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.

Yep, I loved this snack. Covered in cheddar powder and big enough to fill your mouth, these puffs are definitely a snacker’s delight (I’m so tempted to rap about cheese right now, but I respect you guys more than that).

A massive amount of organic cornmeal goes into these suckers, a fact reflected in their light, crunchy consistency. It’s this healthy texture that separates this snack from the rest, and saves it from being a bag of glorified Cheetos. Like their orange counterparts, these Baked Cheddar Pops will melt in your mouth after a few bites. Unlike them, the Pops won’t gut-bomb your stomach with several tablespoons of preservatives. Plus, there’s no annoying Orange Underground ad campaign to put up with.

My only texture complaint is this: if you eat 20 Baked Pops in a row (and believe me, you will), you might find the roof of your mouth slightly scraped. This happens to me when I eat Cap’n Crunch cereal as well, although in this instance, I think the scrapage has to do with excessive cornmeal, rather than layers of unforgiving sugar.

However, I was so pleased with the shape of the Baked Pops that I forgave them for my slight discomfort. Bucking the traditional round cheese puff model, Michael Season’s snacks come in weird, unprocessed-looking squiggels. To put it simply, they resemble small chunks of petrified coral. That’s way more interesting than spheres, don’t you think?

Some critics (aka, my boyfriend) would have you think that Michael Season’s Baked Cheese Pops taste like “Styrofoam” or “stale packing peanuts,” but they are wrong. Way wrong. Yes, conceivably, you could use this snack to ship China plates to your newly wedded cousin in Idaho, but that scenario is contingent on you not snarfing all your packing supplies before you tape the box shut. A feat which, by my calculations, would be humanly impossible.

• Michael Season’s Website

Buy Michael Season’s Snacks Online:

• at Amazon.com

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