Snack Review: Wheat Thins Toasted Chips

The folks at Nabisco/Kraft are mighty crafty. And I don’t mean cunning or guileful, but rather smart. At the introduction of their new toasted chip line, they’ve jumped on the eco-friendly “green” bandwagon with a gymnastic and graceful flourish.

One bag features a wispy sepiatone photo of a mountainside, while the other shows a little girl in a sun dress smiling radiantly down at healthy stalks of wheat. If their product were subpar I’d chide them for a blatant attempt at riding the conservation tide. But these snacks are lip-smacking good! Go, Nabisco/Kraft, go!

Still, I wonder why they refer to them as chips when they sure seem like crackers to me.

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Snack Review: Morinaga Ottoto Korean Barbeque Flavor Crackers

I am sucker for animal-shaped food, and for anything Japanese. So just imagine if the animals were weird and Japanese: squid, crab, blowfish, starfish, tuna, shrimp, octopus, even uni (sea urchin)! Even those big weird ocean sunfish! Yes, I was beside myself.

The shapes are wonderful. The texture is really fantastic - they’re totally puffed up and hollow, even though they retain their animal shapes, and perfectly thin and light and crunchy.

The only catch is that I totally chose the wrong flavor. There are two choices of flavor, Salt and Korean Barbeque. I am not sure what I was thinking when I ordered the Korean Barbeque. I know that I am the kind of person who likes the simple, plain version of things. I never eat potato chips in any flavor other than plain, for instance, which I know is virtually un-American. I wouldn’t eat a barbeque flavor potato chip, for instance, if it were the last food in the house.

But, let’s be honest, Japanese crackers in the shape of squid and blowfish - if these had been Horrible Garbage flavor, I still would have wanted to try them. So I probably wasn’t thinking straight.

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Snack Review: Twisted Grandma Buttery Garlic Goodness Pretzels

About a month ago, Caitlin, our lovely editor here at Snackerrific, asked if I’d be interested in reviewing Twisted Grandma Pretzels. Interested? How could I not want to review something with that name? Anything with the name “Twisted Grandma” had to be unique.

After confirming my interest, I ventured to the company website. I hoped it would whet my appetite with all manner of out-there flavors. I was disappointed to find that, at that point, the pretzels only came in one flavor - Buttery Garlic Goodness.

“Buttery Garlic Goodness are the original Twisted Grandma pretzels,” read the description. “We combine a rich, buttery flavor with roasted garlic and our secret blend of spices. The result is perfection!” Garlic fan that I am, the description set my mouth watering. Yet for a supposedly “twisted” Grandma, it seemed awfully limiting to offer one flavor, and no matter how fabulous it sounded, the garlic flavor wasn’t exactly cutting-edge.

Admittedly, the logo’s Grandma, with her spiky blond hair and siren-red lipstick, looked more extreme than most. According to the website’s info, T.G. is based on a real Grandma from Eveleth, MN. I wondered why she hadn’t yet cooked up a batch of five-alarm tabasco pretzels… or, better yet, a chocolate-espresso flavor!

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Snack Review: Mountain Dew Voltage

Okay, so I’m probably one of the only people on the planet that hasn’t tried Mountain Dew, which is why I decided to try out Mountain Dew Voltage. Makes sense, right? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

However, I was fascinated by how they marketed this product. The company decided to make three new flavors of Mountain Dew, but wanted the public to pick which one they liked the best. And yes, you got it, Mountain Dew Voltage won this DEWmocracy.

Mountain Dew Voltage is “a blue colored raspberry-citrus and ginseng flavored Dew.” Does any word in this description sound appetizing to me? If I had to pick the words I like, they would be “a” and “blue”. Having never consumed even a regular Mountain Dew before, I would not at all buy this based on that description. Something about raspberry-citrus and ginseng flavor doesn’t sound too good. Now, if they had a “mint chocolate and peanut butter flavored Dew” I might do it.

So I didn’t think it’d be fair to try Mountain Dew Voltage without trying the original Mountain Dew. As for my thoughts on Mountain Dew original? I think it has a sweet citrusy taste to it, however, it wasn’t as fizzy as I thought it would be. Being an avid dieter, I could almost taste the sugar sticking to my teeth.

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Snack Review: Calorie Mate

They still haven’t come up with that meal in a pill that they promised we’d have in the future. Not that I would want all my meals to be replaced by a pill, but sometimes, when there isn’t time to make a nice event out of a meal, wouldn’t it be a useful thing?

Instead, we have a whole product category of power and energy and granola bars. The problem is, these look too much like candy bars, and have similar flavors to candy bars, so you’re set up to expect a candy bar… and are always disappointed.

I’ve tried a lot of them and have never found one that I’m interested in eating repeatedly. So I was curious to see if the Japanese had come up with something better.

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