Tire Tread

Well. It appears I have discovered the solid cousin to the diet Moxie soda. MORE'S THE PITY.

These are impressively horrible. I mean it. I can only imagine that these remain on store shelves solely to please old folks, and that worries me terribly, as this shit is clearly not meant for human consumption.

THEY ARE STRONG. This licorice does not fuck around. It really does taste exactly like the Moxie, right down to the painful burning sensation after you take your first bite. They're really not that bad until a few seconds after you swallow, which means there's really nothing you can do to save yourself from the horrible experience that is the Tire Tread. But then again, when the first ingredient is 'beet syrup', you can pretty safely assume you're not in for a taste treat.

The Great Japanese KitKatastrophy part III

White

Although I'd sworn off albino chocolates after the yogurt horror, I gave these a chance anyway. They're the officially 'white' flavored Kit Kats, altho for some reason they have a picture of a maple leaf on the box. So, suspecting maple but fearing something less pleasantly Canadian, like beaver or Mike Myers, I forged ahead. Adding to my disturbing-flavor concerns was the texture of the things. They were lumpy. Clumps of unidentifiable crap clung to the bottom of the bars, not entirely disguised by the milky coating.

My concern now shifted from unidentified Canadian flavors to chunks of actual Canadians. It could be some sort of soylent green for modern times, like a really shitty remake that's been 'hipped up' for today's audience.

Turns out, however, they are maple, really REALLY maple, on top of the painful sweetness of the white chocolate. The flavoring was STRONG, much like the Maple Prez. In Japan the men are real men, women real women, and the maple is mind-blowing.

Interestingly enough, the chunks weren't related to the maple flavor, but were little bits of wafer that got stuck on the bottom, which I suppose does make them somewhat cannibalistic, which is pretty cool.

Strawberry

Jesus god these are revolting. While this does make me feel better about the American version of strawberry candy failure, I am frankly NOT happy I had to go through that taste experience again.

These may actually be worse because, in a moment of misguided realism-related fervor, the coating has little strawberry bits ensconced in it. Which sounds reasonable, but looks like a scale model of a highly communicable skin disease (which btw, is a phrase you should never ever
Image Google). I don't know that rosacea KitKat would've necessarily tasted worse, but it's never-the-less not a parallel I need to be drawing while the damn thing is in my mouth.

Sakura

This is one of those flavors which you immediately recognize as being disgusting, but carry right on eating it anyway. I can't say for sure what it actually tastes like, there's definitely sweet waxy undertones, but they're lighter than usual, and accompanied by something that tastes like chocolate covered feet.

While the flavors are all fairly unpleasant individually, the whole effect is not bad. Everytime I ate one, I knew that it was bad, but I kept wanting more of them. It's a destructive behavior microcosm Kat! Just like a Lifetime special, only with less Patty Duke.

Wine

These are really interesting. They start innocently enough with that bland waxy flavor that has become synonymous with KitKat in my mind, and then move on to an actual wine flavor. Seriously. Not a fine vintage, granted, more like the solid cousin of wine in a box, but still. They're neither hideously sweet nor terrifyingly strong. Amazingly, they're an entirely acceptable, if somewhat baffling flavor of Kit Kat.

I keep trying to picture the setting in which a wine KitKat would be the sophisticated choice. The only situation that springs to my mind is 'trying to get laid in Candyland'. Presumably you smoke candy cigarettes afterwards.

Thanksgiving Soda

Sam's Club Cider Apple Burst & 7-Eleven Apple Ginger Snap

Extreme Cider Apple! It's totally the experience of a crisp fall evening in front of the fire X100! Give it to your Grandma and BLOW HER MIND!! WHOOOOO!

Who the fuck is this drink for? Does anyone want extreme sparkling apple cider? On top of which, it's caffeine free, which I'm pretty sure automatically revokes your standing as an extreme beverage. Also it looks like cloudy urine. But what pisses me off most about this drink is that it actually DOES taste just like apple cider. Only carbonated, which is vile and the exact thing I do not look for in apple cider.

Where is this amazing flavor accuracy when they're dealing with flavors I actually am interested in tasting? There's 9 million different permutations of berry flavored drinks on the market, and not one of them can reasonably approximate the flavor of even one given berry, let alone several put together. But somehow WalMart's crack team of popologists can pull off cider apple.

And what's really incredible is that the Thanksgiving flavor line of soda gets even worse, in the form of a 7-Eleven Apple Ginger Snap Big Gulp. None of the words in that flavor have any business on a bottle of pop. They all appear to have escaped from the cookie isle, and I do not like it. As far as taste goes, it's much less impressively disturbing than the Apple Cider, inasmuch as it doesn't really taste like anything. It has a very watery apple juice base, with a hint of something that says to me 'mistook a vat of industrial cleaner for the Ginger Snap flavoring', and to top it off, there's no carbonation to speak of. If there's anything that bothers me more than cookie flavored pop, it's cookie flavored pop that doesn't even try. I pronounce Cider Apple Burst to be the superior crime against beveragekind and we move on.

All the Jell-O in My Life

In which we discover the point at which there ceases to be room for Jell-O

There is something intrinsically hilarious about Jell-O. I don't know if it's because it used to come in such disturbing flavors as Celery and Tomato, or because housewives dutifully ensconced everything from salad to tuna in the aforementioned and called it dinner.

And while I, personally, have never enjoyed actually eating it, I do get a great deal of amusement out of making it, or at least, attempting to make it. Lacking an amusingly flavored gelitan this time around, I instead decided to go for sheer volume. That's right. I was going to combine one box each of every flavor of Jell-O I could find, and thus create Super Jell-O.

First thing's first:procuring the Jell-O. I went to every grocery store in a 400-mile radius (which actually only totalled 6 stores. Hey, I live on the fucking prairie.) and came up with 18 separate flavors of Jell-O. It's important to note here that I only bought actual Jell-O brand gelitan, because if I got into store brands it would never end. Also, I wanted this to be a quality gelitan monstrosity, thankyouverymuch.

Here's the full list of flavors I ended up with:

Apricot	Berry Blue
Black Cherry	Cherry
Cranberry	Cran-Raspberry
Grape	Island Pineapple
Lemon	Lime
Mixed Fruit	Orange
Peach	Strawberry Banana
Strawberry Kiwi	Wild Strawberry
Xtreme Sour Apple	Xtreme Watermelon

I have always wondered about this...Who can really tell the difference between Apricot and Peach? Do we need both these flavors? I know they've both been around for at least the last 20 years, meanwhile fifty other flavors have come and gone. Honestly. Perhaps we could just settle for one of those, and invest some of that flavor-specificity in extricating an actual fruit or two from the mess that is Berry Blue. I really hate Berry Blue. There are no blue berries. Even actual blueberries are purple. The fuckers.

As far as the actual construction of the super Jell-O goes, I decided to just multiply the basic instructions by 18 and go from there. This was the first indication I had that this would be maybe more to deal with than I'd had in mind. 18 packages of Jell-O yielded more than a liter of powder, and one hell of a sand scupture.


And to this I was to add 4 LITERS of water. Rather more than I had been expecting, and certainly more than would fit in any of my standard issue kitchen containers. Clearly, this called for something special. Something big. This called for... the crisper drawer. Figuring if I ended up with more than that there was no possible way I'd get it in the fridge, I just went ahead and poured the whole mess into one of the refrigerator drawers.

Fortunately for both me and the fridge, that turned out to be just perfect. Full of the satisfaction that only comes with a completely pointless job well done, I left it to set up overnight. Surprisingly, it did actually set, more or less. Well...mostly less. It never did achieve the solidity of normal Jell-O, instead preferring to hover somewhere between lumpy juice and runny salad. (Sorry, running out of metaphors here.)

The unexpected problem arising from this the next day was that it was nearly impossible to dispose of. It was too solid to pour down the drain, but not solid enough to lift out of the drawer and throw away. I spent a good half hour trying to scoop it up and throw it in the trash before I gave up in disgust. By this time, the kitchen counter looked as if I had been disassembling a mob hit, and the Jell-O was starting to melt into nastily viscous little piles of sticky shit that I knew would never, ever entirely wash off.

And that is to say nothing of the smell. It was disgustingly sweet, and permeated every inch of the fridge, including much of the food therein. The bread sitting on the shelf above the Jell-O tasted like the aftermath of a Care Bear circle jerk. It took a week before I could eat something out of the fridge without sniffing it in fear first.

And what did I learn from the experience? Not a goddamn thing. I did discover that every flavor of Jell-O together tastes pretty much like any one flavor of Jell-O by itself, but I don't know how useful that information will be to me in later life, so eh. It was however, an amusing experience, and a good waste of an evening, which really is all I ever ask for in life.

Moxie

This particular beverage hails from the days when sodas were called phosphates, and they had to carbonate molasses cause they didn't have anything else. The intimidating duotone man on the label claims the beverage has been in existence since 1884, which means that it was probably the Ingalls girls' treat on those long sleigh rides to the nearest town's general store. Seriously, check the dates. I personally would've gone with the candied squirrel intestines or something, but pioneers can't be choosers. Actually, if I'd lived on the American frontier, I would've contracted smallpox and died at my first opportunity. In the womb, if possible.

If you've ever actually tried Moxie you'll have no trouble believing it was created in the 1800's. It tastes like something your local midwestern museum would serve as part of their annual ' In the Days Before Electric Lightsavaganza' festival. It smells like something you'd find in a 20's drugstore. Something with 'Bromide' in the name. Something that doubles as a cure-all for everything from cholera to losing all your oxen in an attempt to ford the Green River.

The taste itself is hard to explain in terms of actual flavor. It's more of an experience. A horrible, painful experience, comparable to drinking molten tar. This stuff was so strong I couldn't even drink a full swig of it. I had to sip it like it was a tea party. My mouth tasted like burning shoes days after trying this crap. I actually forgot about the bottle in my backpack for a couple weeks, and then tried it again, thinking once it'd had some time to calm down and think about why pop shouldn't taste like getting kicked in the face, it'd maybe be palatable. Wrong. It was just as vile without carbonation. Maybe worse, because there were no bubbles to numb my poor taste buds. And this was just the diet Moxie. Woe betide the fool what takes on the full-strength Moxie.

Maizena

I see this at every grocery store, in a cheerful assortment of flavors, but I've never seen anyone buy it. I now know why.

It's sort of the low budget equivalent of Qwik. It's made with milk, comes in the same basic flavor assortment, and ever has a cheerful little mascot. The difference is, this is made with corn starch. Now, doesn't that just sound like a bad idea to you? I don't think I've ever used corn starch in my life, and definitely not in a beverage.

According to the instructions, one little packet of this whips up to a full five servings of piping hot corn drink. I opted to just make half the package, which was way more than enough for your average 2.5 kids, I feel. Especially considering no kid in their right mind would drink any of this.

It was barely even a beverage, honestly. I ended up with violently strawberry scented Pepto-Bismo colored water on top of the cup, and a good half inch of corn starch silt at the bottom. The powder got this weird skin over it as soon as it touched water, and flatly refused to dissolve, no matter how much I stirred. So I eventually I gave up on that and just tried to drink around the clumps.

What was kind of cool about this, is that even though it smelled insanely strawberry-y, it had no strawberry flavor whatsoever. Really. It tasted like nothing in particular. Kind of corn starchy, really, but no surprise there. It was definitely unpleasant, but I say if you're purchasing corn starch beverages, you probably know what you're getting into, so hey. No harm no foul, Maizena.

Candy Racism and Process at Work

You may've noticed that I generally avoid using American candy for these reviews. This is not because I'm a terrible candy racist. The reason I don't bother with my own country's confections is because in recent years the major US candy companies have lost their fucking minds, and cranking out dozens of completely awful candies that are on the market for all of two weeks before slinking off in shame.

And rather than being entertainingly bad, these flavors are simply not worth bothering with, either in print or as edibles. I don't need to write a review telling you that eating a Limited Edition Giant M&M is the modern equivalent of the experience of eating a handful of M&Ms. You can figure that out on your own, I hope. If not, for godsake, I don't want to know about it.



Raspberries 'n' Creme / Strawberries 'n' Creme Hersheys
This could have been so much better, or at least less awful. Raspberries are delicious and underrepresented in the world of confectionery outside of Blue Razzberry shit, which we shall not speak of.
Even so, I don't want to see them getting their moment in the sun in bad candy. It tastes like cheap white chocolate, no surprise there, with grainy little bits of generic sweetness. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two flavors. They're both unimpressively unpleasant, and I have to wonder why Hershey's even bothered with both. Did they honestly think people's candy bar palette is refined enough to distinguish the between the two? Everything about these bars says 'slapped together the night before launch'. They even reused drawing of the splash on the packaging. You'll have to do better than Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation, to fool me, Milton Hershey!


Junior Mints Inside Outs
I just hate to see this. One of the best things about being one of the less popular, non-flashy candies is that you're generally pretty safe from the various revamps and marketing gimmicks that plague the more popular candies. But for some reason, Junior Mints have now been dragged into the jaws of progress, and shat out as Junior Mints Inside Outs.
Despite the amusingly suggestive name, I can't even enjoy the absurdity of these. They don't taste like much of anything-bad chocolate goop coated in crusty sugar, and they certainly aren't much to look at, appearing, as they do, to be giant wads of bird shit. Junior Mints are tasty and should be left alone. For fuck's sake, nobody messes with Skor bars, or Mary Janes. Leave the classics alone!

Milky Way Slammer

To me, that sounds like a porno move, not a beverage. And not a particularly appealing move, either. Actually, I've been sitting here thinking about it so long that I've kind of grossed myself out, so I'm going to drop the porn metaphors, and just say that this is a very bad drink.

Not so much because it tastes bad, but because it actually does taste like a Milky Way bar. But it's a liquid. I felt unpleasantly like I was partaking in a candy bar that had, in fact, already been digested. This is not fun at all, and, in retrospect, even less appealing than the porn idea.

Dominade

Crystal Light for the S&M set, I guess. It was only 99 cents for two gallons worth of mix, making it the beverage of choice in the cost-conscious dungeons. My only hope is that they marketed it like Sunny D.

"Let's see, we got a glass of my cum, your own urine, brown stuff...Hey! Dominade!

Congelli - Rompope flavor

Every once in awhile a food will catch my eye with its mild wackiness, but then turn out to be a festival of complete and utter what-the-fuckery. The Congelli is one of those magical foods.
It's hard to see in the picture, because of the eye rending yellow-on-white color scheme, (which, in retrospect was a sign I probably should have paid more attention to) but both the English and Spanish flavor for this gelatin dessert is 'Rompope'. On the rare occasions these languages agree, you know you're in for a treat. Whatever this stuff was, there was no room for doubt-it would taste like fresh squeezed/picked and or/congealed rompope. Who the hell could resist a treat like that?
Personally, I prefer to be surprised by my weird random foods, but my roommate, (who has actually learned from my experiences), checked into what exactly a 'rompope' was while we waited for it to clot. I mean set. As it turns out, rompope is the unspiced, Spanish version of eggnog.
I was a little disappointed on hearing this, because I am frankly not a fan of any type of nog, much less de-spiced nog. In fact, I refuse to drink even the seasonally mandatory American egg nog because I do not believe in alcoholic beverages that are thick, creamy, or in any way bear resemblance to cum. Unfortunately for me, I'd already bought the Congelli, so there was no help for it. I was duty-bound to fully experience the rompope.
My first indication that maybe this was not a great idea came as soon as I started mixing, inasmuch as, it looked exactly like dog vomit. But as I'd already wasted four cups of milk on this shit, there was no turning back.

After mixing, the directions said to 'pour in molds and chill for 4-6 hours, or overnight,' but since I have nowhere near the patience nor the attention span that would require, I dumped it in a tupperware and stuck it in the freezer. It set up a couple hours later, no worse for the wear, if you don't count its intensified semblance to Lassie's last meal.

I don't know what those brown spots in it are, but I once saw some vanilla ice cream that listed 'bean specks' as one of its accomplishments, so I'm going to go ahead and say that's what the mystery spots in this are. Bean specks. Yes.
So, now for the true test-what exactly does rompope taste like? Will it be the vaugely spiced pancake batter flavor of American eggnog, or would it be a less spicy version, more along the lines of taupe house paint? Or even some here-to-fore unimagined permutation of bland, cream colored food? Only the taste test would tell...
Now, even as I write this, there is something about the rompope that nauseates me. Honestly, I have a hard time looking at the pictures. It's not that it was even that disgusting. There's just something about it that really makes me want to throw up. Not necessarily even in an unpleasant way. It could be like when you're sick, and the only thing you've eaten in the last 72 hours is lukewarm 7-up, which tastes exactly the same coming up as it did going down. It might even be a little better on the return trip, because then it's like a visit from an old friend you didn't think you'd get to see again. At least, not in that part of town. But my point is, that while I don't like to think about it now, it really didn't taste all that disgusting.
The problem was its texture. It was rather..rubbery. In fact, when I tried to stick my spoon in it, it just bounced off the skin of the pudding. Having never been deflected by my dessert, I tried dropping the spoon onto it, which resulted in some pretty decent airtime.

I tried bouncing other small objects off it for awhile, including a pen, coins, and a statue of a boy's first communion.

I tried a little surfer guy too, but he didn't work too well. Eventually the top of the rompope was so covered in lint and dirt from all the crap I was throwing at it that I had to tip it onto a plate and eat off the bottom.

It tasted more or less how you'd expect eggnog Jell-O to taste, bland, christmassy, and fairly unpleasant. All in all, I'd say Spanish eggnog is basically the same as its US counterpart, insofar as, it's not worth bothering with. The springy squid-like texture pretty much ruined any chance it had at being eaten, but I bet you could make some awesome molds with this stuff. I don't know if it was made out of a higher quality of horse hooves or what, but this crap really holds its shape. You could probably construct the most elaborate gelatin structures ever with this. Hell, you could just carve it into whatever shape you want. For that, I declare the rompope the most amusing non-edible foodstuff on the market. Gracias, Congelli!

The Great Japanese KitKatastrophy part II

Orange & Creme

As promising as the image of an Orange slice coming all over a KitKat bar was, these were a tragically less than orgasmic experience.

They were actually like a sort of opposite orgasm, where instead of getting more and more enjoyable, these started off bad and built to a hideous crescendo of unpleasantness, culminating with my convulsively spitting the whole revolting affair into the garbage.

Milkshake

You ever had Whoppers? Great, this is that, only shaped like a stick. You can put it between two Whoppers and have a little milkshake flavored sex-ed set up. You may as well, there's no other excuse for having these things around.

Matcha with Azuki Beans

Ok, this one I know:matcha is green tea, and azuki beans are sweet red beans which are famous for not making you gassy. Which I suppose is a nice feature, although what candy is known for its gas producing prowress? Not even novelty fart candy, really. I fed a bunch to our dog once, and got nothing. And if you can't even make a dog farty, you have no business allying your self with the internal gas industry.

Anyway. I was pretty excited about these, because there was a little drawing of green KitKats on the back of the box, which pretty much guaranteed that the actual bars themselves would be green. Imagine! Little green KitKats! You can play that you're eating miniature uranium bars that make you mutate and destroy the city, or that they're martian candy, and use them to lend credibility to your abduction story, or leave them in the living room and claim the dog ate a birthday cake. The possibilities are endless!

As you can see, they did not disappoint. And while it's hardly worth mentioning in light of the how amazing these things look, I will say that they do taste a little like green tea. In that strange watery way that green tea flavored things have. It's not something you can really eat much of, but it doesn't matter, because what they lack in snackability, they make up for tenfold in comedic possibility.

Watermelon

It is long past time we as a species stop trying to make things watermelon flavored. Watermelons DO NOT HAVE A FLAVOR. THEY DON'T. And attempting to assign them one via red dye #40 and industrial food flavoring is not going to change that.

Personally, I move that we start using 'watermelon' as a texture. Think about it: really wet, but still structured, and rather grainy. What word describes that? Nothing! Think of all the good watermelon could do for the English language. We'd have the perfect one-word description for all sorts of things like....well, like...Watermelon. I guess there's not a lot of call for that specific texture. I still think it would do less harm as a texture than a flavor, though. Especially where KitKat flavoring is concerned.

Yeo's White Gourd Drink

I can still taste the horror of this one. Actually, it sat in the back of my refrigerator for a couple of months before I could even work up the courage to open it. This is because I've never tasted a gourd in any form, much less as a beverage, which seemed like the worst possible medium for my first gourd-related experience.

And even though I was expecting the worst, I was still taken aback at the pure unmitigated wrongness of this drink. There are no currently-existing flavors to describe it. It had kind of a peanutty-old sock flavor, a little bit like soy nuts, only gamier. Gordish, I guess. I don't know. Not helping was their decision not to carbonate the damn stuff, so you could experience the gourd flavor in full effect, without any tangy bubbles to distract the taste buds. The harnessing of CO2 for beverage purposes is one of man's greater triumphs, and makes even the most retarded store brand pop not just drinkable, but enjoyable. Thank you, Carbon, Oxygen.

The can proudly proclaims itself an 'Authentic Asian Drink' which I feel is pretty obvious, considering that if it was an American pop, the can would have something along the lines of 'XXXTREME ALPINE MIST POWER GOURDO CODE BLANCO BLASTOFF!!!!' spalshed across it in fonts of varying color and extremeness.

But even after all the aforementioned, the thing that really amazes me about the White Gourd Drink is that I didn't get it at an Asian grocery store. I found it in a major chain market, which means that of all the canned beverages floating around the entire continent, this was one of the most mainstream ones available, and therefore chosen to be stocked as a regular item at a major US grocery store. What the hell else is over there that didn't make the cut? The mind boggles.

Bella Vita Pasta

Why is the pasta brown? Actually, it had more of an unsettling reddish cast, sort of a russet. The only colored pasta I've ever seen has been that way because of flavoring, or novelty reasons. Which are both perfectly acceptable circumstances for colored noodles, so I wasn't too worried about trying these. I figured since they weren't shaped like penises, they had to fall under the heading of 'flavored' and further surmised that the reddish cast meant 'tomato' and gave not another thought to the possibly sinister nature of these noodles.

God was I wrong. These were unbelievably bad. They weren't flavored, at least, not any flavor that I know of. They tasted dirty. That's the only way I can describe it. And they were dry. Rather than being bendy, as regular noodles generally are, these all but disintigrated when I tried to scoop them into a bowl. To top it all off, cooking frankly did not improve their color. If anything, the sickly orangeish-red color they became was worse than the original color. I say this is God's punishment for trying to remove the delicious carbs from pasta. Shame on you, Bella Vita.

Vimto

This is much less exciting than it sounds. The UK entry into the 'red' flavored soda category, this tastes much like Big Red, Faygo RedPop, Barq's Red Creme soda, and every other red flavored pop you can get at the finer gas stations and aged hotel vending machines. The sickly sweetness of corn syrup and red dye No 40 are present throughout, with notes of that indefinable but distinct flavor of cheapness and failure. No one ever actually has a thirst that only a red soda will quench, they just drink it because it's the only thing that's never sold out at 3am in Akron.

Milo

I think I bought this just because of the waaay too excited dude on the front. The drink itself is purportedly a 'nutritional energy drink', but I can't say it did anything for me, energy-wise. I had been hoping the drink would do for me what it had done for Milo, but with an excess of neither caffeine nor sugar, and a taste comparable to those gritty Carnation Instant Breakfast drinks they used to make, I could find no convincing reason for this drink to exist.
Not that the actual breakfast drinks made much sense themselves. Carnation made such a big deal out of the fact that they were the perfect breakfast for important, on-the-go people who didn't have time to fuck around with a waffle before running off to decide world policy, but honestly, have you ever tried to drink a glass of that stuff when you're in a hurry? It's like trying to chug a glass of damp chalk. At least a you can eat a granola bar on the bus without having to worry about people spitting in it if you take your eyes off it for a moment.

Let's Pretz!

Roast

I admit, I was kind of hoping these'd be a very non-specific meat flavored variety of roast, but alas, they were just toasty. Which was tasty enough, until it occured to me that 'toasted more' isn't actually a flavor, it's what happens when the guy manning the oven falls alseep.

Realizing I was eating a box of what are essentially little mistake sticks took some of the majesty out of my Roast Pretz experience, and I was left feeling like my snack sticks had somehow pulled a fast one on me.

Deception and lies aside, these were decent. Not very exciting, but, as I was to find out in my later Pretz experiences, sometimes that's the best you can hope for.

Salad

While these unfortunately aren't quite as amusing as the name suggests, they were easily my favorite Pretz .

They taste more or less exactly like cheap croutons, but with a slight tang. It's something on the order of the French dressing you'd get at a Bonanza. This may not sound terribly inspiring, but trust me, in light of the flavors to come, it's completely five-star. Rock on Salad Pretz.

Ebi (Grilled Shrimp)

I actually tried these last, because I was seriously afraid of them. As I've mentioned, I'm a total food wuss, and as such, I am completely against all forms of seafood, on the grounds that decent, self-respecting, edible animals do not wave their eyes around on stalks. Eyes belong in the head. In it. And as I've been avoiding seafood with much success for approximately 25 years now, I wasn't even sure what I should expect with these things. How do I know what shrimp tastes like? I don't.

Now that I've eaten them, I still have no idea what any kind of seafood tastes like, because I refuse to believe shrimp actually tastes like dirty peanut butter socks. I ate maybe a half a Pretz and was tasting (read: regretting) it for the rest of the day.

Even more disappointing was that the individual Pretz didn't have little grill marks. Way to break my heart, guys.

Maple & Butter

They aren't fucking kidding about the butter part. If there was a way to compress and dry butter into crunchy stick form, then baste it with butter, and finally roll the whole mess in butter dust, it would still have nothing on the orgasm of butter happening in these Pretz.

I have no idea if there was even any Maple flavor at them all, I was too busy listening to my arteries clog. These things caused me actual pain to eat, and I'm sure I will never enjoy buttered toast again. I only even made it through about a fourth of one of the four packets in the box. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined artificial Maple & Butter flavor capable of inflicting actual pain when eaten, but today, I stand corrected. Hoh-lee shit.

Cheeky's

Once upon a time there were two tasty cookie brothers, born of the union of an Oreo and an E.L.Fudge (you know, I didn't realize that E.L.Fudge=Elf until I was in college? Isn't that sad?). These cookies had happy little faces, and were named Giggles, which sounds more like a horror movie than a food. Or maybe a horror movie about food. But anyway, they were very tasty, and unfortunately, did not make it out of the '80s.

Except they did! They snuck off too...I can't even remember where these are from, but not the U.S, and hid there in little cookie-sized bunkers, waiting for the time to arrive when they could emerge from their isolation and reclaim their rightful place along side the Mallowmars and Chips Ahoy.

But years and years of inbreeding while in hiding had terrible consequences....grape consequences. That's right, these things are grape flavored. They have excitingly purple filling and taste like the worst thing you can imagine. Cookies are just not meant to be artificially grape flavored. I adore the taste of fake grapes, it's by far my favorite flavor of anything, but this is just wrong in an unfixable way. Largely because there is no way you can prepare yourself for it. It's bad in a way you simply cannot imagine unless you've experienced it personally.

I mean, what other cookie has ever been grape flavored? None, that's what, and with damn good reason. If it doesn't go with chocolate, it doesn't belong in a cookie, that's my new motto.

Bamba Peanut Snacks

There's a baby on your package, with a picture of the snack arranged so that it looks like a gigantic log of baby poop flying out of the baby's ass. Does this sound like smart food advertising to you? Well, it did make me buy these things, but that doesn't say much.

These were like little healthy, peanutty, kosher, Cheetos. Only they didn't really taste much like peanuts. So they were mostly just puffed air and sort of a soybean oil flavor. So all in all, a pretty depressing snack. But hey, their mascot's a baby that can play basketball! Not a lot of babies can do that,

Blue Mountain Country Cock Soup

Seriously? Not that 'rooster flavored' makes a lot more sense, but what flavor do male chickens have that isn't covered under the 'Chicken' heading? Even if there is some subtle nuance that falls outside that category, wouldn't 'poultry' probably pick it up? Did we really need to get this specific? Especially on a package already adorned with some fairly phallic carrots, and the suspiciously testiclesque onions. And that's not even mentioning the mountain in the background.

Hogs Heaven Mini Pretzels

These were actually just normal, if excessively salty, pretzels. But I had to try them, based on the tagline at the bottom of the bag. Put Some "More" South in Your Mouth" What?

Most of the south that comes to my mind is not anything I would want in my mouth, much less quote-unquote more of it. And they weren't spiced or flavored in any way, sooooo....I still don't know exactly what the Southern aspect of these things was.

Which leaves me wondering what the hell did they sneak into these pretzels that makes them "more south"-y. It has to be something, right? Otherwise why the hell would that be their slogan? Where did it come from?? God, I hope it's not related to the brand name...I have the most uncomfortable feeling that I just ate something that was fried up in pig anus oil. Ugh. Not knowing what's actually in my scary food makes it immeasurably worse than it probably is. I watched all those 20/20 exposes John Stossel and his giant moustache did in the early '90's. I know there's all kinds of crazy behind-the-scenes shit going on in my food, I just don't like it when I'm given cryptic hints to that effect. Just let me enjoy my pretzels and my denial in peace, thankyouverymuch!

McVities Milk Chocolate Digestives

I'm not sure what exactly a digestive is, but this is the heaviest package if cookies I have ever encountered. There's only like, six cookies in it, but it's a serious brick. You could chuck it at someone's head and do some actual damage, then eat the evidence. It's the perfect, tasty crime!

From the name, I had imagined them being something like a fiber grenade. As soon as you swallowed one, it hit your colon like a fucking fiber bomb, and just blew that shit all over the dining room table. Much to my disappointment, they were pretty much just ordinary cookies. Maybe a little grainer than most, but nothing that sent me running for new shorts.

Sigh.

Mini Cakes Red Velvet

I found this in the freezer section of my local Wal-Mart for 49 cents, which is about as bad a sign as there is. But! This was a tasty little cake! And it actually was red!
I don't know how or why, but these little guys rock. My compliments to whatever weird tiny bakery is cranking these babies out.

The Great Japanese KitKatastrophy...

Melon

Exactly as it sounds. You can't imagine it? Well that's because it should never have happened. I don't understand what possesses companies to make things taste like melon. Melons don't even taste like melon.

Yogurt
Well. Thank god this one was just a fun-size. I was expecting something akin to the yogurtish coating that makes even raisins (nature's cookie and bagel ruiner) tasty. But what I got was very, very different. I'm not sure what exactly these were coated with, but 'not yogurt' just about sums it up.
They were sweet. Nastily, cloyingly, filling-damagingly sweet, kind of like the weird sweetness of white chocolate x1,000. And sort of off-tasting, like they were rotting somehow, despite having been teased into existence from the least organic substances the planet has to offer. All in all, I got no semblance to yogurt out of these, other than that they're both white and unpleasant.


Cafe Latte
I don't understand how we can not have these in the US. Not because they're particularly tasty, but because every other food here that can have coffee added, has.
These guys were pretty much exactly what you'd expect if Starbucks made crappy chocolate. A bland, watery milkish coating over nondescript little wafers. Very non-offensive. Not too coffee tasting, because we don't want to scare the kiddies. I predict it's only a matter of time on these things' American debut.
UPDATE!
Since I haven't been paying much attention to American candies lately, as they've been getting progressively dumber and dumber, I missed the Limited Edition Coffee flavor KitKats.
Unsurprisingly, THEY'RE BAD. They taste like the air in one of those coffee shops that middle aged women hang out in. Usually these places sell a lot of unbearably cute knickknacks and rubber stamps and things of that nature.

Takagi
The main problem I have with importing candies is not that they are generally pretty bad (I like that), it's that I don't write down what I order, and when a big 'ol box of foreign candy shows up at my door a couple weeks later, I have long since forgotten what actual flavors these things are supposed to be. At any point in time I could biting into a squid 'n chicken creme, and I'd have no idea.
This one, at least, has the romanization of the flavor name written on it, although I'm not sure why that would be, considering. I'm not complaining, however. At least I can look this one up, or I could if I wasn't so lazy. From the picture on the front, I'm guessing some variety of persimmon / pomegranate type affair. The heart motif all over the outer and inner package made me a little nervous, because maybe animal heart flavor is a routine candy additive in Kit Kats, I don't know.
But these actually turned out to be pretty ok. They were dark chocolate, of which I heartily approve, and some weird tangy flavor creme that you could hardly taste anyway. So if it was heart squeezings, at least it was from one of the tastier-hearted animals.

Spam Spread with Pineapple

It looks like cat food, it smells like cat food, and it comes in one of those little cat food tins.
I would write this off as a labeling mix-up at the Fancy Feast factory, if not for the tiny pineapple chunks imbedded in it, which, frankly, did not help matters, and just made me wonder if there was a pineapple related accident over one of the mixing vats. Hopefully this accident created some sort of half cat half fruit supervillian.

Coca-Cola Chocolate Flavor Rage

I can understand if you're not familiar with this one, I don't think it ever made it past its test market of Midwestern towns with a population of <1000 .="" actually="" any="" are="" br="" denizens="" failures="" hilarious="" majorly="" matter.="" on="" out="" people="" prairie="" proverbial="" report="" tend="" test="" the="" they="" things="" to="" unlikely="" where="" who="">
"No, I'm serious, it was chocolate flavoring, and you put it in your Coke! I saw it with my own eyes!"
"Sure you did Ed, suuuuuure you did."
" I'm tellin' the truth! Rip to rage!! Rip to rage!!"