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.