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.

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.