Rockin' Nut Road Snickers

As soon as B-Com reached for it I thought "Oh God. This is not going to be good." You know what? I was right. The Snickers Site is conspicuously sans Rockin' Nut Road. (Maybe they know something you don't!) But we will more than make up for it. Buckle up kids, it's going to be a bumpy, Rockin' Nut Road.

B-Com Says:
I have to ask myself a question each time I pick up a "limited edition" item based off a staple classic of the genre. I'm 36 years old, and Snickers has been essentially unchanged for as long as I can remember. It is a perennial favorite. It's pedigree is not to be taken lightly. I've found in similar circumstances in the past that a company can make an irreplacable classic (like the Snickers bar,) and yet are curiously incapable of "improving upon" the original, no matter how hard they try. Examples:

• Snickers Peanut Butter and Dark Snickers. (When I tried Dark Snickers, I couldn't chew the thing. Not sure what's up with that, but I don't see people whipping out a Dark Snickers and chowing down as they're walking through the office, so I have to assume others feel as I do.)
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cup with the chocolate cookie. Remember those? You're not alone.
• How about Crystal Pepsi? The product's multi-million dollar advertising blitz was followed by a six-month flame out. I can still get my hands on some (thank you eBay) but do I want to? No.
  
• And perhaps the biggest atrocity in this category: The New Knight Rider. What NBC exec green-lighted this fiasco? Hello? Hasselhoff and the souped up Trans Am were cheesy the first go around. It became a cult classic because it was bad!! You really think the concept deserved a rehash?

Anyway, we're here to discuss the Rockin' Nut Road Snickers bar. It tags itself as dark chocolate, almonds and marshmallow-flavored nougat. As I mentioned above, the last time I tried a Snickers bar covered in dark chocolate, I had a tough time biting through it. This one was surprisingly well-textured and soft. However, the flavor of the dark chocolate overpowered the other flavors to the point that it dwarfed the marshmallow and nuts. I doubt they would have gone through the trouble of naming it after Rocky Road if they intended for me not to notice the nuts and marshmallow. This unfortunately named Snickers bar is definitely a

TURD.

J-Lam Says:

Like I mentioned in the introduction, I wanted to run away as soon as I saw what it was. It was the marshmallow that threw me. I don't have fond memories of campfire S'mores or of roasting marshmallows with my Boy Scout buddies. My only vivid childhood memory regarding marshmallows is what I like to call "The Microwave Mushroom Cloud" which was an experiment gone bad when I was about eight years old. It proved two things: 1) A marshmallow nuked on high for 45 seconds will grow to the size of a basketball before exploding and 2) a basketball-sized marshmallow exploding inside a microwave oven takes about six hours to clean up.

This horrific incident aside, I've never been really fond of marshmallows anyway, so it seems to me that nougat artificially-flavored to taste like marshmallows may be worse. And if that equation could become even scarier, I submit this mind-bender: What the hell is nougat anyway? I mean, we eat this stuff all the time, but I challenge anyone reading this blog to explain in three sentences or less what nougat is! The comments button is right over there. Go ahead.

So, needless to say I was not expecting to like it, but I took one for the home team and popped it in my mouth. I pretty much got what I expected. I'm a fan of dark chocolate and almonds, but the marshmallow-flavored-whatever-it-is ruined those ingredients. I did not have a chance to enjoy them because I was too busy trying to get that funky marshmallow flavor out of my teeth. Not only does this Snickers bar look like one, it really is a

TURD!

Vegetable Thins - Flavor Originals

Nabisco goes retro with Vegetable Thins!!!!

Who cares?

J-Lam Says:

It would be nice if "Flavor Originals" had some flavor. You know, any flavor at all would be nice. Something. I guess the original flavor was invented before flavor existed, so they needed to specially design a chip that tasted like nothing. It's like the Seinfeld Show of crackers!

That's not to say I wouldn't pound these things down without thinking about it, while watching the 49rs trounce a bunch of sissies in spandex and pads, but I wouldn't like it. There's nothing to like. (Unless of course, you like nothing. And if you're that kind of consumer, you'll have a tough time convincing yourself that the nothing you find here is the kind of nothing you like. Being that you like nothing... Anyway,) They're not even good for you. They're still almost as high in fat as any of a million varieties of snack chips, but all those chips taste better.

This one was easy:

TURD!!

B-Com Says:

I have fond memories of enjoying Vegetable Thins as a kid. I remember the crackers as crisp and buttery with a perfect blend of (vegetable) spices, which made them even more delectable. The box now touts them as "baked, with a great new recipe!" As I tore open the top of the box, I was reminiscing so hard, I could almost feel that rich, spicy cracker crumble over my tongue...

Then I was brought crashing back into reality with my first bite. I laughed.

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I laugh when something is bad. Really bad. Car crashes? I generally chuckle. Train wreck? A good hearty guffaw. Vegetable Thins?

I was crying, I was laughing so hard.

I had to check quick to see if I'd accidentally bitten the box because the chip tasted like cardboard. I know the packaging was very proud to boast it was made of 100% recycled paperboard, but I didn't realize that included the contents!

Of course, it wasn't a total loss. There was a very interesting recipe for Creamy Vegetable Garlic Dip on the side of the box that I'm very interested in trying. But as for the Vegetable Thins, they're a shoo-in...

TURD!!!

Dunkin' Donuts Personal Pan Pizzas

Dunkin' Donuts is entering the madcap world of lunch-hour fast food with 5-inch personal pan pizzas and flatbread sandwiches. (See the official site at https://www.dunkindonuts.com/aboutus/products/NGSS.aspx)

We decided to try out the pizzas because we have a broader frame of reference. (For those of you who are used to our normal vocabulary level, that means we eat more pizza than flatbread sandwiches.) After reading our thoughts, you'll know why we think Dunkin' Donuts should change their slogan to Everyone Runs From Dunkin'!

B-Com Says:

Before I continue, let's remember that we went to a doughnut shop to get a pizza. Obviously, this is not Pizzaria Uno's or even Pizza Hut. It's certainly not your old-school neighborhood pizzaria where Uncle Guido has been hand-crafting deep-dish delights for over half a century. This is a doughnut shop looking to cash in on the lunchtime crowd by offering a 5-inch personal pizza you can whiz through the drive-thru and bring back to the office to pound down before your 1:00 meeting.

That being said, we decided to sample the cheese ($2.99) and the pepperoni ($3.29) varieties. Tryin the cheese first, I found it quite tasty. I came in expecting a reheated frozen pizza, and that's what I got, but the cheese was much better than Eelios or any of the dozens of other frozen pizza brands I've tried over the years. It actually made me look forward to the pepperoni because that's generally my pizza preference.

This is where the wheels fell off.

The pepperoni pizza was of a lower quality than most frozen pizzas I've tried: it was cardboardy, dry, and all-around pathetic. If you chopped up some mildly spicy meat-product, added a few drops of uninspiring sauce, and dropped it on a cracker (or any other vehicle on which to shove it down your piehole,) you could easily match this experience. As much as I enjoyed the cheese pizza, my experience with the pepperoni through the whole thing off. Whoever approved this experiment should be feverously working on a new-and-improved model because this one is a

TURD!!!

J-Lam Says:

Pizza Hut and Domino's have nothing at all to worry about.

Now, I understand why Dunkin' Donuts is heading in this direction because I'm probably the only guy in upstate New York who is willing to eat two Boston Creme doughnuts for lunch. But the personal pan pizzas offered don't make me want to spend my lunch break hunting up a Dunkin' Donuts.

First of all, for the price (which isn't much, but runs around the same price as a standard burger or chicken sandwich at any another fast food joint) there's not a lot of food here. The pizzas are only five inches across, and about an inch of that is dry crust. Taking my time with it, I got about seven bites out of the thing, and it felt like less. Not that I'm touting a huge burger for any particular reason, but when I spend a couple bucks on a Whopper, I walk away feeling like I actually ate something.

Then we get to the taste. Unlike my esteemed colleague, I had the displeasure of trying the pepperoni first. It reminded me of a dusty coaster that someone spilled pizza sauce on. The tiny pepperoni cubes were chewy and lacked flavor, and there was far less cheese on it than on its better-looking older brother. I struggled through it, already thinking up what incredibly mean things I could say about it in this blog.

Fortunately for pepperoni, I ate the cheese next, and it did a fairly good job of bringing me back into an agreeable state of mind. (In other words, it caused me to edit out all my nastiness except the coaster comment above.) Although still suffering from the same size and satisfaction shortcomings of the pepperoni variety, at least these seven bites were flavorful and enjoyable.

Overall, though, even the power of the cheese pizza can't turn this bad idea into anything other than a

TURD!!

Phat Phruit (Grape-Strawberry Phlavor)

Phat Phruit is another addition to the vast energy drink market, this time in the form of 40-calories of phruitilicious juice. (Sorry for the ph-thing, after reading their website, you'll understand: http://www.phatphruit.com/)

B-Com Says:

Opening the bottle, I got a pungent whiff of something that reminded me of a bottle of Flintstone vitamins. That's a weird scent in a bottle of juice, and made me hesitate.

But, taking one for the home team, I tipped it back and here was my exact reaction:

"Mmmm, this tastes like Hi-C with a -- WHOA! What the--" It was tough to swallow. Let me try again...

"Mmm, I like the -- aaacckkk!" (shudder shudder) "Whew! I'm done."

I don't think that's the reaction they were going for. There's something hidden there in the juice-like concoction, and it's not right. Not at all.

TURD!

J-Lam Says:

This is an energy drink that just tastes like juice. In some ways, that's a good thing. But in checking the ingredients, I wonder how effective it can be with just a dash of caffeine and a dose of Vitamin B-12 in it.

The normal energy drink flavor and aftertaste are missing, and it's non-carbonated which I really like. But, it's also only 40 calories, and my D+ in 10th grade Biology was enough to teach me that calories are what the body actually uses for energy. So if this stuff has less than a third of the calories of normal juice, plus caffeine and B-12, what the hell's it going to do to me?

UPDATE: After about 20 minutes I went through a five-minute period where I was unable to remain seated and felt the need to call B-Com and tell a stupid joke before hanging up and running away laughing. After five minutes I came back to my desk, sheepishly, resumed my work, and fell into my afternoon slump right on schedule.

This stuff is a phreaking

TURD!

Skittles Chocolate Mix

It is somewhat telling that Mars Candy has apparently decided not to bother putting Chocolate Mix Skittles on their skittles.com website. That's because they're nasty.

B-Com Says:
Ever since I was a kid, Skittles has been touting, "Taste the Rainbow!" That line has always brought to mind a delightful, fruity, chewy candy experience. Now, however, they've taken a step over to the dark side. This seems to be an attempt to muscle in on the saltwater taffy and fudge arena, but skittles will get beat up pretty bad over there.

Here are the five flavors available, in order from least nasty to most nasty: S'mores, Vanilla, Brownie Batter, Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Pudding. All of them are fairly accurate flavors, but they feel wrong in this candy.

When the Skittles hit my mouth, my mind is expecting lemon, cherry, etc., regardless of what's on the package. These things are obviously screwing with my mind because I like chocolate. I know I do, but these are not good.

This tells me Skittles is meddling with powers they can not possibly understand.

TURD

J-Lam Says:

Have you ever chewed an eraser?

I won't admit it either, but if I ever did, it would taste like a vanilla Skittle. The texture is a different story, but equally bad.

In my experience, (which, at 252 lbs., is significant,) chocolate should be rich and creamy. If it must be chewy, make it Tootsie Roll chewy, not chewy sugar in a hard shell. As is often the case with turds, this product goes against the grain of what the consumer expects. And, as lofty a brand as Skittles is, they just don't have the clout to start a revolution in the vaulted land of chocolate.

This bag of funky-flavored bad ideas is definitely a

TURD.

p.s. As a side note, two of our esteemed colleagues at work tried Chocolate Mix Skittles at our request, and loved them! They thought they were awesome! And while we truly appreciate their assistance, and will request it again, we felt it necessary to report that their opinions are wrong.

Java Pop Hazelnut

Java Pop is a start-up product from a little company in Vermont who are taking on the big boys of the soft drink and coffee industries, with the drink being released nationwide just today!

Unfortunately, it's not so good.

B-Com Says:
I was originally attracted to the packaging because Java Pop is going for the "organic" and "Free-trade certified" thing, which is fine. It's unique in the soft drink market, and it made want to try it out.

The color was very remeniscent of cream soda, which I love, so that whet my appetite even more. That first swallow was impressive, too, as it seemed the flavors meshed well together, and I liked it.

But, as I continued, the flavor became more intense, to the point of overbearing. It was as if something in the drink had settled in shipping, although nothing was visible. It made me want to shake it up, but that's not good because I can't shake it can I? It's carbonated.

So, since I don't feel comfortable giving out a terrific for half a product, I've got to call Java Pop a...

TURD.

J-Lam Says:

My initial reaction was similar to B-Com's: It looked great, and when I popped it open, the smell was wonderful. But that first tasted seemed flat, and the flavor was weak (although I could definitely recognize the hazelnut coffee.)

I'm not going to hit it hard because it wasn't completely horrible, but it's not a mix of flavors I can enjoy. If it were a bit stronger without being too much, I would drink it again.

Overall, I was disappointed. It smells better than it tastes, and in a soft drink, that's not what matters. It may as well smell like a...

TURD.

Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry Chocolate

The picture really says it all. (Special thanks to penmachine.com for a fitting pic! Enjoyed your blog! http://www.penmachine.com/2008/02/do-not-buy-diet-cherry-chocolate-dr)



J-Lam Says:

The packaging is very retro: swoops and bubbles, all pastel shades of pink and silver and brown. I think they're going for the 50's look to bring back memories of soda fountain creations. But let's remember that kids paid a nickel for those old treasures, and that's about what this one's worth too!



When I poured it into the cup I was surprised by the funny reddish color. Dr. Pepper doesn't look good in red, and my first thought was "oh boy, it's gonna be super sweet." It wasn't.



Instead, I got a flavor I can only describe as "mild Robutussin." This was no doubt the artificial cherry flavor they infused into an otherwise delicious soda. Combined with the funky aspartame aftertaste, which I can never stand, it completely lost me after the first swallow.



I forced myself to try again, searching desperately for the chocolate advertised on the label. It was only barely noticeable when I swished it around in my mouth like a fine wine.



Fine wine this is not. It's not fine at all.

TURD.

B-Com Says:

May I remind everyone, this is a diet soda! They all taste like that! (Yes, J-Lam, I'm attacking you!) Let's break it down:

Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry Chocolate. Does it deliver what it says it will deliver? Yes. That doesn't mean it's good. I didn't pick up the bottle because Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry Chocolate sounded delicious, I picked it up because it was new and I wanted to try something new.

It tastes kind of like a cherry Tootsie Roll, so it delivers the goods as advertised. But honestly, my first reaction when I took a mouthful was "Oh my God! Who would drink this stuff?"

The chocolate is a surprise. A kind of a sock-you-in-the-mouth type of flavor. The cherry is more subtle, the Abbott to the chocolate's Costello.

To sum it up, does it deliver? Yes. Do I like it? No.

TURD.

P.S. If you want a chuckle, check out this YouTube video for Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry Chocolate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x2W12A8Qow

Nothing But Noodles' "Italian Trio"

Making our first official foray into the world of restaurant food criticism, we found plenty to criticize at a normally impressive fast-but-not-fastfood food place: Nothing But Noodles. Here's their online menu, although, suspiciously, their new dishes don't appear! http://www.nothingbutnoodles.com/menu.php

B-Com Says:

First off, it's freezing inside! I've been in here in the heart of August and found the fireplace lit and roaring away. Today, when it's 2 outside, the fireplace is cold.

OK, now let me concentrate on what I ordered.

When I walked up to the counter, the picture announcing the New Italian Trio caught my eye. It showed three delectable offerings: Chicken Marsala, Chicken Piccata and Chicken Parmigiana. As I asked the girl behind the counter what Chicken Marsala was, I was greeted with a blank look. Assuming she didn't speak Italian as fluently as me, I slowly asked about Chicken Piccata. She was falling deeper into the void, and I was scared I might go with her into the netherworlds. So I threw it in reverse and ordered the Marsala.

In about a five-minute turnaround, the waitress brought out a bowl full of bowtie pasta, a boat-ton of chopped tomatoes, two thin chicken breasts and a light tannish-brown sauce. Just to clarify, there was a tremendous amount of chopped tomatoes. I mean, a hell of a lot of tomatoes. It was like two-thirds of the bowl. Seriously.

Taking one complete bite, I noted the springy pasta, the tender chicken, and a mouth absolutely dripping with chopped tomato. The sauce seemed to not even be there. It added nothing to the dish at all, and that left the rest of the ingredients floating around in one bowl with nothing in common.

It felt like a cheap wine all gussied up to make itself seem expensive. Nondescript, boring, and too many damn tomatoes!

TURD!

J-Lam says:

I gotta say, I didn't fair much better. While B-Com nearly drowned in the deep end with our space cadet counter girl, I was busy trying to manage filling two cups of iced tea from the fountain and juggle the napkins, silverware and straws from the central caddy because this restaurant is still grasping tight to the fast-food feel despite it's double-digit entree prices.

Don't get me wrong, all this aside, I normall love Nothing but Noodles. But their Italian Trio is an odd addition to their menu due to one important factor: the food is normally good, and these dishes aren't.

I chose the Chicken Parmigiana. How can you screw up Chicken Parm?

Here's how:

Put two frozen, breaded, thin strips of tasteless chicken on top of a pile of spaghetti coated in watery sauce and (you guessed it,) chopped tomatoes. Then, throw a handful of cheese on top and heat it up.

The sauce tasted alright, and the noodles were fine. (That's their real specialty, isn't it?) But the chicken was truly tough to swallow and I ended up leaving more than half of it. And that's not my style, if you know what I mean.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed. And by the time we left, I was totally sick of B-Com complaining about the damn tomatoes!

A&W Float and Sunkist Float Sodas

The Cadbury/Schweppes company's Dr. Pepper/7-Up division has decided to destroy a cherished piece of your childhood. Here's the site: http://www.floats.com/.

A&W Float

B-Com Says:

How does it look? Have you ever gone barhopping, gotten really sick, and the Devil comes out of you? You're close. It was so intimidating, I couldn't look it straight in the eye. Repulsive.

How does it taste? Well, if there's any way to complement this drink, it's this: it tastes exactly as I would expect after looking at it. It took the entire sharp, bright taste I remember from floats as a kid and ruined it. Flat, with a horrible after-taste.

J-Lam Says:

This stuff looks like rotten dishwater. It's packaged in a nice colorful bottle, and it's a damn good thing, because if it came in a clear bottle, you'd think something crawled inside and died before they got the cap on.

It's super sweet and thick, but not in the "rich and creamy" way. More in the "God save the queen" way. Although it tries hard to get close to hinting at the flavor of a root beer float, I can't get past the gunkiness of it. And I can't get it out of my throat!

Sunkist Float

B-Com Says:

How does it look? Whoa, whoa whoa! What an improvement over it's ugly kid sister! Picture a melted creamsicle in a cup. That's how it looks.

Now, how does it taste? I was really excited to try this because a few co-workers had tried it and loved it. I don't know if it was all their hype, or the clinging aftertaste of the worst thing I've ever choked down (see above), but though it tastes "right", it's flat and not intense in any way. I miss the bubbles.

J-Lam Says:

Sunkist Float has the same snazzy packaging, but delivers the goods inside as well with a liquid I can handle putting in my mouth.

Once again, though, it's sickeningly sweet with a gooey slickness that stays with you long after you've tried to forget it. Plus, I caught an unexpected funky "diet" flavor in there. I checked the label, and there are no artificial sweeteners, but I'd already made my decision anyway. Not impressed.

With little discussion beyond searching for a palate-cleansing chaser, we both agree to grace the Floats with our first full-scale TURD!