Chips Ahoy Archives - Page 6 of 8

REVIEW: Chewy Chips Ahoy! Sweet ‘n Salty Salted Caramel Chunk

June 5, 2013August 14, 2023 Drew 2 Comments

A cookie is one of those foods that really should be review proof, right?

It’s a sweet mound of dough and sugar, sometimes with something tasty contained within. People who don’t enjoy sweets aren’t going to eat them, and people who do are almost automatically going to like them. Yeah, you can get some outliers like shortbread cookies or Fig Newtons that some people hate, but by and large, there’s no way to mess up a cookie…EXCEPT by messing with the formula.

Sometimes successful companies who have plateaued on expansion with their existing lines will try dreaming up new variations of a product they’ve already mastered. Occasionally this works out really well. Frequently it…doesn’t. But it’s why we’re here today to discuss Chips Ahoy!’s latest offering, a dual attempt to increase market share and to make my spellchecker commit suicide.

The premise behind Sweet ‘n Salty is that they’re part of the “chewy” sub-line of Chips Ahoy!, but in addition to chocolate chips, they also contain salted caramel chunks. Since caramel is inherently sweet, it seems like more of a 2-1 ratio, but I guess “Sweet ‘n Salty ‘n Sweet” isn’t as marketable.

As you’d expect, the package is strongly modeled on Chips Ahoy’s “house style,” where you exchange some originality for instant recognition. If you’ve ever seen an EC horror comic, you know what I mean — any issue of Tales from the Crypt, the Haunt of Fear, etc. had a large box in the upper third with the book’s title, a small rectangle on the far left with an eye-catching noun like “Terror” or “Horror,” and three circles showing the trio of hosts (the Crypt Keeper, the Vault Keeper, the Old Witch). The individual cover images would vary, obviously, but you always recognize an EC cover or parody immediately.

As the “chewy” variety of Chips Ahoy!, this package is primarily red, with the standard logo and lettering and background. However, the image depicts a cookie with both chips and caramel chunks and supplements this with the ubiquitous “New!” tag in the upper left. Overly creative? No. Recognizable? Quite.

To my non-cookie-expert mind, it seems like the key to success here lies in achieving the right balance. Too salty and it’ll turn away people who came for a cookie, not a cracker. Too sweet and you risk rendering the salt unnoticeable/irrelevant. I’m happy to report that Chips Ahoy! seems to have found a pretty good balance, albeit with just a little less salt than I might have liked.

The cookies are the same size and consistency as any other Chips Ahoy! cookie you’ve ever had, and yes, they are indeed chewy, almost oozing rather than crumbling into your mouth. The chocolate is sweet, the chips are plentiful, and the caramel definitely makes its presence felt, though not overbearingly so. As a caramel fiend, I actually could have used just a bit more, but overall it’s a good proportion.

And yes, you will taste some salt, though it takes some time to hit; and as I mentioned before, remains fairly subtle. You might get the impression that these are chocolate chip-caramel cookies that some factory worker just accidentally dumped some salt into, and while that doesn’t make them taste bad by any stretch, I could see some people (like me) wishing for more.

Still, it’s hard to fault Chips Ahoy! too much for that. A pleasing taste, soft texture, and sweet smell combine, Voltron-style, to form a pretty darn good cookie, at least by prepackaged grocery store standards. I do think they could have just not bothered with the salt, but maybe that’s one of the things that attracts people and moves product in a way that plain caramel wouldn’t have. And that’s why I’m not one of the cookie mavens.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 95 milligrams of sodium, 25 milligrams of potassium, 20 grams of total carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 12 grams of sugars, and less than 1 gram of protein.)

Other Chewy Chips Ahoy! Sweet ‘n Salty Salted Caramel Chunk:
Junk Food Guy

Item: Chewy Chips Ahoy! Sweet ‘n Salty Salted Caramel Chunk
Purchased Price: $3.79
Size: 9.5 ounces
Purchased at: Acme
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Strong brand marketing. Seeking the sweet/salty nirvana. Enjoyable smell. Plentiful chips and caramel. Stay chewy, my friends.
Cons: “Subtle salt” not just a good band name. Certain people (wives) might find them overly chewy. Could get lost among similar-looking Chips Ahoy! Chewy varieties. Suicidal spellcheck (also a good band name).

REVIEW: Chewy Chips Ahoy Chocolate Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

April 23, 2013August 14, 2023 Margaret 12 Comments

As with any decade, the 90s brought along waves of immense enthusiasm for a variety of cultural phenomena. Shoulder pads. Slap bracelets. Oat bran. I think the yo-yo came back for a brief stint in 1999. Somewhere along the way, the enthusiasm for such trends dwindled.

So it goes with the grocery store chocolate chip cookie. While not a distinctly 90s product, they, much like the nation’s love for shoulder-specific garments, seem to have fallen humbly out of the marketing spotlight, and yet I know that there are those among us who love the cheap, chewy, slightly preserved taste of a pre-packaged cookie. This is nothing to be ashamed of, dear reader, for, indeed, they are cookies. If you munch them, are they not sugary? If you chew them, are they not filled with bits of goodness?

Such were my thoughts when I happened upon the Chewy Chips Ahoy! Chocolate Made With Reese’s.

The promise of greatness.

I read somewhere that, even if we tried, it would impossible to clone a dinosaur (note to self: must re-think way to attain a pet dinosaur). While they’re not related to a triceratops, I’m convinced the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, similarly, cannot be replicated. While many companies try, the proportions of a Reese’s are exact, the peanut butter ample, and the fudgy, slightly oily chocolate give the needed contrast to the gritty, dry peanut butter. It is, in my book, what every peanut butter cup is measured up against, so the fact that Mr. Chips Ahoy (would he be a pirate?) could garner some support from The Mr. Reese definitely puts these cookies in an advantageous position. At the same time, it also raises my level of expectations.

And these do not disappoint. The chocolate and peanut butter combination is spot-on. There are milk chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and Reese’s chunks/bits all around. You get at least one in every bite. The chocolate chips are of a mild, semisweet variety while the peanut butter chips are nutty, creamy, and just sugary enough. Every now and again, a chunk of meteor-like Reese’s shows up to the party. These chunks lean more to the edge of “broken up Reese’s bits” than they do “whole Reese’s cups,” but, with at least two to three solid chunks in every cookie, I can roll with that.

If there’s anything I think Mr. Chips Ahoy could work on, it’d be his cookie base. The texture works, leaning more towards “cakey” than “chewy,” and, if I’m being nit-picky, the taste of the chocolate base is pretty weak, but, let’s be honest: that’s nothing too out-of-the-ordinary for a chocolate Chips Ahoy. These cookies are all about the chips. It even says it in the name.

Certainly, there are many prospects to consider when having an afternoon snack. Is it filling? Does it have enough protein? Is it enhanced with a fiber extracts and Omega-3 liquigels of unknown origin? Well (thankfully), these cookies have none of that. What they do have is a good portion size. Not gigantomundo. Not itty-bitty. And, not to go all “Goldilocks” on ya, but they’re just enough to make a serving size worth 2 cookies, which is all I really need, although I could stuff them all at once if I had the hankerin’.

Well, Nabisco, ya did good. I could eat these on a plane, in a car, on a bus, or in a train. The fudgy chips, cakey cookie, and dry grit of the roasted peanut butter in the Reese’s makes for an all-sensors-loaded experience. I fear the English language has yet to discover the word for the joy this combination brings, but, if I were to invent one, it would likely smoosh together an amalgam of interjections, onomatopoeias, and exclamation marks. Keep making more good cookies like this, Mr. Ahoy. I’ll keep buying.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 100 milligrams of potassium, 18 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 11 grams of sugars, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Chewy Chips Ahoy Chocolate Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Purchased Price: $4.59
Size: 9.5 oz.
Purchased at: Met Foods
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Nutty, chocolate goodness. Lots of peanut butter chips. Lots of semisweet chocolate chips. Reese’s chunks. Nice size. Onomatopoeias. 90s trends.
Cons: Not the best chocolate cookie base. Could have more Reese’s. Lack of vocabulary to describe yumminess. The inability to have a pet dinosaur. Shoulder pads.

REVIEW: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

May 30, 2012August 14, 2023 Marvo 12 Comments

For a second, I thought about copying and pasting the regular Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups review we did in 2010 to complete this review, because everything I said in that review would apply to these new Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Doing that would’ve been an extremely lazy and reprehensible thing to do, even though I’ve done it before. Of course, a lazier and reprehensibler thing I could’ve done was make this review consist of nothing but a link to the old review.

But you deserve better than that and these Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups deserve better than that because they’re quite tasty.

Although the packaging says they’re made with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, they don’t taste like they were made with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The peanut butter center of the iconic candy has such a distinct flavor that it should easily stand out in these cookies, but instead it’s a nondescript peanut butter flavor.

The cookies not only contain mini peanut butter cups, but also peanut butter flavored chips. They even contain something a bit scary called Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Drops, but none of them have that familiar Reese’s peanut butter flavor. While that’s extremely disappointing, the peanut butter in these cookies do complement the chocolate well.

The Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are wonderfully chewy with a good balance of chocolate and peanut butter. Basically, they’re forkin’ delicious. The cookies are on the smallish side, but they’re packed with chocolate chips, peanut butter flavored chips, and tiny peanut butter cups. Actually, that’s not quite correct. While every cookie I pulled out and stuffed into my mouth had peanut butter and chocolate chips, some of them didn’t have any peanut butter cups. However, that really didn’t make them taste different from the others.

Even though they lack the unique flavor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and they’re made using partially hydrogenated oil, it’s hard not to chain eat through a package of these Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Have you ever seen a double rainbow? It’s extremely beautiful. Seeing two colorful arcs in the sky with a chance to get two pots of gold is exhilarating.

These Chewy Chips Ahoy Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are like a double rainbow, except the second rainbow is a bit faded and you can barely make it out in the sky. It’s still awesome, but not as awesome as it could’ve been.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat*, 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 100 milligrams of sodium, 40 milligrams of potassium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 11 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

*made with partially hydrogenated oil

Item: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Price: $3.79 (on sale)
Size: 9.5 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Forkin’ tasty. Addictive. Like a double rainbow, except with one rainbow a little faded. Lots of chocolate and peanut butter chips. Chasing double rainbows to get two pots of gold.
Cons: Doesn’t taste like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Peanut butter cups aren’t in every cookie. Made with partially hydrogenated oil. Could’ve been awesome. Smallish.

REVIEW: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Gooey Caramel Cookies

May 11, 2012August 14, 2023 Marvo 11 Comments

The Chewy Chips Ahoy! Gooey Caramel cookies are a lot smaller than the Chocofudge and Megafudge Chips Ahoy! Chewy Gooey Cookies we reviewed last year.

What kind of size difference are we talking about?

In cookie terms, they’re slightly wider than an Oreo. For those of you who’ve never had an Oreo, I’m going to put it into terms that might help you understand. If you saw someone with areolas the size of the Chewy Chips Ahoy! Gooey Caramel, you’d think they’re normal, unless they had three of them. But if another person had areolas the size of the other Chips Ahoy! Chewy Gooey cookie varieties, you’d want them to put their shirt back on.

At first, I didn’t think the cookies were at all gooey, much like the other Gooey varieties, but it turns out they were. I just didn’t eat them properly. Instead of eating them like any normal human being would, I had to split the cookie in half in order to experience the gooeyness, exactly like what’s shown on the product’s packaging.

Who the hell would eat these cookies in a way that involves the same motions used to open a newspaper? If you’ve watched Sesame Street, you know the proper way to eat cookies involves grabbing a whole bunch of them, throwing them at your mouth, and allowing most of the cookies to fall to the ground while yelling, “Om nom nom nom!”

You’d think a Chewy Chips Ahoy! cookie stuffed with gooey caramel would be awesome, like watching kittens yawn, but I can’t say that it is.

Each cookie is impregnated with a good amount of caramel, but the caramel flavor is lacking. It’s almost as if I’m eating regular Chewy Chips Ahoy! cookies, which isn’t bad, but there should’ve been more to it. If these cookies had emotions, I would buy a Twix candy bar, eat it in front of them, and then tell the cookies that’s how caramel should taste with cookies and chocolate.

I looked through the ingredients list and found most of the stuff needed to make caramel, but the list didn’t specifically say there’s caramel. It specifically says there are semisweet chocolate chips and lists its ingredients in between sad and happy emoticon mouths, but it doesn’t do the same for the caramel. I thought that was a bit strange.

Overall, the Chewy Chips Ahoy! Gooey Caramel cookies are disappointing. While they’re decent cookies and have a nice chewiness to them, I can’t say they’re addictive, which I think is a pretty good measurement of how good a cookie is. They don’t make me want to eat them faster than Law & Order can rip a story from the headlines.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 45 calories from fat, 5 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 1.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 125 milligrams of sodium, 50 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.)

Item: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Gooey Caramel Cookies
Price: $2.98
Size: 10 ounces
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Gooey, if you eat them a certain way. Chewy. Twix. Lots of caramel. Om nom nom nom! Watching kittens yawn.
Cons: Disappointing. Lacks good caramel flavor. Smaller than other Chewy Gooey Chips Ahoy! varieties. Not addictive. The wasteful way I eat cookies.

REVIEW: Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Chewy Gooey Cookies (Chocofudge and Megafudge)

May 23, 2011December 12, 2020 Marvo 14 Comments

Chips Ahoy cookies are like the human drug testing subjects of the cookie world because Nabisco will stick anything into them to see if it works. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups…yup. Heath Candy Bar pieces…yup. Candy coated chocolate pieces…yup. Oatmeal…yup. Patriotism…yup.

This time around they’re putting fudge into the center of their signature chocolate chip cookies to create Chips Ahoy Chewy Gooey Chocofudge and Megafudge cookies. Yes, the fudge puts the “gooey” in the Chips Ahoy Chewy Gooey. Yes, Chocofudge and Megafudge sound like Godzilla’s gigantic blob-like neighbors on Monster Island. And, yes, I wish one of them was named Superfudge so that, much like Nabisco stuffs fudge into these cookies, I could stuff this review with Judy Blume references.

The Chocofudge version looks like a regular Chewy Chips Ahoy cookie, while the Megafudge looks like a Chips Ahoy cookie from a bizarro dimension with its chocolate cookie and white chocolate chips. Although, due to the fudge injection, both varieties look a little more plump than regular Chewy Chips Ahoy.

Fudge fills each cookie like a Great Dane fills a Smart Car. With the amount of fudge it’s almost impossible to not get fudge in every bite, unless you’re one of those odd people who nibbles a cookie like a bunny rabbit nibbles on a carrot.

The Chips Ahoy Chewy Gooey cookies are chewy, but I’m not completely sold on the gooey part. In my mind I’ve always imagined gooey being something soft and sticky that holds together as if their lives depended on it as it’s being stretched apart and only separating because gravity demanded it. Although, I may have this mindset from watching way too many pizza commercials. There is some stretching, but the fudge gives up easily, much like I do when playing Madden at All-Madden difficulty. But the fudge doesn’t cry, throw a controller across the room, and scream “I suuuuuck.”

While they aren’t gooey in my eyes, the Chips Ahoy Chewy Gooey Chocofudge are really good and a step above regular Chewy Chips Ahoy. Heck, let me say they’re also better than regular non-chewy Chips Ahoy. The fudge, while not quality stuff, does give the cookie a significantly stronger chocolate flavor which makes these cookies much more satisfying than regular Chips Ahoy.

As for the Chips Ahoy Chewy Gooey Megafudge, I can’t say I enjoyed them as much as the Chocofudge. And I blame the white chocolate chips for that. The chocolate cookie and fudge give it a deep chocolate flavor, but the white chocolate chips disrupt it. They’re like those people who ruin the telling of a really good story by interrupting the storyteller at the most interesting moments with meaningless comments and questions, like “What happened next?” or “If that was me, I’d slap that bitch.”

What happened next? If you shut up, you’ll find out.

I’m glad Nabisco decided to stuff fudge into these Chips Ahoy Chewy Gooey cookies instead of dipping them in fudge like they do with their Oreo cookies, because having fudge on the outside tends to get a little messy. Although, since Chips Ahoy are like the human drug testing subjects of the cookie world, I wouldn’t be surprised if a fudge filled and fudge dipped Chips Ahoy cookie popped up on store shelves.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – Chocofudge – 150 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 1 gram of polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 110 milligrams of sodium, 60 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, and 1 grams of protein. Megafudge – 150 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 1 gram of polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 110 milligrams of sodium, 80 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, and 1 grams of protein)

Item: Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Chewy Gooey Cookies (Chocofudge and Megafudge)
Price: $3.99 each
Size: 10 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Chocofudge)
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Megafudge)
Pros: Chocofudge is a better Chips Ahoy cookie. Enough fudge to have fudge in every bite. Strong chocolate flavor. Not using an exclamation point after EVERY Chips Ahoy reference. Judy Blume.
Cons: Not as gooey as I hoped. White chocolate chips throw off flavor of Megafudge. People who interrupt storytellers. Playing Madden at All-Madden level.