Recent candy roundup

Oh, hi there.

Snickers Fudge: I'm not overly taken with Snickers in the first place; their chocolate has an oddly sharp taste, almost acrid, at least to my palate. This might also be the contribution of the peanuts, and so switching to peanut butter nougat in the Fudge variety doesn't really help matters. This might be good for a lark if you like Snickers but wish they were more chocolatey, but you'll probably be disappointed - the fudge is present but at least partially masked by the inferior chocolate coating of the whole bar. On the other hand, if you like that chocolate coating in the first place you can probably make it work.

Bat Dots: Dots have kind of gotten the big head over the last few years. First they released Tropical Dots, which were not very good, and then Yogurt Dots, which were terrible. (Somehow both products remain on the market.) Now they just keep putting out strange seasonal varieties which all seem to have one thing in common: they don't contain a mix of flavors. Would you buy a bag of Skittles that was all reds? What makes Dots good in the first place is the variety; an entire box of black-colored but "blood orange"-flavored Dots is asking too much of the consumer, in my opinion. These taste all right but I just got sick of them after a while, which wouldn't have been as much of a problem with a mixture. How hard could that possibly be? Anyway, you won't likely have to worry about whether or not to pick these up now that Halloween is over, so whatever.

Tropical Chewy Lemonhead and Friends: Has tropical ever not been candy code for "awful"? The problem with these things goes to two sources: one, the flavor mix, and two, the complete lack of tartness. For a product that contains real lemon juice according to the ingredients, there is a stunning absence of even a hint of pucker in this candy, a problem that might be more forgivable if the flavors weren't so utterly mediocre. The lemon/pink lemonade is the most tolerable, and cherry/watermelon can pass, but kiwi/strawberry is forgettable, peach/mango somewhat dire, and I wouldn't touch berry/banana with a ten-foot clown pole. Isn't the whole gimmick of Lemonheads being tart? Aren't regular Chewy Lemonhead and Friends at least mildly tart? Did I just get a reject box? Regardless, I can't be unequivocal enough: do not ever buy these. The regular stuff is a million times better. (The Ferrara Pan website says of these, "You asked for it, you got it!" Ferrara Pan, what did we ever do to you?)

Jamon it, all right

The other day I went down to Fox & Obel, a gourmet grocery store at the corner of Illinois and McClurg in the River East neighborhood, just west of Navy Pier. I was looking for some serrano ham and Manchego cheese to make sandwiches with, since I've had sandwiches with those ingredients before and liked them, but they tend to be pretty expensive. As I was looking in the case at the variety of hams, one caught my eye: jamón ibérico de bellota. Specifically, what caught my eye was the price tag: $179.99 per pound.

After confirming that wasn't a misprint, I came home and did a little research. Jamón ibérico, ham from black Iberian pigs from the south of Spain, is the most expensive ham in the world, and the bellota is the cream of the crop. Bellota ham is made from pigs that eat nothing but acorns in southwest Spain's oak forests for the last months of their lives, giving the meat an intense marbling and a nutty taste (at least supposedly). I decided I had to try this ham.

So I went back with a coworker who had the idea to expand the thing to a three-way Spanish ham taste test. We'd start with the "basic" serrano ham (priced to move at a mere $26.99/lb), then move on to the standard ibérico ham (which retails at $89.99/lb), and finish with the bellota.

I had never before had serrano ham in isolation, outside of a sandwich and without the accompaniment of Manchego. The taste was sharp and fairly salty, but pleasant; I found something vaguely woodsy about it. The color of the meat was fairly light, and it could be a little tough to bite through depending on if I was biting the outside of the slice, which was surrounded by a ring of fat that got fairly thick on one end.

Next was the $89.99/lb ibérico. Already I could see a darker, richer color to the meat, and the marbling was noticeable (supposedly the second grade of ibérico, one down from bellota, is finished merely half on acorns and half on grain, so if this was that kind, it certainly makes sense). I tasted some nuttiness, and noted that it seemed lighter and less salty than the serrano (although it was certainly greasier). It tasted rather like a high-end cheese, in fact.

Finally came the pig de résistance. The bellota was perhaps even slightly darker than the regular ibérico, the marbling even more pronounced, the flecks of fat poking up from the paper-thin slices even more noticeable. The paper on which the ham sat peeled away, as the meat practically oozed oil. The tenderness was ridiculous - while the serrano could at times be difficult to chew, the bellota could be pulled into as many pieces as you wanted by hand, and even the biggest attachments of fat simply melted away in the mouth. I almost didn't even need to chew it. Perhaps owing to the 36-month curing process, the bellota seemed saltier again than the ibérico had been, but as I chewed, the saltiness began to fall away, and the ham presented a rich, earthy aftertaste. It seemed that I was tasting both the pig itself and the natural environment in which it had lived.

Jamón ibérico de bellota. Image found on Flickr.

Unquestionably, the bellota ham was the best. At the same time, it's difficult to argue that it's worth three bucks a slice - yeah - except to say you've tried it. And really, the regular ibérico was up there with it - while it clearly was not as superior, I can't say it was half as good, and since it costs half of what the bellota costs, if you're looking to splurge on a high-end ham, you might as well save yourself a bit of money and stick with the stuff that merely costs 90 bucks a pound (or $1.50 a slice). You have to be willing to eat the ham on its own, though; this stuff is too expensive and too complex to justify putting it with, well, anything really - maybe alternate bites with a piece of Manchego or Mahón or something, but that's about it. If you're just looking for a nice classy ham sandwich, serrano ham will do you just fine.

Rebirth of a blog

You - by which I mean the two people who read this - have probably noticed there haven't been many posts. There are several reasons for this, not least that I'm trying to eat better and thus avoid junk food, and also because I find I only have so much to say about junk food. I either think it tastes good or not, but there just isn't the kind of difference between items. This piece of sugar tastes like that piece of sugar.

So the blog is being repurposed as "Notes from an Omnivore" (I'm open to title suggestions). I'll try almost anything once, and my investigation of new (to me) types of food can now be extended not just into just-on-the-market products but also to cuisines I'm trying for the first time, or even my attempts at cooking. There might still be junk food reviews here, but they're going to be fewer and farther between, and surrounded by a lot more reviews of other stuff. I won't promise constant updates - I don't do that anywhere anymore - but there should be a few more than there have been.

Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms

Mars apparently has a thing for hooking itself to summer blockbusters these days. Last year there were Mint Crisp M&Ms and the Snickers Adventure Bar, both discussed in the June 16, 2008 podcast, which tied into Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Not content with one questionable summer sequel, Mars has joined up with the second Michael Bay Transformers movie. They've also continued their trend of adding berry flavors to M&Ms (which have gone one good, one bad for me so far). This time, though, it's strawberries, and the M&Ms in question are actually peanut butter. Presumably the idea is that these two flavors go together in a PB&J (unless you're a grape jelly person), so surely they'll go together in an M&M.

It's an intriguing thought, but things never quite work that way. When you're making a candy product and trying to impersonate something that isn't candy, you usually end up with a curiously ersatz version, and it's really no different here. In isolation, the peanut butter tastes like peanut butter, and I guess the strawberry flavor tastes enough like a real strawberry - but neither tastes quite enough like the real thing for anyone to be fooled by the combination. Not that M&Ms is trying to fool anyone into thinking they're eating a sandwich, of course, but the way peanut butter and strawberry jam might mesh between two slices of bread is not sufficiently aped by the way peanut butter and strawberry flavor mesh here. I had a similar problem with the raspberry M&Ms - I might like eating raspberries covered in chocolate, but taking raspberry flavoring and grafting it onto an M&M just isn't the same experience, and it's never going to be.

And so it is here. I can taste the peanut butter, and I can taste the strawberry, but I never found that the two of them mixed all that well. It probably doesn't help that M&Ms peanut butter is so sweet - not only does the inherent sweetness overwhelm some of the strawberry taste, but without a richer peanut taste, there simply isn't the mix of flavors that might result from a well-made PB&J.

Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms are far from the worst things in the world, but their reason to exist is pretty small. Peanut Butter M&Ms don't really need modification, but if they're going to have one, it really needs to be more impactful.

Southwestern Ranch Baked Lay's

I saw these for the first time tonight at Subway, so I went for it. If you like Baked Lay's and appreciate a little heat, this is the chip for you. There's a nice, fairly mild heat coming from some cumin and chilies, as well as an appealing hint of cream that gives the flavor some depth. And of course there's the usual advantage of Baked Lay's - they're not greasy, so you have that nice crispy texture and cleaner potato taste.

I know not everyone appreciates Baked Lay's, and obviously spice isn't for everyone either. But for those of us who like both things, this is a really strong snack, and it goes great alongside a sandwich.

Honey Barbecue Lay's Potato Chips

My bag didn't look like this - it has an actual photo of the chips, a sliced potato in the background, and a bowl of honey and barbecue sauce with a basting brush with sauce on it in the foreground. Anyway.

I had high hopes for these chips - you see "Honey Barbecue" and you think tangy, sweet, a little spicy, right? When it came down to it, though, there wasn't much going on. Not only was the barbecue sauce taste fairly ordinary, it was way too heavy on a smoky, mesquite kind of flavor which I just wasn't a huge fan of. Mesquite is fine on its own, I guess, but this isn't a bag of mesquite chips. Something with "honey solids" in it, as listed in the ingredients, should have a honey flavor somewhere; I couldn't find it. The mesquite wore off a bit as I got farther down in the bag, and there was a bit more of a tangy flavor to the chips near the end, but it shouldn't take that long.

More to the point, I guess I just expect more out of Lay's. We're talking the biggest chip brand in the world - if they do a Honey Barbecue chip, shouldn't it really knock that taste out of the park? Instead it was barely even close. For the most part these just tasted like any barbecue potato chips I could have gotten in any bag, with any brand name on the front, in any store in America. They were a genuine disappointment.

Pepsi Throwback

Much has been made in recent years of the evils of high fructose corn syrup, with claims made about its more negative health effects than "regular" sugar and a vocal subset of cane sugar fans who insist that sodas made with their standard-bearer just taste better. I don't have any particular interest in getting in the middle of either of those debates (I go back and forth on cane sugar, due to its extremely distinctive taste), but it's interesting to see a company of Pepsi's stature giving some play to the whole debate by releasing "throwback" editions of its two biggest brands, Pepsi and Mountain Dew, to a national audience. There's something about "throwback" which implies that things were better before, and one wonders what Pepsi might do if this new edition proves popular. (At least they learned the lesson of New Coke and didn't try to completely supplant their existing product. As it is I've yet to find Pepsi Throwback outside of grocery stores in the Chicago area; not a convenience store I've been in has carried the stuff.)

Pepsi doesn't specify the provenance of the "natural sugar" found in Throwback. Assuming it's sucrose, sugar cane is the most likely source, but as I said above I usually find cane sugar to have a distinctive "caney" taste, which I didn't notice in Throwback (though cola always does the best job of hiding any distinctiveness in the taste of its sweetener, so it's not out of the question).

Regardless of where the sugar comes from, it does its job. As outlined by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink, Pepsi's sweetness relative to Coke was the key factor in its winning sip-based taste tests in the 1980s despite being less popular as an overall brand (as Gladwell notes, when you're taking home a two-liter bottle of the stuff, you're possibly not looking for the same things that you're looking for in a sip or two of it). Coke's more distinctive flavor and less overpowering sweetness - in spite of its use of HFCS - have allowed it to maintain more brand loyalty. But by taking out the HFCS, Pepsi Throwback starts to taste, well, a lot more like Coke.

Pepsi Throwback ranks right up there with the best of the mass-market colas. It has a cleaner taste than Pepsi itself because of the lack of corn syrup, and while it doesn't have Coke's trademark tang, it actually has a deeper, more complex cola flavor. (Coke is also more syrupy, although not hugely so. But I found it odd in comparing the two how relatively light the cola taste of Coke was. Pepsi Throwback's is much darker and richer, for lack of better words. I'm not sure if that's what a mass audience wants from their cola, but it's out there.)

Will Pepsi Throwback last? I don't know. It's hard to see it picking off committed Coke drinkers, and if Pepsi drinkers prefer it because of the sweetness, it's hard to see them switching to a cleaner, drier alternative. People who really like the taste of the kola nut and find HFCS too sweet should flock to it if the word gets out, but how many cola drinkers does that describe? Probably not enough to save Pepsi Throwback from its likely fate as a limited edition, but the increasing national popularity of HFCS alternatives at least gives it a chance.

Life Savers Gummies: Island Fruits

Life Savers Gummies tend to be among the better gummy spinoffs; they're usually quite flavorful and the flavors themselves are chosen well. Island Fruits, the latest iteration, follows well in the footsteps of its predecessors. There are four flavors - strawberry kiwi, mango melon, fruit punch and pineapple - and all four manage to be at least solid. One thing I find with tropical flavors is that there's almost always one (at least) that I don't care for in the bunch, but here that's not really the case.

Mango melon isn't spectacular - melon is always a pretty weak flavor, and mango is rarely done well. In this case, though, the melon isn't too overwhelming and the mango isn't terrible. It's probably the least of the four flavors, but it's rare when the worst flavor in a tropical bag is still decent.

Candy flavors of pineapple tend not to do the actual fruit justice. That doesn't really change here, but on the other hand it does a pretty good job of tasting like the actual pineapple Life Saver. So it's plenty edible.

Strawberry kiwi frequently just means "strawberry." Not that that's a terrible thing. In this flavor, there actually is a hint of tartness, perhaps the presence of the kiwi. That makes it slightly better, but a standard strawberry candy would already be pretty good.

Finally, there's fruit punch, which is almost always the best flavor in any mixture. The cover of the bag has raspberry and orange on it, and that tastes about right. And who can complain about that? Certainly not me.

Overall it's a decent mix. It's not really crazy tropical, but it gets there, and candy so rarely does a good job of tasting like tropical fruits that I'm not going to complain if the replacement flavors are done well. Thumbs up from me.

Pepsi Natural

Pepsi Natural strikes me as an odd product. To whom does it really appeal? Sure, it uses real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, and it's made from all-natural ingredients. But if you're on the kind of green kick where you refuse to consume regular Pepsi because of all its chemicals, are you really so desperate for "all natural cola" at all? And if you are, aren't you probably going to be just as happy with the organic colas that already exist?

The answer might be no. I ran a cola taste test two years ago in which the organic cola from Whole Foods was graded pretty low. And Pepsi Natural, while it'll never be mistaken for regular Pepsi, actually isn't that bad just as a cola. As you might expect, the flavor is a little more watery than a "standard" cola - sort of like if Vitamin Water made a cola - but it isn't too bad, and there's really none of the sometimes overly harsh bite that cola can have; it's much smoother going down. The difference between sugar and corn syrup is only really noticeable (aside from the fact that the cola is not overpoweringly sweet) in the aftertaste, which left hints of what reminded me of maple. I also thought I got a little bit of the flavor of the apple extract which the label says is used for color; that light fruitiness adds an interesting layer of "naturalness," for lack of a better word.

At 150 calories and 38 grams of sugar in a 12-ounce bottle, it's hard to imagine Pepsi Natural catching on among the health food set, no matter how all-natural it is. But considering the inherent flavor disadvantages it has next to its more industrial brother, I think it comes out pretty well, and in some cases even nudges ahead. You could do worse than trying it once, certainly. It seems to be sold mostly at Target (although I did see it at Dominick's tonight), so check that out if you're interested.

Dr. Pepper Cherry

Dr. Pepper has tried out a lot of different permutations in the last few years, including Cherry Vanilla, Berries and Cream, and the rather woeful Cherry Chocolate (reviewed in the 3/31/08 episode of the old podcast). I actually liked Berries and Cream pretty well, but the others ranged from "hardly different from basic Dr. Pepper" to "pretty horrible." Maybe the problem was they were just trying too many flavors.

The front of the bottle of Dr. Pepper Cherry that I picked up actually has the tagline, "It's so amazingly smooth, you have to try it to believe it!" on the front. Ordinarily I would say this was incredibly hubristic, but you have to give to Dr. Pepper here - they're right. I'm not sure how I would explain it - the cherry flavor, much like in the old Cherry Vanilla variety, is hardly strong. But the undertone that is there does just enough to make the regular Dr. Pepper flavor easier to drink. I'm not sure it's "amazingly" smooth, except that it is kind of amazing that just adding cherry flavor could actually make your soda taste smoother.

On the other hand, Cherry Coke is one of my favorite sodas ever, and it's certainly smoother than regular Coke. The irony is that I'm not even a huge fan of cherries or even cherry flavor most of the time. In soda, though, I really enjoy it for whatever reason. I guess I would say that it's a good complementary flavor - I don't want to eat an entire bowl of cherries, and I thought that Cheerwine was pretty good, but not great. However, you take that mild, sweet cherry flavor and mix it with the strong, rather robust flavor of cola or Dr. Pepper, and the combination manages to mitigate the few harsh aspects of the original soda's taste. (Just don't make the mistake of trying to pair it with yet another flavor.)

So if you like Dr. Pepper, put Dr. Pepper Cherry on your list. It's at least as good and possibly even better.

Ben and Jerry's Ginger Snap Ice Cream

Oh. My. GOD.

This ice cream is limited batch, so you'd better get your hands on it now, because there's no guarantee it will remain accessible and if you think it sounds good - like I did, buying it solely based on the carton's description (which you can read above) - wait until you try it.

I've always liked it when cookies and ice cream mix. Cookies and cream was probably my favorite hard-packed flavor growing up, I love ice cream sandwiches (and the recent Edy's variety that puts pieces of ice cream sandwich cookie into vanilla rocked), and I think my favorite flavor of ice cream ever is Haagen-Dazs' Sticky Toffee Pudding. (Yes, I know that's pieces of cake, not cookies. The principle is very similar.)

What makes Ginger Snap so great? Well, let's break it down. The base ice cream is "brown sugar cinnamon." Clearly that would be pretty amazing just on its own, but as a vehicle for complementary flavors it only gets better. Throw in a "ginger caramel swirl" - sounds insanely delicious, right? I found a sizable payload of it against the wall of the carton at one point - it is exactly as great as you would expect Ben and Jerry's caramel to be. And we're not even to the coup de grace.

The actual cookies themselves... I don't even know what to say. First of all, the pieces are enormous, which is fantastic (I can't have been the only one who always wanted the Oreo pieces in Cookies and Cream to be just a little larger). Second, it's more like just barely cooked dough than it is "cookie." The texture is soft and chewy, and the taste is perfect - that taste of ginger and hints of dark sugar that make the actual cookie such a hit on its own.

This is the kind of ice cream where you have to be careful, because it is easy to knock down a pint without even thinking about it. Every piece of cookie had me ready to hunt for more, and even if you don't find any for a couple spoonfuls, "brown sugar cinnamon ice cream with a ginger caramel swirl" is so good on its own there's really no compelling reason to stop until your conscience kicks in. If you like ice cream and you like ginger snaps at all, you have got to try this stuff before it's gone.

Cheetos Chile Y Limón

My bag of Chile Y Limón Cheetos doesn't actually look like the bag above - it's green and features Chester in the middle of a wrestling ring with an apparently nervous lime on one side and a pepper in a luchador mask on the other. Whatever.

Chile Y Limón Cheetos certainly deliver what the name promises - the snacks have a dark red color and a taste that combines a smoky, mildly spicy pepper flavor with a kick of lime, aided by the inclusion in the ingredients of "lime juice solids." However, there is a point at which the name no longer makes sense - and that's when it gets to "Cheetos."

Simply put, there is no cheese in Chile Y Limón Cheetos. Not even the barest hint of it. I scanned the ingredients twice to make sure I wasn't missing anything; nope. It's just not there. It's not like cheese is a snack food requirement, I guess, but your snack is named Cheetos! The slogan used to be "the cheese that goes crunch!" Would it have been that difficult to keep a slight underlying cheese flavor? It works perfectly well with the Flamin' Hot variety. And I think it would have made these snacks better. They're all right, but they seem to lack character somehow - there's a chile taste that hits first, followed by the lime taking over, and then the whole thing fades to a mild burn at the back of the mouth... and while all this is okay, I feel like there should be something else in there, right under the initial chile taste, preventing the lime from completely overwhelming everything until after I've swallowed. I think it would also make the aftertaste a little less starchy to have some cheese in there; right now, that's what we get, and while it's not unpleasant, I'd rather be tasting something else at that point if at all possible.

Really, these cover little ground that the Flamin' Hot Limón Cheetos don't - yeah, they're less spicy, which is fine if you're somebody's grandmother, but if you're eating Cheetos at all you ought to be able to handle a little spice on top of that. If you really want the Limón experience with a kick, that's where I'd go. It's a bigger kick, but it's much more satisfying, too.

Skittles Crazy Cores

Skittles may be overrating the "craziness" of their new variety just slightly. The premise, as you can probably tell from the front of the bag, is one flavor inside of another. The five are Mango Peach, Cherry Lemonade, Strawberry Watermelon, Melon Berry and Blue Raspberry Lemon. Just two of these (strawberry and lemon) have any kind of counterpart in the regular Skittles bag, so this is a relatively novel mixture even without the pairing of the flavors. But the real question, of course, is: how do they taste?

Melon Berry, for my money, is the worst of the lot. I've never really understood the obsession with either melon or the generic "berry" flavor. Melon is a fairly bland flavor even at its best and just doesn't work well in candy form; "berry" does nothing for me, especially when multiple legit berry flavors are available in the same bag. I would just pitch these pretty much right away.

Strawberry Watermelon is fourth-best, or second-worst, depending on your prerogative. You can taste both flavors, but watermelon is such a fake candy flavor that it's a little weird in combination. The strawberry is fine.

Cherry Lemonade is pretty good, with both flavors making appreciable impacts and combining well. I'd rank it #3, but only because I enjoyed the two ahead of it so much.

Peach Mango is #2. The peach taste is heavier, but the mango can be found, and it's a more creative combination than most of these and deserves applause for that. It also tastes really good, however, so I'm not just giving it points for creativity.

#1 is Blue Raspberry Lemon. Both flavors have a great zing and combine near-perfectly. I would have done just fine with a bag composed entirely of these.

I don't think anyone's going to forget regular Skittles over these, but the top three flavors all have a decent tang to them which you don't normally get in Skittles (aside from the sour variety, though it can be too tangy for one's mouth at times). The bag as a whole is weighed down by the mediocre-to-bad bottom two flavors, but if you like Skittles the top three flavors make it worth a go.

Orange Creme Hershey's Kisses

Perhaps the oddest variations on the recent blitz of alternate-flavor Hershey's Kisses are the ones that, well, aren't chocolate. The orange creme variety has apparently been around for a couple years, but it only seems to pop up at Easter time, so this year was the first time I noticed its existence.

Last Halloween's "candy corn" flavor and the orange creme flavor have a lot in common. They taste fine, if more than a little ersatz, but their raison d'être is confusing if not entirely nonexistent. Why would you eat candy corn-flavored Hershey's Kisses when you could just eat candy corn? And why would you really want to eat Hershey's Kisses that taste like a Creamsicle when you could just eat a Creamsicle?

I don't have an answer to either question other than "You wouldn't, really." It doesn't help matters that these Kisses aren't made out of chocolate. (Technically I guess they're made out of white chocolate. But even speaking as someone who likes white chocolate well enough, it's about as much "chocolate" as soy milk is "milk.") Chocolate is the only ingredient of the standard Hershey's Kiss, which is easily one of the five most famous candy products in America. Can you really brand something with the same name when it doesn't contain that ingredient? Isn't this like Coca-Cola rebranding Sprite as "Coke Citrus"?

Anyway. I won't say these aren't edible, but I really don't see the point in buying them unless you're looking to bulk up someone's Easter basket. The lack of any true chocolate will prove unsatisfying for most people, and I'm not sure even fans of orange will like the flavor, always hanging just on the acceptable side of the "vaguely unpleasant" border. If this is the taste you want, do yourself a favor and just eat a Creamsicle.

Sierra Mist Ruby Splash

It's often hard to know exactly how new a product is when you happen to notice it for the first time at the store. I'm pretty sure that Sierra Mist Ruby Splash just came out, however. First of all, there are barely any available images online and I don't have my digital camera at the moment, so all you're going to see of it is this shot I found online of the basic logo design:

Was it Sierra Mist who used to run the "Yeah, it's kinda like that" ads? Anyway.

The initial aroma coming out of the bottle is good - it really does smell like fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. And the initial sips tasted as much like a grapefruit soda as I think it's possible to taste - alternatives like Squirt and Fresca are much tamer in comparison. I was actually a little surprised Sierra Mist went this way, to be honest. It's not like there aren't people who like grapefruit juice, but it tends to run towards that sour/bitter end of the spectrum and be more of an acquired taste; to me, the stereotypical grapefruit juice drinker is a grandmother. Of course, I like it, but I like grapefruit.

We're still talking 39 grams of sugar in a 12-ounce can, though. After the first few sips, the grapefruit taste started to fade into the background a little bit, as the overall sweetness and lemon-lime flavor of the Sierra Mist overwhelmed it (and as my tastebuds got acclimated to the grapefruit flavor). It did hang around, but a little less obviously. That's probably not a bad thing for sales, of course - people probably aren't buying "Ruby Splash" expecting a grapefruit soda, but rather a typical Sierra Mist with just a little kick. And ultimately that's pretty much exactly what you get.

I'll be interested to see the reaction to this one. I liked it pretty well, but I enjoy grapefruit juice and I'm not sure that everyone does. Either way, I'm glad to see Sierra Mist carrying the torch for trying slightly different things in the mainstream soda market (following Cranberry Splash the last two holiday seasons). Up until this point I was worried that only Mountain Dew was really trying to branch out, and that would be unfortunate.

Battle Royale: Heath vs. Skor

Heath and Skor are the two major toffee-based candy bars on the market today. As a result, you might think that they're competitors. At one time that was true - Skor was introduced by Hershey's in 1983 to compete with the much older Heath - but Hershey's actually acquired Heath in 1996, meaning it's been almost 15 years since they were really in competition with each other. You might have thought Hershey's would phase one or the other out, but evidently they decided that both brands had sufficient admirers and that it was therefore easier to keep both on the market. The question is, how much difference is there between them, really? And which one is better?

Heath's toffee is light in color and bits of almonds can be seen on the inside. The taste is primarily that of almonds, with the chocolate coating providing additional flavor. The toffee snaps fairly easily under the teeth upon biting into the bar. Heath contains palm oil (the only ingredient it contains which does not also appear in Skor), which might help explain its slightly softer texture.

Skor's toffee has a rich, buttery taste which dominates the product. The outer layer of chocolate is barely even noticeable from a flavor standpoint. The toffee is also much darker in color and while it does contain bits of almonds, their flavor does not predominate as they do in Heath. The dark, buttery toffee flavor is the driving force. Also, while the two bars are about the same thickness, Skor's toffee is slightly stickier and more resistant to the tooth.

The Verdict

This may seem odd coming from me. In terms of everyday foods, I love almonds, while I'm not a huge fan of the taste of butter. But the taste of Heath, while certainly good, just seems weak when stacked up against the richness of Skor. Heath tastes like a chocolate bar with toffee in it; Skor tastes like toffee, and I actually like the butteriness in this context. I was actually a little surprised just how different the two bars were; it's easy to see why both remain on the market, as aside from both having the word "toffee" on the label and looking superficially similar from the outside, they're pretty much entirely separate entities, with a much bigger heads-up taste difference than something like, say, Coke and Pepsi. But put everything together - Skor's richer taste and its entertaining packaging (as far as I can think of, it's the only mainstream US candy bar that actually shows a picture of the bar on its wrapper, which I've always enjoyed) - and you come up with a clear winner.

Winner: Skor

Tranquilo Vitamin Water

I feel a little weird including Vitamin Water in this blog. It's certainly not what you'd consider "junk food." On the other hand, your typical 20-ounce bottle has 125 calories - it's no soda, but it's certainly packed with calories when compared to regular water. And ultimately it's a flavored beverage with sugar in it which contains no juice (let alone 100%). Why not include it?

I like most flavors of Vitamin Water I've tried. In fact, I haven't tried one I haven't liked - possibly in part because I've avoided green tea, expecting not to like it. At least, not until now. Tranquilo's stated flavor is "tamarind-pineapple," and while those are two things that I like well enough in isolation, their combination in this particular product just isn't doing it for me.

I'm not sure how to describe the taste. Pineapple constitutes the bulk of the aroma I got when I stuck my nose in the bottle, although it's a sort of tangy pineapple, which is probably the tamarind's influence. So far, so good. The actual taste was a bit different, though. As with all Vitamin Waters, there's a wateriness to the flavor - that's certainly expected and usually isn't a big deal, but here it bothered me a bit. The pineapple flavor itself was there, but there was kind of a strange secondary taste which I wasn't sure I could chalk up to tamarind (which I associate with a kind of sour flavor). I think I found the pineapple flavor to taste more like a piña colada-type flavor, with hints of coconut amid the pineapple. The tamarind is there, but it's not very distinguishable - pineapples themselves already have a tanginess, so the tamarind doesn't really stand out. If anything, it could be what's causing the piña colada taste, but that would only be a negative.

I wouldn't say it's undrinkable (though I might just be talking myself into not wasting the rest of this bottle), but Tranquilo takes its ignominious place as the first flavor of Vitamin Water for which I can say pretty definitively that I won't be drinking it again. Of course, I don't like piña coladas. Your mileage may vary.

Doritos Diablo Enchilado

Oh, Frito-Lay, you're so sneaky. You may remember a few years ago when Doritos launched a bunch of new flavors at once; after a short period of time, several were pared away and became unavailable. One of those, Ranchero, went away - but it's back, albeit in a Witness Protection Program bag.

Naming the chips "Diablo" and putting a devil's face on the bag is perhaps a little misleading; these chips aren't really that spicy, in spite of their dark red color. But there is a nice mixture of different flavors going on. The initial hits are primarily salty and sour, owing to the MSG and citric acid listed 7th and 5th on the ingredients list respectively. The tang is reminiscent of a lime flavor, and it does take over quite a lot of the flavor of the chip - but not all. As the sourness fades, a fairly mild but nevertheless quite noticeable heat arrives at the back of the mouth, probably due to the paprika, 6th in the ingredients list, which also lends the chips their deep redness. The overall effect is similar to dipping a tortilla chip into salsa ranchero, a smooth red salsa in which the lack of chunks of tomatoes or onions means the pepper's heat can take center stage. The salsa ranchero in this case has perhaps had a good deal of salt and lime juice added to it, but the key to the experience is really the way that taste melts away to reveal a light, pleasant burn.

There's something about these chips that somehow makes them extremely craveable; I'm thinking it's the MSG, but it's hard to say exactly. At any rate, how a chip as addictive as Ranchero ever went away in the first place I don't know, but any Doritos fan should be welcoming its return.

Orange Cream Pop Tarts

In a world where the list of breakfast cereals includes things like Lucky Charms and Count Chocula, it's perhaps not that strange to see Pop Tarts as "breakfast" even when so many of their varieties, with their frosted tops and artificially sweetened fillings, are clearly "dessert." The pretense towards breakfast is particularly well abandoned by the new limited edition Orange Cream Pop Tarts, which depict the classic Creamsicle ice cream bar right on the box as a reminder of what the Pop Tarts are intended to taste like.

The flavor does match up fairly well, certainly as much as I think you can expect from a Pop Tart. I was more bothered by the filling, which with its neon orange color and particularly gooey consistency called to mind Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, or perhaps the product of an industrial accident. I quite obviously have no delusions that Pop Tarts aren't heavily processed, but I'm not sure I needed so stark a reminder.

Still, the concern here is first and foremost how they stack up as Pop Tarts. By that standard there's nothing really wrong with them; I'm not sure this was exactly the flavor I'd have chosen for the latest edition, but after years of little branching beyond berries, cinnamon and chocolate, I suppose the product line can deal with a minor shake-up. Personally I wouldn't buy them a second time, but I'm not dreading the prospect of dealing with three more packages in the box I bought either. They taste fine, and that's what counts. And if you're excited by the prospect of Orange Cream Pop Tarts, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Flamin' Hot Funyuns

During my junior year of college I was, for a brief period, semi-addicted to Flamin' Hot Cheetos (until I made the mistake of eating two bags one after the other... I won't say any more than that). In high school, meanwhile, Funyuns were one of my favorite snack foods (although I really preferred Wise Onion Rings, but you can't get those out here). So naturally I had to try Flamin' Hot Funyuns.

They're pretty much exactly what you'd expect, but in a way that's actually better than I might have expected. Let me try and explain that. I was expecting the flamin' powder to taste more or less identical to what's on the Cheetos, and it does. I was also expecting some of the Funyun taste to come through, and it does. But what's nice about Flamin' Hot Funyuns as compared to the regular type is that normally, Funyuns are pretty starchy. This isn't a surprise, of course - all a Funyun is is a ring of puffed, fried starch with some onion powder on it. The nice thing about the Flamin' Hot variety is that while you still get enough of the onion flavor coming through, the fiery powder largely overwhelms the starch, giving the whole thing a much cleaner overall taste. (There's a slight starchy aftertaste, but we can't really complain about that when we're eating Funyuns, can we?)

I can't imagine I'll be developing any kind of addiction to these, but if you like your snacks spicy you can certainly do a lot worse in the taste department.

Starburst Sour GummiBursts

When I had the original Starburst GummiBursts some months ago, I was not a fan. The gummy was too tough and the liquid inside tasted like cough syrup. I'm pleased to report that not only do the Sour GummiBursts not have this problem, they're also actually fairly sour, something that isn't true of far too many candies bearing the name.

It's a little disappointing, perhaps, that they had to go with the sour sugar; Sour Starburst are one of the few products that don't and to my mind they're better for it. When it comes to gummy candy it's probably hard to avoid that tactic, however. Either way, the overall experience is a vast improvement over the original product - the gummies are much softer and the "juice" inside (which actually does contain some real apple juice, with artificial and natural flavors) is significantly better-tasting than its original counterpart.

The flavors might help as well. The original used strawberry, orange, cherry and lemon, and at least three of them just didn't taste very good. The sour version mixes it up a bit with green apple, orange tangerine, watermelon and strawberry, all of which manage to be pretty decent. I was a little disappointed that the juice itself didn't seem to have any additional sour kick, but the candy as a whole has a nice little bite to it, so I'll take what I can get. (Mars does have a tendency to get sour right - Sour Skittles and Sour Starburst are both good examples of the genre, more than just tangy without being quite as devastating to the mouth as the nevertheless delicious Jolly Rancher Screamin' Sours.*)

It's also nice that the bag is relatively small (just 1.5 ounces), so you can have one without eating so much sour that it wrecks your mouth for the rest of the day (Sour Skittles, at 1.8 ounces and with many more individual candies per bag, start to verge on this problem). I love sour candy, but as I age I just can't eat that much of it, so having a pretty good example of it in a pretty small size isn't a bad thing by my standards.

*A few years ago I bought a bag of Screamin' Sours at a Jewel in Lake County. The cashier, as she rang it up, said to me, "I hope these are for your kids!" They were not.

The Junk Monitor is back online

You may recall that about a year ago I started doing a podcast called The Junk Monitor, in which I reviewed new snack food products. Within a few months, unfortunately, the podcast went by the wayside; it was just too much work with everything else going on, plus I needed four or so different items to fill out a whole podcast and getting my hands on that much new junk food at once could be difficult.

However, it's time to bring the concept back, just in a more convenient format. Blog posts can be as short or long as they please, and I only need to include one product at a time, plus this way I'm only spending the time to write the post, as opposed to with the podcast which basically involved writing a whole post and then also recording and editing it. It was fun, but this is going to be updated a lot more frequently, and I think that's what everyone wants.*

*might not be what everyone wants