Tag: Chips

Pringles Extreme Screamin’ Dill Pickle

Ace 28 Comments

Pringles Extreme Screamin' Dill Pickle

Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck in an M.C. Escher painting, running through endless corridors of waterfalls and weird shit only to end up in the same place. This might be because I browse the shopping aisles after taking a tab of acid, but it’s more likely that I’m just running into the same lazy promotions. Oh boy, another company gone “extreme” to spice up my life. I’ve grown weary of writing “extreme” jokes every other review, so if this is their intention, they have turned me into a beaten man.

Luckily, there is more to this damnation of cardboard tube than a stupid name, and believe me, it is a very stupid name. “Screamin’ Dill Pickle” was actually slang for gonorrhea where I grew up. It brought back some bad memories when I saw this on the shelves. Pickle flavoring on Pringles scared the shit out of me. I absolutely hate it when I get pickle juice on my fries, so pickle flavoring on Pringles would probably be that much worse.

I should probably explain Pringles to the uninitiated. Pringles are for small children who enjoy the novelty of eating stackable chips and stoners who like making those Pringles lips as seen in the commercials. If potato chips were steak, then Pringles would be mechanically separated beef. That’s because Pringles are “potato crisps” that are made from a potato-based dough not unlike your favorite instant mashed potatoes. While this does wonders for their ability to be neatly stacked into tubes, it doesn’t keep Pringles from tasting like salty paper.

While I figured that I probably wouldn’t enjoy this, I was still willing to give it a shot. I figured that the pickle flavoring would be mild at best. I also enjoy partaking in a crispy pickle spear fresh from the jar every once in a while, so I figured that I was prepared for some mighty picklage. However, you readers should know by now that I judge about as well as Lance Ito.

This is either the best thing ever or a nauseating abomination depending on your level of sanity. I don’t know how they did it, but it actually tastes more pickley than a pickle. It pretty much tastes like a McDonalds pickle if you were to take a swig of the juice right after consumption and then had someone kick you right in the nuts.

An informal taste test among a few friends confirmed that it is indeed disgusting, even for pickle lovers. The smell of it is also unsettlingly pungent. Just opening the tube around people leads to many audible complaints, escalating into violent threats after an extended period of time. If you ever sense the pleasurable aroma of pickles at your house, don’t be alarmed. It’s just me opening my Pringles and wondering if these extreme companies will ever let me go shopping sober again.

(Nutritional Facts – 1 ounce – 150 calories, 10 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 mg of cholesterol, 110mg sodium, 14 grams of carbs, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 1 gram of sugar, 1 gram of protein, 0% Vitamin A, 6% Vitamin C, 2% Calcium, and 0% Iron)

Item: Pringles Extreme Screamin’ Dill Pickle
Price: 99 cents
Purchased at: Stater Bros.
Rating: 2 out of 10
Pros: Very, very, very pickley if you’re into that sort of thing. Tube is sturdy and plastic cap fits well. May be able to fit some small tennis balls in there.
Cons: Just one chip tastes like ten concentrated pickle slices. The smell is ridiculously strong and literally nauseating. People who make Pringles lips. Pringles kind of suck compared to real potato chips. Companies that are too lazy to name their products anything other than Extreme.

Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips

Marvo 25 Comments

Fruits can be fresh, frozen, canned, or dried, but thanks to the new Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips I can now eat fruits in a crunchy, processed chip form. If you combine the taste of bananas with the look, size, and crunch of Wheat Thins and the shape of Doritos you would have an idea of what Garden Harvest Toasted Chips are like, or you could look at the picture on the right.

According to the revised USDA food pyramid, I should be eating six ounces of grains, two and a half cups of vegetables, two cups of fruits, three cups of milk, and five and a half ounces of meat and beans every day, but who eats like that? Who eats two and a half cups of vegetables and two cups of fruit everyday?

Most likely, people healthier and skinnier than me.

I don’t even know what a cup of fruit looks like. I was going to educate myself and find out how many slices of bread I need to eat to reach six ounces of grains or how many bananas I need to eat to get two cups of fruits, but the McDonald’s Big Mac Value Meal I ate made me sluggish and lazy.

It’s good to have another option when it comes to eating fruit because fruits are a pain in the ass, especially bananas. Fresh fruits, unlike Cher’s face, eventually wilt, rot, or spoil. Picking fresh fruit at the grocery store is also difficult since I get kicked out for smelling, fondling, or slapping fruit a little too much in order to know if they are ripe.

I know that honeydew melon enjoyed it.

I could make my own banana chips by buying some not quite ripe bananas from the grocery store, waiting for them to ripen, cutting them into slices, pulling out my Ronco Food Dehydrator, placing the banana slices on my Ronco Food Dehydrator racks, setting and forgetting my Ronco Food Dehydrator, letting the Ronco Food Dehydrator do its thing, and in a time 1,000 times longer than the time it takes me to walk to the nearest hippie natural foods store and buy banana chips, my homemade banana chips will be ready.

The Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips taste like the banana chips found in hippie natural foods stores, which I enjoy, and just like Lays Potato Chips, prescription painkillers, a roll of bubble wrap, or a room full of balloons with a needle in my hand, once I pop, I can’t stop.

Despite tasting good, I was disappointed that I couldn’t reach my daily recommended amount of fruit by eating only the Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips, since a serving of about 16 chips only provides the equivalent of 1/4 cup of fruit.

If you’re too lazy to do the math from eating a McDonald’s Big Mac Value Meal, I would have to eat 2/3 of the six-ounce bag in order to eat a cup of fruit or about 64 chips. I’m pretty sure eating a normal banana would be easier, if you eat them quick enough before they start rotting. Also, bananas are an excellent source of potassium and I was hoping that these chips be another good source, but each serving only has 160 milligrams, compared with a medium-sized banana, which has 400-500 milligrams.

Overall, the Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips are tasty and they’re healthier than other snacks out there, but aren’t as healthy as an actual banana. But if you’re tired of the rotting with fresh fruits; the opening of cans with canned fruits; the thawing of frozen fruits; or the hippie, treehugger images that goes with dried fruits, you may want to give these chips a try.

(Nutritional Facts – 1 ounce (about 16 chips) – 120 calories, 3 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat, 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 60 milligrams of sodium, 160 milligrams of potassium, 22 grams of carbs, 3 grams of dietary fiber, 8 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein, and 0 grams of banana peel slipping.)

(Editor’s Note: Read more about the Garden Harvest Toasted Chips at the Junk Food Blog. Then go watch the second version of the Hot Dog Dance)

Item: Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips
Price: $3.99 (6-ounces)
Purchased at: Wal-Mart
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Tastes like banana chips. Crunchy. Recloseable bag. Naturally flavored. Baked with 100% whole grain. Made with actual bananas. Decent alternative for fresh, frozen, canned, and dried fruits.
Cons: Only one-fourth a cup of fruit per one ounce serving. Not a lot of potassium with this banana product. Rotting fruit. The amount of time it takes to dry fruit in the Ronco Food Dehydrator. Getting kicked out of the grocery store for fondling melons. Bananas can be a pain in the ass.

REVIEW: Caramel Doritos Sweets

Marvo 24 Comments

Whenever I purchase or receive a product that on the outside seems like it’s going to make me cringe, like finding an Adam’s apple on a blind date I met through Craigslist, I try to prepare for it the best I can. After receiving the Caramel Doritos Sweets from Japan, I went into full preparation mode, getting all my senses ready for what I felt was going to be gag worthy. It’s the same thing I did before trying the Pepsi Cucumber Ice.

To prepare my sense of touch, I plunged both arms into a bucket of ice. To get my sight ready, I stared at Tara Reid bikini pictures, which if you see them, you will know that it is 100 percent less sexy than it sounds.

To prepare my hearing, I listened to my poor attempts at becoming a turntablist during my high school years, scratching the 45 RPM record single for Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.”

Don’t…chicka…chicka…chick…Don’t dream it’s over.

I prepared my sense of smell by making a three-bean chili, giving it all to a hungry homeless dude, and standing downwind from him. To prepare the sense of taste, I punished my tongue with a whip that came with the non-sanctioned Ken & Barbie Malibu After Dark S&M set with real leather that I bought in the Mature Audiences section of eBay.

While lashing my tongue with the small whip, I wondered if Japanese companies use things like prototypes, focus groups, or common sense when coming up with new food products. They have a tendency to make items that seem like something consumers don’t want, like breaded meat without the meat in bar form.

After my senses were prepared for the Caramel Doritos Sweets, I slowly opened the bag and a slightly sickly sweet aroma billowed out of it. “That smell is not a good sign,” I thought to myself as I peered into the packaging.

The Doritos inside didn’t look like the triangle-shaped Doritos that most people know and love. Instead they looked like small screw bits, which is appropriate, since this flavor seems like Frito-Lay Japan is screwing with us.

With all the preparation I did, I was ready for its taste to be unsurprisingly horrible, just like going ass-to-mouth, but it ended up tasting like slightly sweetened Fritos corn chips. The combination of sweet and salty was good with this crunchy snack, but I didn’t think its flavor was caramel-ish, it seemed more pancake syrup-ish.

Preparing my senses for a possibly bad tasting product was unnecessary this time. I got lucky with the Caramel Doritos Sweets, which is a tasty original product. I wish I could say the same for my Craigslist blind dates. Maybe I should stop looking in the Misc Romance section.

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Impulsive Buy reader Melbatoast for sending me a bag of Caramel Doritos Sweets from Japan. If she ever wants a Wendy’s Baconator, I’ll be glad to send it to her, although it probably won’t be edible by the time she gets it.)

Item: Caramel Doritos Sweets
Price: FREE
Purchased at: Received from reader Melbatoast
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Surprisingly good. Good combination of sweet and salty. Mature audiences section of eBay. Only available in Japan. Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.”
Cons: Smells sickly sweet. Not caramel-ish. My turntablist skillz. Tara Reid in a bikini. Adam’s apples on blind dates.

Tostitos Multigrain

Marvo 27 Comments

If I needed to be saved from a burning building, car accident, David Hasselhoff music video, or a greasy Richard Simmons hug, I wouldn’t want these Tostitos Multigrain chips to rescue me.

The reason why is because they are weak, like Pete Doherty’s will power around heroin or Britney Spears’ parenting abilities. I may have a hard time opening a bottle of salsa without help from a towel or a much stronger eight year old girl, but these Tostitos Multigrain chips are so weak that they cracked every time I tried to scoop up some salsa with them.

If they can’t pick up salsa, how are they going to save me if I needed to rescued from a shark, bear, snake, wolf, tyrannosaurus rex, vampire, Tim Allen movie, Decepticon, black hole, or MySpace sexual predator?

Sure, the Tostitos Multigrain has “four wholesome grains,” corn, oat, buckwheat, and wheat, but how can I truly enjoy them if they keep breaking down in chunky salsa and I have to worry about the part of the chip that buried in salsa?

I could use another chip to dig out the buried chip, but these Tostitos Multigrain chips are so fragile and weak that the next chip would probably break, causing a path towards the Zsa Zsa Gabor Marriage Effect, which involves many, many failures before finally succeeding.

Despite the “four wholesome grains,” the Tostitos Multigrain are not healthier than regular Tostitos. It’s much like how Britney’s black hair doesn’t make her less trailer trash.

The combination of the “four wholesome grains” also gave the chips a darker appearance, a kind of healthy nutty taste, and a crunch that’s slightly not as crunchy as regular Tostitos. They taste okay, but if the “four wholesome grains” don’t make them any healthier, I don’t think I would buy them again, like I would for the okay-tasting, but significantly healthier Baked Lays.

So if you happen to be kidnapped by some shady guy in a black suit with a pointy mustache, tied up in a huge coil of rope, everything around you is in black and white, you’re placed on train tracks to get run over by an oncoming train, and Tostitos Multigrain comes to try and help you, just eat them, because the only thing they can help is hunger.

(Editor’s Note: If you’re interested, or love randomness, check out the “Random Review” button in the top navigation bar. Click it and it will magically take you on a journey through all the good reviews, bad reviews, and ugly banana deep-throating reviews. Thanks to Impulsive Buy reader Rylan for the idea.)

Item: Tostitos Multigrain
Price: $3.99
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: Okay healthy nutty taste. Zero trans fat. Having eight year old girls around to help open jars and bottles. Celebrity references for all ages.
Cons: Tostitos Multigrain is too weak to save lives. Chips break easily while scooping up salsa. The four wholesome grains doesn’t make it any healthier than regular Tostitos. Slightly not as crunchy as regular Tostitos. Britney’s black hair. Being weaker than eight year old girls. Decepticons. ANY David Hasselhoff video.

Natural Lay’s Sea Salted Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

Marvo 32 Comments

Lay's Sea Salted Potato Chips

After opening a bag of Natural Lay’s Sea Salted Kettle Cooked Potato Chips and smelling them, I felt eating them on my living room’s couch, while watching ESPN SportsCenter, in my stretched-out, four-year old Late Show with David Letterman t-shirt and surf shorts was not the right atmosphere to consume this bag of chips.

So I closed the bag, sealed it with a Chip Clip, and headed out the door.

About 20 minutes later, I found myself sitting in the middle of a crowded beach, surrounded by imported sand, beautiful women in bikinis, children laughing, and many failed attempts at sand castles. I breathed deeply and let the salty air, mixed with various scents of sunscreens and tanning lotions, fill my lungs.

“Aaah, this is a much more appropriate place to enjoy these chips,” I said to myself, as a bronzed blond in a string bikini passed by. “Even the sand in my crack feels right.”

I removed the Chip Clip and reopened the bag of Natural Lay’s Sea Salted Kettle Cooked Potato Chips and began chowing them down.

These chips were very different from your normal Lay’s potato chips. First off, they were noticeably thicker and crunchier. They were so crunchy that they actually drowned out part of the argument some couple next to me were having about how his eyes were wandering around the beach looking at all the other women.

However, I REALLY wished the crunchiness could have somehow drowned out the accidental sight of seeing a hairy, overweight guy wearing a blue Speedo coming out of the water, with either pubic hairs or the legs of dead spiders sticking out from behind his Speedo.

Ugh! I think that image will forever be etched onto my brain, but at least I found out the hard way that the water was cold.

The chips were pretty good and were a nice golden brown, but they weren’t as good or as golden brown as the cute Asian girl who was tanning to the left of me in a skimpy yellow floral bikini.

I would’ve gone and talked to her, but my paleness would’ve made us look like a set of salt and pepper shakers, and her buff, golden brown boyfriend next to her would’ve kicked my ass.

Besides being thick, crunchy, and golden brown, another thing that made these chips good was the sea salt, which gave the chips a nice salty taste that you could actually see on each chip.

Finally, the last thing I liked about these chips was the fact that there were no preservatives, no added colors, and nothing artificial. I wish I could’ve said the same for a trio of college girls that were walking up and down the beach, because their six slightly bouncing boobs looked totally fake.

Well at least the image of six fake boobs wrote over the image of the overweight guy in a Speedo.

Item: Natural Lay’s Sea Salted Kettle Cooked Potato Chips
Purchase Price: $3.99
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros: Pretty good. Thick. Crunch. Nothing artificial, like fake boobs.
Cons: Kind of pricey for the size. Overweight guys in Speedos. Sand in my crack.