Snack Review: New Combos in Zesty Salsa and Jalapeño Cheddar Tortilla

In honor of their Ultimate ManCation Sweepstakes promotion, the good people at Combos decided to send me a few samples of their merchandise. Saturday morning, a FedEx man arrived with a decently large package which turned out to contain four bags of the beloved cheese and cracker/pretzel rolls. Three were family-sized (6.3-oz.) packs, with six (supposed) servings apiece, and the other was single-serve (1.5 oz.)

Two of the larger bags were reserved for the popular snack’s first and most beloved flavors, Cheddar and Nacho Cheese. The final large bag contained the newest variety of Combos to be released (Zesty Salsa-Tortilla). The single-serve bag held another new flavor, Cheddar-Jalapeno Tortilla. Until I searched for an image of the bag, and came up empty-handed, I had no idea how new. As it turns out, this variety of Combo hasn’t been released yet, so shhhh! Don’t tell anyone!

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Combos Nation Presents: The Ultimate Mancation Sweepstakes!

Life can sometimes bring you down. Family issues, financial woes, office stress and other factors can combine to make life undesirable at best, and miserable at worst. It’s only natural to want to escape from time to time, but vacations have a way of putting serious stress on most budgets.

Lucky for you, Combos and Nascar have teamed up to sponsor the Ultimate Mancation Sweepstakes. Not only does the Grand-prize winner of this Macho dream-getaway win a trip for himself and three buddies to the Daytona 500, the winner also gets to serve as honorary crew chief at the race! This Man-tastic, once-in-a-lifetime vacation opportunity comes complete with round-trip airfare and a six-day, five-night hotel stay to beautiful South Florida. Also included in the package: totally mantacular wheels in the form of a sports utility vehicle - and $1,000 extra spending money for all the totally hot dancers you’ll be taking for rides in that vehicle wink wink.

But wait, there’s more! If you don’t win the grand prize, Nascar’s giving away tons of mantabulous manora - I mean, memorabilia to ten lucky first-prize winners. Five hundred more will win $10 VISA gift cards - the better for buying lots of delicious Combos snacks.

• Are YOU ready? Enter the Ultimate Mancation Sweepstakes!

Snack Review: Enten-mini’s Tubes Chocolate Commotion

OK, first, Tubes. What? Isn’t this kind of a gross name for a food? Does it have a companion in another flavor named Pipes? Or Hoses?

There is an illustration of a skateboarder up in the corner there on the package. Maybe I am too old and uncool to realize that Tubes is a totally (insert your own up-to-date slang for “awesome” here) skateboarding term. And, it turns out, I am also too old to enjoy this snack.

I recently mentioned that I am a sucker for cake rolled up with creamy stuff in it. Trying these made me realize that I should have said “cream” as in, something made from a substance that originally came from a cow.

I especially love the combination of dark chocolate and vanilla cream and thus used to be a big eater of Yodels, Ring Dings, and Devil Dogs. But the more I ate more adult versions of dark chocolate and of vanilla cream, the less satisfying these commercial treats became.

Of course they also might not be as good as they used to be, as I am always whining about in regards to one thing or another. But they never had real cream in them, I’m sure, so clearly at least part of the issue is my own evolving tastes.

I still eat a Devil Dog once in a while when I can find them, because without the chocolate coating there’s one less thing for me to complain about. But mostly, I have become too fussy for these easily accessible treats to satisfy my cake-with-cream cravings.

I also used to eat a lot of Entenmann’s products, as I suppose most New Yorkers of my age did. They’re also not as good as they used to be, of course. But the combination of the Entenmann’s name and the Yodel-like concept of these, and the fact that they were sold in a small package of two – well, why not try them?

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Snack Review: Kozy Shack Frozen Chocolate Truffle Rolls

Kozy Shack is one of the most mysterious snack brand names around. How could anyone have thought this was a good idea? A shack is not the kind of place that sounds appealing to go to for great snack food. And the spelling does nothing to assure me that they’ll get anything else right, either.

The history on their web site does nothing to clear it up: the business started as a New York deli called Cozy Shack. I’m not sure how that succeeded either – you’ve got plenty of choices of delis in New York, and I think I would cross the street to another place rather than buy my pastrami sandwich at a Cozy Shack.

But, you know, it’s actually kind of nice that not every brand name around is the product of a room full of consultants and MBAs poring over statistics from focus groups. And, what’s more, they make good pudding.

Still, when I saw Kozy Shack Tiramisu in the freezer case, I had to laugh. It was so incongruous that it was actually intriguing.

I almost bought the tiramisu, but then I saw the chocolate truffle rolls next to them. The truffle rolls had better-sounding ingredients – I don’t think the Italians use corn syrup in their tiramisu – and then I noticed, they are actually made in Holland. Sold. I can’t resist those European baked goods, even if they’re made in a factory and deep frozen for who knows how long and sold at the crummy neighborhood Safeway.

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Snack Review: Triple Chocolate Fudgsicle Assortment

After my traumatic experience with the Chocolate Éclair Bar, you’d think I’d have learned. But I was intrigued by the introduction of dark and white chocolate versions of the original Fudgsicle. I realized that this just left me open to the possibility that this would be a box of Triple Disappointment: the old-fashioned milk chocolate being not as good as I remembered and the new kinds being both not traditional and no good at all.

But what can I say? Hope springing eternal, as well as the fact that “Triple Disappointment” sounded like a charmingly bad translation of a name of a dish on a Chinese restaurant menu, sucked me in.

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