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!!

Peanut Butter Whoppers

You may have noticed that this is the second "new" variety of Whoppers we've tested, and so far so good! You can't find their official site anywhere, but that's okay because the blogosphere is afire with stories on these little tan packages of peanut-buttery goodness.

B-Com Says:

Think about being five years old, up early on a Saturday morning, getting ready for the cartoons to start. You've got one of your Mom's mixing bowls out, and you've found your favorite cereal. You get out the big gallon jug of whole milk, 'cause you're a big boy now, and you empty half the box of Cap'n Crunch into the bowl, and fill so full of milk, it's floating at the rim.

Then came that first bite and the intense peanut butter flavor combined with the Cap'n's patented "shards-of-glass" attack on the tender lining of the roof of your mouth...

These Peanut Butter Whoppers are exactly like that, without the shards of glass. I would recommend making a cereal out of it.

TERRIFIC!

J-Lam Says:

For some reason, hearing B-Com tell me we were going to try Peanut Butter Whoppers, I pictured a regular chocolate Whopper with a peanut butter-flavored malt ball center. I was really loving that picture (and highly recommend the idea to any candy company big-wigs who may be avid Terrific Or Turd fans!)

But, alas, it's a peanut-butter coated malt ball. I was justifiably disappointed.

But, then I put it in my mouth, and all was forgiven. This little nugget of pure nutty yumminess has excellent flavor that mixes well with the old-fashioned malt flavor of the original malted milk ball. It's not as overpoweringly sweet as the original milk chocolate variety, which may even be an improvement! I give Peanut Butter Whoppers and enthusiastic

TERRIFIC!

Strawberry Milkshake Whoppers

Strawberry Milkshake Whoppers add a brand new twist on an age-old candy favorite! Unfortunately, as it turns out, Hershey's doesn't think enough of their product to mention it anywhere on their official Whoppers website! http://www.hersheys.com/products/details/whoppers.asp

B-Com Says:

The last time I ate a Whopper, I was 9 years old. Let me take you back there for a moment:

When I was growing up, my Mom didn't have money for anything more than the staples: milk, bread, etc. So we almost never had candy, or treats of any kind. One day my aunt brought home a One Pound Super Sack of Whoppers.

Realizing we wouldn't be seeing another gift from the gods like this one for many moons, and also realizing that "we" was actually "me" because my sister wasn't home when my aunt dropped by, one overriding thought took over: "This sack must go down, and it must go down hard."

Now imagine the nine-year old kid who has just finished obliterating a pound of Whoppers.

There is a line, a boundary if you will, between sane and insane consumption of simple carbohydrates. I triple-jumped that sucker.

So, fast-forwarding over twenty years, you can understand why I've avoided busting open a package of Whoppers since what I call D-Day.

That story notwithstanding, I found Strawberry Milkshake Whoppers to be very pleasent tasting, fruity and delicious. My pancreas started to twitch and moan after I'd had only ten, but that's probably a good thing.

TERRIFIC!

J-Lam Says:

I've always liked Whoppers, but for some reason they've always made me sick too. Reading my colleague's story above, I realize it's not just me. Now, I need to ask: if people the world over have been making themselves sick by eating large quantities of Whoppers since 1929 (did you read the site I linked to above, hmm?) when they were invented, why in the name of all that's holy do they package the things in such huge boxes? Why not a little six or seven-Whopper "fun size"?

Do they like making us ill?

Anyhow, I've ripped them enough because the fact is, I enjoyed Strawberry Milkshake Whoppers very much. I only ate a few because I was nervous about the effect described above, but what I had went down nice and smooth, with a pleasent Strawberry-Quik-style artificial strawberry flavor. Just like you'd expect from a strawberry milkshake.

Nutritionally, they're not bad as candy goes. But I did notice that all 8 grams of fat are saturated. Ouch.

Still, as I've said many times already on this blog, if I'm grabbing the eye-catching pink box and delving into a package labeled "Strawberry Milkshake Whoppers", I'm not in it for the health benefits.

Overall, Strawberry Milkshake Whoppers earns my

TERRIFIC!

Vanilla Mud

Mud is touted as "Coffee for the rest of us!", and is available in three flavors plus an extra-strong Dyno-Mud variety. Check them all out here: http://www.drinkmud.com/.

B-Com Says:

This is coffee in a can. Straight up. Coffee, vanilla, milk. Tasty.

TERRIFIC!

J-Lam Says:

He's a man of few words. (But not often enough!)

Here is yet another coffee drink. Looking back at the Terrific Or Turd postings, we're obviously drawn to these things for bad or for good.

Mud looks like the others: a solid texture and color, which is appetizing. (See our A&W Root Beer Float post for a bad example of this important point.) But, it tastes much better. It's not as sweet as, say, a Starbucks Frappuccino. This puts it a notch above Starbucks in my mind.

It's also not the same funky-fake vanilla flavor I've come to expect from vanilla coffee drinks, which is a pleasent surprise. There is a fairly high sugar content for a drink that's not too sweet, but not enough to turn me off to it.

Overall, I'm inpressed. Very good. I'll buy it again.

TERRIFIC!

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!

Cape Cod Cheddar Jack and Sour Cream Potato Chips

B-Com Says:

These chips have an intense cheddar cheese flavor. Is there Jack? I don't taste it. There is a definite hint of sour cream. In short, there is really no concrete distinction between these and other cheese-flavored chips, but they do taste great!

TERRIFIC!

J-Lam Says:

What can I say? It's another cheese-flavored chip. It's not different, it's not special.

But, Cape Cod makes a really good kettle-cooked chip which has a satisfying crunch and a flavorful bite. As far as that goes, this is a great example of a Cape Cod chip. Although I tend to shy away from cheese-flavored chips and snacks, this is one is fairly good, and it gets my

TERRIFIC!

Oreo Cakesters

A soft, snack-cake version of the legendary sandwich cookie! You can check them out online here: http://www.nabiscoworld.com/oreo/cakesters/

B-Com Says:
As expected, the cakester tastes like chocolate cake with an Oreo-like cream filling in the middle. Most people, myself included, love the filling of an Oreo. That's why Double Stuff Oreos are so popular. But, oddly enough, in this case, the cream was too much!

I found it too be way too sweet in proportion to the amount of cake. It felt like there needed to be more cake to offset the super-sweet cream. I was reminded of the numbnuts who put frosting on a brownie. I mean, honestly! Frosting on a brownie? Come on!

But, I digress. I liked the cakester to a point: it had an intense flavor that was initially good, and it is a lot like it's namesake, which is an automatic winner. So, all this being said, I'd like to nominate it for the Golden Turd award, but we only have two choices here. So, I'm calling Oreo Cakesters

TERRIFIC!

J-Lam Says:

I was bowled over by the Oreo Cakesters. They're definitely up to Oreo's standards of super-tasty goodness, and the combination of that great taste with the soft and chewy cake and filling makes this a winner! I don't need to keep gabbing about it, because I'm on the way to the store to pick up some more!

TERRIFIC!