, which we have never and will never review?

Fire and ice just go together, baby! You can’t have the Ying without the Yang, Ernie without Bert, or Mary Kate without Ashley.

Shazaam!!!

To enter the drawing, just leave a comment for THIS review. Also, so that we don’t seem like comment whores, you can also enter by sending us an email with the phrase “Fire Ice” in the subject field.

If you leave a comment, don’t forget to fill out the email field, because we will be emailing winners for their mailing addresses. Don’t worry about the shipping, we will take care of that.

We will start accepting entries for the drawing on February 16, 2005. We will stop accepting entries on February 19, 2005. Only one entry allowed per person. The drawing is only open to those in the United States and Canada. Sorry, to the rest of the world.

Entries will be stuffed into a Hefty HandySak and when it’s time to pull winner we will shake it like it was a Polaroid picture or Beyonce’s luscious ass. After an adequate amount of shaking, the winning entries will be pulled.

For those of you who’ve never won anything before, here’s your chance to finally to win something. If the Boston Red Sox can win a World Series, there’s hope for you, as well.

Fine Print: We promise your email address will not be used to send you spam about getting a free Mac Mini. We also promise your mailing address will not be used to send you offers for a Citi Bank credit card. Bribes will not be accepted. We will not be responsible for lost mail.


Item: Fuze Mega Energy Drink
Purchase Price: $1.99
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Big can. Caffeine. Vitamins C, B6, and B12. I can now get 5 cents back for recycling the can.
Cons: Tastes and looks like all the other energy drinks. Blah, blah, blah.

REVIEW: Dentyne Fire

Dentyne Fire

I’m an awesome kisser.

After years of practicing with my pillow, hand, and 8×10 photos of Angelina Jolie, I have taught myself to apply the perfect amounts of pressure, sucking, and tongue playing, when making out with a woman.

I’ve done exercises that make my lips softer, help me efficiently control my breathing through my nose, make my jaw stronger for longevity, and make my tongue flick faster and longer. I’ve read numerous articles on the art of kissing, like this one, this one, and this one.

I’m a kissing master. A black-belt kisser. The Sultan of Smooching. The King of Kissing. The Heavyweight Champion of Kissing.

If you don’t believe me, ask my 8×10 photos of Angelina Jolie.

Oh, but don’t ask the first girl I ever kissed, because that was one sloppy saliva mess I’d like to forget about. It was so bad, she broke up with me a couple of days later.

Anyway, how many of you have seen the commercial for Dentyne Fire?

If you haven’t seen it, it goes like this: A girl introduces her boyfriend to her parents. While boyfriend is talking to parents, girl pops a Dentyne Fire in her mouth. After chewing for a little bit, she gets horny as hell and jumps her boyfriend, right in front of her parents. Seeing this, the girl’s mom pops a Dentyne Fire and then jumps her husband.

The bottom line: Dentyne Fire will make you horny.

Of course, this can’t be true. It’s like saying spinach will instantly give me superhuman strength and help me attract flat-chested women.

To prove it isn’t true, I’ll chew a Dentyne Fire.

(Pops one into mouth)

Mmm…Nice cinnamon bite…OH! Excuse me…

(Eight hours and one pack of Dentyne Fire later)

Wow, I guess I’m going to have to buy some new pillows and 8×10 photos of Angelina Jolie. Heh, heh!

Now I don’t know if it was the Dentyne Fire or Debbie Gibson’s Playboy photo shoot that kept me busy for the past eight hours, but all I know is that I’m out of Dentyne Fire and Valentine’s Day is over. This means I can’t follow through with my plans to get a woman to kiss me on Valentine’s Day using the Dentyne Fire and then take her breath away using my well-practiced kissing techniques.

Oh well, there’s always next Valentine’s Day.


Item: Dentyne Fire
Purchase Price: $1.29
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Spicy. Cinnamon. May make you horny. I AM an awesome kisser.
Cons: Flavor lasts as long as any other gum.

Keto Vanilla Moon Super Premium Ice Cream

Keto Ice Cream

(Editor’s Note: I was going to do a review about Valentine’s Day today, but I found a product that could actually help me get a Valentine, if their commercial is accurate. I’ll review it tomorrow and let you know if it worked. No, it’s not pheromones.

So instead of a Valentine’s Day review, today you get another low-carb product review. Yeah!)

When items are labeled “Reduced for Quick Sale,” there are probably several reasons why: (1) Expiration date is coming up. (2) Item has been discontinued. (3) The product isn’t selling well. (4) The packaging has been damaged. (5) Item was returned. (6) It’s crap and it totally blows. (7) Product is endorsed by Seymour Smith. Who? Exactly. (8) Possible store employee practical joke on customers involving bodily fluids being added to the product.

When I pulled out a pint of Keto Vanilla Moon Super Premium Ice Cream from the freezer case at the national grocery store chain I shop at, I picked it up because of the “Reduced for Quick Sale” price tag hanging from the shelf.

I inspected it to see which of the reasons above was the cause for the “Reduced for Quick Sale” tag. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell, but my money was on reason number six because of the three words printed repeatedly on the lid, “The Low Carb Leader.”

Now boys and girls, what have we learned about low-carb foods?

Let’s say it all together.

“They’re crap, they totally blow, and they’re a waste of money.”

However, after reading the packaging more thoroughly, I thought the Keto Vanilla Moon might taste better than other low-carb foods because it had the same high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol than regular ice cream.

Well just like my Super Bowl pick, my presidential election pick, and my pick to win Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, I was totally wrong. Despite all the fat and cholesterol, it didn’t taste very good. It sort of tasted like Cool Whip…Lite, and I think I’m being a little generous by saying that.

After I read the package even more thoroughly, I found out the Keto Vanilla Moon was also high in dietary fiber. Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time I checked, ice cream didn’t aid with bowel movements, unless you’re lactose intolerant, then it REALLY helps with bowel movements.

But it’s good to know that I can get fiber in ways other than Metamucil, whole-grain bread, and a Taco Bell bean burrito.

I wanted to find out more about Keto, but unfortunately it turned out that they’re no longer in business. So I guess that explained why the Keto Super Premium Ice Cream was labeled “Reduced for Quick Sale.”

I’ll have to add to my list, “(9) Company no longer in business.”

So if you’re interested in trying Keto Super Premium Ice Cream, get yours now, because once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.


Item: Vanilla Moon Keto Super Premium Ice Cream
Purchase Price: $3.49 (on sale)
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: Very limited edition. High in fiber.
Cons: Keto is no longer in business. Not very “super” or “premium.” Tastes like Cool Whip Lite. High is saturated fat and cholesterol.