New Snack Review: Newtons Fruit Crisps

I’ve always been a Fig Newton fan. If I’m on a road trip or lazing around on the beach, my backpack will inevitably contain several sleeves of gooey Newtons. They’re such a solid snack, you know? Depending on your hunger level, they can either act as a quick bite (serving size: 2 Newtons) or as a meal replacement (serving size: 8 Newtons).

However, after manufacturing the same product of over a century, I can understand why Nabisco wanted to diversify. These cookies are great, but with the advent of Gogurt and Cheeseburger in a Can, the Newton Big Wigs (or should I say Big Figs? Oh, snap!) needed to shake things up. Staying relevant in the snack industry is a blood and guts business, and if you’re not ready to step it up a notch, you can expect to go the sad, forgotten way of Hostess’ Pudding Pies.

So how do these snacks shake down? Well, although it seems odd to attach the Newton name to a food that doesn’t stick to your teeth, these Crisps aren’t half bad. Imagine someone ironed a normal Fig Newton until it was flattened and crunchy, and you’ve pretty much got a Fruit Crisp. There’s a hard outer shell - which fractures like Tectonic Plates when you bite down on it – followed by a thin layer of succulent apple filling.

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Snack Review: Annie’s Chocolate Bunny Grahams

When grappling with major life decisions, I want comfort food. Starch, chocolate, gravy, whole chickens – they are my saviors in times of personal crisis.

And, although anti-terrorism specialists and cancer patients might argue that entering one’s senior year in college is hardly earth-shattering, I beg to differ. Senior year is cause for MAJOR concern, people. There are 2 semesters, two measly semesters, between me and the real world (which totally exists, despite John Mayer’s insistence to the contrary).

This world expects me to change it; to make it better, faster, stronger, fairer. Or, at the very least, not to mess it up more than it already is. That’s a lot to ask, don’t you think?

Which is why I’ve retreated to the safe, chocolaty arms of Annie’s Bunny Grahams. Because if I’ve learned one thing during the past 3 years, it’s this: society can make me act like a grown-up, but it sure can’t make me eat like one.

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The Why Files: Pickle in a Bag

For the true warrior, the reward often lies in the challenge. Why climb Everest? Because it’s there. Why watch a five-hour marathon of “Roseanne”? Because I CAN.

These challenges test our very moral fiber. They crop up when we least expect them; hurling a wrench into our robotic daily lives and forcing us to stare Fate straight in her squinty little eye. So when I spied a rack of Van Holten’s “Sour Pickles” in my local convenience store, I knew I had to step up to the plate. It was do or die.

The snack is simple enough. It’s a single pickle, bobbing up and down in an amniotic sac of yellowish brine water, tempting you with its tangy goodness. Upon seeing it, my mind immediately filled with images of medical specimens. Suddenly, I was transported to the laboratory of a mad scientist circa 1890, and everywhere I looked, unsavory experiments floated in dusty glass jars.

Not an appetizing thought, but certainly a motivating one. Any snack that inspires that amount of imagination in a convenience store deserves a try.

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Snack Review: Clif’s Chocolate Peanut Mojo Bars

If you’re like me, consuming an energy bar is like eating a bar of lies. I don’t mean that they conceal their ingredients or exaggerate their benefits (although I’ve yet to find a bar that makes me float above the street, a la Marty McFly). What I mean is that I will never, under any circumstance, use an energy bar to:

A) run a marathon
B) power-hike along the Appalachian Trail, or
C) lift something 20 times my body weight, in homage to the noble ant

My lifestyle does not involve a Jeep. Nor does it include Timberland hiking boots, a Nalgene bottle, or a dog with a bandanna tied around its neck. Rather than utilize energy bars for their intended purposes, I use them to silence my grumbling stomach as I drive to work, or elevate my blood sugar levels during lectures I would otherwise sleep through. Truth be told, most of the time I don’t even buy these products, since their marketing seems specifically designed to shame my slovenly ways.

Take Clif Bars, for example. Their wrappers feature a man scaling a mountain. Legs flailing, he clings to a granite outcropping with all this might, his battered fingernails digging into the stubborn rock before him (the man has just enough energy to hold on, thanks to that 3 oz. of granola he ingested before climbing). Ah, the average Clif bar consumer! Always spending his free time dangling above certain death!

So, if you couldn’t already tell, I’m glad that Clif has come out with a less intense snack. Because frankly, some of us just can’t handle the X-tremeness of the standard Clif Bar product.

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Snack Review: Michael Season’s Baked Cheddar Cheese Pops

When I hear the words “cheesy poofs,” my mind immediately jumps to a little round kid in a red sweater, sitting on his couch and screaming obscenities at his cat. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, I suggest you hunker down for a marathon viewing of South Park – during which you will inevitably encounter Eric Cartman singing the praises of puffy cheese treats.

Nary a South Park season goes by without Cartman preaching the cheese puff gospel. Despite the free advertising this implies, I’d venture that snack manufactures aren’t terribly pleased with this development. After all, with “healthy” foods flying off supermarket shelves, no one wants to be the snack with the high calorie count. Personally, if I were a cheese puff CEO (those exist, right?), the last thing I’d want is a slightly obese cartoon character giving my product two pudgy thumbs up.

How then, would a snack manufacturer remake the cheese puff image? Well, according to Michael Season, the answer lies in using organic ingredients, shying away from food coloring, and slapping the word “gourmet” onto your packaging.

Oh yeah, and making your product so tasty that snack reviewers demolish their sample bag. That always helps.

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