Licorice ribbons

Product: Fini Mini Kollisions
Origin: Spain

First looks

Nick:
The bag screams "The Boldest Ever Mix of Sweet and Sour Licorice" and you know what guys, I'm gonna give you that one. No longer must my mouth fall asleep chewing timid, excuse-me taps together of sweet and sour licorice. I'm mildly hopeful for these; they smell like sugar and cheap fruit flavoring. Don't let me down, Spain!

Katie:
I can't stand licorice.  Not really very fair of me to review it!  I do like how colorful the ribbons are. Hopefully they're tasty.

I don't have anything funny to add here. sorry. nick add something funny and not that joke about the lonely ghost at the Halloween party.

See that white and red filling? That's all pure sugar. Also,
look at how white this guy's hands are. Where is his blood??!!

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Hey why was the ghost sad at the Halloween party? he didn't have any BODY to dance with! Oh ho ho ho ho ho! Oh, yes! Ripping good laugh!
As for this snack, my god; it's like 99% sugar. Two of the three shapes in the bag are a very thin layer of licorice wrapped around an extremely thick filling, and that filling is 100% sugar. Wow. If you need a sugar overdose, pop two or three of these in your mouth. I'm going to finish the bag, but maybe one a day. Very powerful stuff. I feel like I should be wearing a hazmat suit and using tongs to drop a single one of these into my mouth before cackling maniacally.


Katie:
How many apples grow on a tree?
t
h
i
n
k
i
n
g
s
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All of them.

I don't want to ruin Nick's joke by calling this entry "Pizza Assholes"

Product: Fabitos Pizza Assado
Origin: Brazil

First looks

Katie:
The pizza smell is strong with these, even breaking through the remnants of the sinus infection I'm getting over at the time of this writing.  The chips are puffed and shaped like wheels, meant to represent a sliced pizza I think. I'm really rooting for these to be delicious.

Nick:
I swear to God, when I first saw the package, I thought these were called "Pizza Assholes", and if you look at the shape of the snack... uh, yeah. They smell like very basil-y pizza, but I don't have my hopes up too high; I'm pretty sure none of the pizza flavored items we've had actually tasted anything like pizza. We'll see. My mouth is armored in powerful skepticism at what these are actually going to taste like.

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
All the nope.
Let's start with the texture--these things have all the pleasant mouthfeel one would expect from a packing peanut. They don't crunch so much as collapse in your mouth with a cracking eggshell feeling.
And the taste? Was that supposed to be added at any point? Brazil, do you even have pizzas to use for reference?  This tasted like bad salt and out-of-date taco seasoning. Your culture is vibrant but your pizza snacks are awful. Bleck.

Nick:
Oh, boy. I'm really struggling to think of even a single nice thing to say about these pizza assholes. The taste and texture is like they made an extremely cheap, pizza in name only cheese snack, then left it around to get stale and musty before putting it in a bag and unleashing it on innocent food bloggers. Something nice, uh... hmm. Ummm... the bag has a little diagram showing you how to open it? That part was okay! Ha ha!

Milka and Oreo

Product: Milka & Oreo
Origin: Poland

First looks

Nick:
So this is like chocolate with Oreo goop inside? All right, this looks pretty good. As long as they didn't make it sugar free or gluten free or GMO free or gum free or whatever other way we've had promising snacks ruined before, I think this is going to be quite nice. I mean, chocolate normally doesn't have gluten anyway, right? This is like when I'm shopping for candy and the product that's 100% sugar yells FAT FREE on the package. I'm going to pass the keyboard to Katie so I can stuff this in my mouth now.

Katie:
This seems very promising. The Oreo inside (btw I keep typing Oreo as "Orea" wtf is an orea???) is not goopy, which is the ultimate crime when it comes to chocolate...even more so than flipping quinoa being in there. Anyway.  The chocolate smells exactly like regular milk chocolate, nothing more or less. It's broken up into handy squares, as you'll see in the photo below. I'm hoping this is good, melty chocolate with Oreo cream filling bonus taste. We shall soon see!

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Ah, yes sir, yes sir indeed sir, indeed sir yes sir, this is really good. Like Katie I don't enjoy it much when chocolate has "goop" inside - substantially softer filling - and the texture of this filling is great; very slightly softer than the outside chocolate, but not so much it's distracting; instead it kind of melts in your mouth with a very nice light milky flavor. Even better than I anticipated! I'm sure that liking Oreo-flavored chocolate bars like this so much doesn't make my taste seem terribly sophisticated, but I don't care; this is delicious. I would definitely get more of this. My only caution is that it's very super sweet - you'll want to have some water handy to wash even a small amount down with, I think. A+!

Katie:
Oh my gosh, an explosion of sweetness. I definitely liked this but a little bit goes a huge distance. Pick this up if you see it but be prepared to work on this Charlie Bucket-style (i.e. very slowly because you're a poor little English boy in a Roald Dahl story). A great mash-up of tastes from our friends in Poland!

Pre-smashed peanut cookies

Product: PikaNut peanut biscuits
Origin: Pakistan

First looks

Katie:
Having been already smunched up fairly well, I grabbed a sliver of cookie from the bag as my taste-test piece. The cookies have a very weird, plastic-y smell to me. The cookie piece is rather hard and I have a feeling it will taste very dry and not very good. I hope I'm wrong.

Nick:
These allegedly peanut-flavored (by the way, shouldn't it be, like, peanut-butter flavored? I've never had just peanut flavored something before, probably because peanuts don't have much of a taste) biscuit smells exactly like extra virgin olive oil. I don't know how that's even possible; maybe there's a ton of extra virgin olive oil in them. Uh, wish us luck, everyone.

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
Texture is softer than I thought.  Tastes like bland peanuts. Not especially good but not especially horrible. These aren't for me, dude.

Nick:
Deeply bland, with a mild undercurrent of... uh, slightly unpleasant blandness. I'm afraid there's not even really enough to make fun of here, it's just a bland, sad cookie and it's kinda not good. Maybe we could do a joke because PikaNut sounds like something Pikachu would eat, but I think Pokemon just eat berries or something, and it would be boring if Pikachu even ate these, like he'd take a bite and then just frown and the episode would kinda end on an anticlimax (like this review).

Explosive quinoa chocolate

Product: quinoa ka-pow!
Origin: USA

First looks

Nick:
I'm very confused. The container screams "TASTES LIKE A CRUNCH EXPLOSION IN YOUR MOUTH" but surely that's a texture? Crunch is a texture, not a taste. "What's your burger taste like?" "CRUNCH"? Is this just dark chocolate with quinoa in it? Is the quinoa exploding? Is that normal? How does quinoa explode? This looks and smells like a regular dark chocolate bar with a very tiny amount of quinoa in it, so I'm getting the feeling the wrapping is over-promising a little bit here.

Katie:
Is quinoa even crunchy? I don't remember it being a crunchy thing but I've only had it like twice. Did everyone run out of ways to make chocolate good so now we're just shoving random foods into it?

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
I'm still confused. My quinoa isn't exploding. This does indeed just taste like good chocolate with random food shoved into it; there's very little quinoa, and when I do even notice that it's in there, it just feels like crunching a seed. I mean, the chocolate is pretty good, so I'll eat the whole bar, but the quinoa is completely accidental to the whole experience, and I wouldn't miss it if it was gone. Did this not just sell as, like, "Tastes like a nice dark chocolate bar in your mouth"? The chocolate is very nice, it doesn't need quinoa and lying packaging. Very puzzling.

Katie:
Mlech. Do not want.  The chocolate is fine but it's not going to make you love dark chocolate all the sudden because there's weird crap in it. The quinoa does not need to be here at all. The texture is not right for chocolate and is very distracting. Just...don't with the adding weird stuff to chocolate. Make good chocolate, people. Add actual good food to it, if you have to add something. Stop being 'lol so random'.

Also, instead of touting that your chocolate is 'non-gmo', which is a bs thing to be proud of, how about you get your chocolate fair-trade?  How about chocolate that doesn't involve child labor or slavery? That's quite a bit more important than your non-gmo crap.

Food tubes

Product: Wafer Rolls--Vanilla flavored
Origin: India

First looks

Nick:
I'm not really a fan of this kind of snack; I usually find the outer flavorless tube part too thick, and as a result this type of thing usually just tastes like a not very flavorful cookie to me. These do smell nice and vanilla-y, and the outside doesn't seem toooooo bad, so we'll see, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Katie:
It smells like cake frosting! I'm hoping this will be good. I used to get those Pepperidge Farm stick things but they'd usually go stale before I ate even half of them. The container made for good storage though.

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
You know, now that Katie mentioned it, these do taste more like cake frosting than vanilla. I'm happy to say my expectations have been exceeded! The tube isn't too thick, the center is sweet without being overpowering, and these are definitely better than those old Pepperidge Farm stick things Katie's talking about (no need to remember me saying that one, Pepperidge Farm). A very pleasant surprise!

Katie:
I guess the secret way to please us is to taste like cake frosting or ketchup. I really liked these. Cake frosting can get overwhelming real quick, but these were perfectly balanced. Sweet enough to be a dessert, vanilla enough to give it taste, and just crunchy enough to satisfy. Grab these if you ever see them anywhere.

Epic Eagle mural ketchup chips

Product: Ketchup chips
Origin: Canada

First looks

Katie:
I believe I have enjoyed the past iteration(s) of ketchup chips. These are brought to us by a Canadian Aboriginal corporation. The ketchup smell is quite strong and you can see the flavoring coating each chip. The chip thickness seems to be on the thing side but I'm not detecting any grease-induced translucency. Looking forward to trying these!

Nick:
I'm not normally a fan of ketchup chips - I can just get regular chips and dip them in ketchup myself - but these look and smell pretty good, and the bag's sick van art cover isn't hurting either. I'm cautiously optimistic about these.

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
Yum! Tastes exactly like dipping a plain potato chip in ketchup, which I like doing. I would very much like to eat the rest of the bag and see if these can maybe be ordered online if I want more. Thanks, Native Canadian Chip Corporation!

Nick:
Wow! I think I finally found the ketchup chip that's actually better than just dipping the chip yourself. Very good slightly spicy ketchup tomato taste, and the chips themselves are nice and crunchy. I think these edge out the rap snacks for best chips we've tried. I don't have any jokes, I just really liked these.

Holiday special--"Valentine's Day"

We found some holiday season items in a box that we misplaced so we're trying them all now. Enjoy this "Valentine's Day" special! Full of Thanksgiving/Christmas food!

Product #1: Pumpkin Pie Truffles

First looks

Katie:
This looks like a jewel that is the currency of a far-flung video game land. How many of these do I need to buy a thunderblade??? Anyway, it's shiny and smells a skosh like pumpkin but only really because I know it's supposed to be pumpkin. I have to say, I'm really glad not everything in this special is going to be pumpkin.

Nick:
I'm a little worried about these. Like Katie noted, the outside looks very nice; they look like little pumpkin jewels. What I'm worried about is the insides, and the cross-section on the box showing chocolate ganache spilling out isn't filling me with a lot of confidence. I hope this isn't going to be a big mistake!

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
Oh geez.  I think if the middle part hadn't been goop this might have been okay. The taste isn't bad, a bit odd to have chocolate and pumpkin together--very heavily spiced pumpkin at that--but the goopy center killed it for me. Not a fan. If you like goopy crap in your chocolate, I guess this would be your thing but it's not mine.

Nick:
Mmm, I'm afraid I'm not a fan either. I'm actually okay with the texture inside after all; for me it's more the tastes inside clashing. The heavily spiced pumpkin is nice, and the dark chocolate is nice, but they just don't work together; I think one or the other really needed to take center stage, because they end up fighting for dominance in a mouth experience that is not my favorite. It works in a chocolate orange, but not here, and I really think that's because a chocolate orange is slightly orange-flavored chocolate, whereas this can't decide what it is. I'm sure someone out there will love this, but it's a swing and a miss from me.

Product #2 Maple Nut Goodies

Nick:
Ahhh, these smell great = a very nice maple smell with a tiny little undercurrent of peanut. Actually, I'm not sure we even need the peanut in here; just shoot that maple-flavored toffee right into my mouth. I've got high hopes for this, and I think Katie's going to try them even though her enemy peanut is duplicitously ensconced in the centers of these, uh, Goodies.

Katie:
I agree with Nick, take the peanut out and just give me the toffee. I really hope I'm not going to regret this...the mouthfeel of nuts is not my thing in the slightest. The smell is really good though.

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Mmmf, these suckers are hard! I expected soft toffee around a hard peanut core, but the inside is so hard I can't even tell where the peanut is. I'm not really a fan of the texture, which can't decide if it's chewy or crunchy and has to kind of be chewed down into a stubborn little maple mass you can then swallow. The taste is great, but I don't know how many of these I'd want to really eat in a row.

Katie:
Mleck. The toffee was alright but it was ruined by the peanut's saltiness. I didn't like how hard it was and the whole time I was making a nope face. The maple toffee would make great ice cream though. Someone make that happen.

Product #3 Holiday Cinnamon Pretzel Sticks

First looks

Katie:
These just look like pretzels. I don't really smell cinnamon or much of anything really. Are these just going to be normal pretzel sticks with a sort of cinnamon flavor or obnoxiously cinnamon salt rods?

Nick:
Um... you know, now that I'm thinking about it, cinnamon-flavored pretzels actually sounds like it might be kind of nasty. It looks like there's still salt on these, so it's going to be salty cinnamon? I don't know about these, dog. No, I don't know about this at all. I'm preparing myself for the worst.

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
Not bad. The cinnamon is barely there at all to the point where I wondered if I'd read the bag wrong. It's very subtle. I think it was baked in the pretzel dough rather than coated on. I guess these would be for someone who really likes pretzels and wants a nice change?

Nick:
Oh, god. This is weird. I thought the chocolate and pumpkin back in the truffles clashed. This... oh, I don't care for this in the least. The salt and the cinnamon do not go together at ALL. Think about, like, a nice cinnamon cookie, then sprinkle salt on top. No, I'm afraid this just doesn't work. I think the way to fix these is leave the salt off; then maybe the pretzel would be like a nice little gingerbread rod? I don't know. These didn't work for me at all. I'd rather just have regular pretzel sticks.

Product #4 Pumpkin Pie PopTarts

First looks

Nick:
Well, these certainly look good; they smell like warm dough, which is at least a flavor that goes with pumpkin pie. I'm not expecting a super strong pumpkin flavor, and I'm hoping the dough and frosting on top will create a nice combination instead of the weird stuff we've been tasting so far. And, I mean, this can't be more weird than watermelon Jolly Rancher pop-tarts, right?

Katie:
Right away, I like the festive autumnal sprinkle bits on the tarts. I think these will be good, maybe like a pumpkin version of the old(?) apple cinnamon flavor when I was kid. Do they still have that? Nick already covered a lot of my initial thoughts and I really want to eat some before it gets cold so...the end.

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Ahhh, these are great! I'm not an expert in pumpkin pie, but these come pretty close to what I'd imagine a good one tastes like - warm sugar, cinnamon, and pumpkin, in that order. Not quite as good as my favorite Pop-tart flavor (S'mores), but very tasty and a very nice treat on a frozen Winter night.

Katie:
I'm still not used to toasting these. I used to just microwave them so now when they're toasted, sometimes I'm like "too crunchy" (pouty face) but more often "just right!". Anyway, these are delicious. Sorry we didn't post this in time for anyone to buy any!  Might still be on Amazon, these things are still good into the summer.

Product #5 Apple mix candy corn

First looks

Katie:
Opening the bag unleashed a cloud of fake green apple scent into my face. I think the green apple ones will be bad, but apple pie and caramel apple might be good. We shall see. Candy corn is something I like having a few pieces of every Halloween so I should enjoy these if they're like normal candy corn except appley.

Nick:

Apple candy corn. Uh, I don't really know what to make of this; I guess like Katie I'm expecting the green apple to be nasty as usual, while the other flavors might be OK. These smell extremely weird - kinda like alcohol apple plastic - so I don't have my hopes up too high. Then again. I used to really enjoy candy corn flavored Jones soda (in the little Frankenstein head can! Remember those?) so hope springs eternal!

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
Green apple was actually fine, the green apple taste was very mild and more like an actual green apple than the sour green apple candy taste that's usually in candy. Apple pie was good and caramel apple was fine. I think overall these are worth getting to very slowly consume over time but don't go out of your way to hunt them done.

Nick:
Super weird. These taste more like sugar and kinda vague cinnamon and caramel more than anything else. They're not bad, just odd; I think I'd probably rather just have regular candy corn, so I guess in that respect they're not great, but they're much less gross than I expected, so, that's something, right?

PS from Katie: I think I'd rather have these over regular candy corn BUT only because they're not as facepunchingly sweet.

Chesty Festy Bo Besty

Product: Festy--strawberry
Origin: Columbia

First looks

Nick:
These smell like extremely bad, fake, cheap, fake nasty strawberry. If I remember right, Columbia also gave us coconut-flavored cookies, so all they need now is peach and they'll have the trifecta. I'm going to eat one of these, but I'm not gonna be happy about it.

Katie:
Okay, who hear has had astronaut ice cream? The one with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry? The cookie smells like the strawberry stripe from that.
I do like the little design on the front so there's one positive comment in the review so far!

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Eeech. Not as bad as I anticipated, but still not very good; the only nice thing I can say is the actual taste is extremely sweet, and the super sweetness does cover up some of the nasty, fake, cheap, fake bad strawberry flavor. Uh, the non-strawberry part of the cookie is okay too. Solid D+. See me after class.

Katie:
Oh geez, seeing that on my paper was one step above being sent to the principal's office. Immediate panic time. By the time I talked to my teacher, I'd have convinced myself I was about to be kicked out of school for being bad and then be grounded until forever (I'm still grounded! Help!).
I thought the taste was cute. I don't think that's really a taste adjective but it's what came to mind. These were fine cookies that it would be okay to see in your lunchbox to munch on while you read Sideways Stories from the Wayside School.

PS Nick got real mad when he told me the full name of the book--I'd only remembered the Wayside part--and I Googled it so I didn't have to type the whole thing and just copy-paste it.

PPS from Nick: Saying something tastes "cute" makes you sound like a serial killer who just ate a raw rabbit.
PPPS from Nick: Why you all googlin'???? 

Pokemon...gum?

Product: "Chewing candy"
Origin: Japan

First looks

Katie:
While I don't like gum, I like how cute the packaging is. We have the new hat Pikachu has been sporting on the front and each piece of gum is wrapped in Pokemon-themed paper. The piece Nick picked has what looks like a Pokedex entry for Meowth on it. I think I've only caught one of those in Pokemon Go and zero in any of the regular games.

Nick:
OH BOY. My nemesis, soda gum. I'm sure I've said this before, but probably the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten is Royal Crown Cola gum, which shot cola-flavored juice out with each chew, possibly directly from the Devil's laughing butthole (the devil was laughing, I mean, not his butthole, although maybe that was laughing too, who knows). I'm sure this won't be that bad, but I'm very worried about soda flavored gum, even with cute packaging. #prayforthehams (except Katie who wimped out which is probably a smart move). Oh man, I really don't want to try this. Here goes.

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
At the time of this writing, it was single-digit temperatures and extremely windy.  When I fired up Pokemon Go (my work is a Pokestop now!), I was warned about seven times that there was EXTREME WEATHER and that I should be safe...Oh fudge. I thought I was going to go somewhere with this but obviously not. Stay in school, kids. Mazes and Monsters is a far out game.

Nick:
Well, not as bad as I feared. I keep forgetting that Japanese "cola" flavor seems to have a rather strong lemony taste, and this tastes more like lemon than cola; not too bad, but not a flavor I really enjoy. The weirdest thing is actually the texture - the stick starts out very thick and tough to chew, but after a few chews it shrivels up and you end up swallowing it. You can't really chew it as long as you'd like with bubble gum, so I guess it really is more like a "chewing candy" except it's gone in a few chews which isn't too bad because the taste is just okay. Phew! We made it, everyone!