Before you blurt out, “What is this godforsaken malarkey,” I would like to assure you that this kind of things does not NOT happen very, very often.

In a perfectly sane, normal world, I wouldn’t be eating this.

However, as we’ve come to realize, this is not a perfectly sane, normal world. In fact it is such an imperfectly insane, abnormal world that anything can happen. Wonderful times. Wonderful times, don’t you agree?

That is how I came to be ingesting a Macaroni and Cheese Hot Dog the other day.

Oh, it was a perfect storm all right. Leftover macaroni and cheese, hot dog buns and an open pacakge of lonely Oscar Meyer hot dogs. We don’t tend to have that combination all at once in our house. I took full advantage of it and made me a Mac-n-Cheese Dog with Habanero Tabasco sauce.

Pretty damn good. The hot sauce really kicks it up.

A notch, on my belt buckle, that is.

I had hoped to patent this macaroni and cheese hot dog, but I don’t have any money to do so.

Please send me some. Money, that is. And three cases of McCutcheon whiskey.

Thank you, and so on.

I’m in a charitable mood this morning.

That’s right. What I’m going to do right now, right here and now, is NOT wankle around. Wankling – that would be a word that’s a literary bastardization of my own creation. No, nothing to do with a Wankel engine, whatever that is.

Here is my definition. “To wankle” is to veer off topic while writing in a manner that causes surrounding readers to stutter-step and bleed resulting boogers out of their noses. The text created by such a wankler has been the downfall of many an innocent office wanker. Sorry, I mean worker.

That’s how I normally start a review – by wankling around. Wankling, while humorous at times, is not very conducive to the creation of a robust and helpful product review. The review wankler is often so caught up in his own wankling (no, not wanking, you pervs) that he doesn’t realize that he’s not talking about the product in question until it’s almost time to catch the latest episode of Days of Our Lives.

Companies hate reviews that wankle around, because they never quite get to the point of praising their product. To be sure, if the wankler has wankled in a truly artful way, it’s possible to keep readers around until the wankler finally gets bored of wankling and starts talking about the product.

Now, I’m happy we live in a glorious modern age where wanklers are free to wankle (or even winkle, by God) without the fear of persecution. In the old days, if you dabbled in wankling too frequently, you were liable to be strung up with all the other wanklers on a telephone pole line. Or at least fired from your editorial job. Still, the crafty wankler will always keep his wankling somewhat on the down-low. You know, people start to talk: “Did you read the latest product review on Cheap Eats? Man, that wankler is really off his wonker this time. I think we should turn him in to the feds.”

That’s right, I’m just going to talk about the product. No messy wankling around. See these are Pizza Bites. See, I could’ve come up with endless funny insults about how “These Pizzas Bite”. And so on. That would definitely become the bulk of the review. But no, homie don’t play that today. It’s just me, you and Pizza Bites. Yep, that’s all there is. Straight as an arrow. Clean as a whistle. It won’t make you sad, like other things.

Why, just the other day, I was thinking about how sad it is that most people never get to visit Alaska. Alaska is a great place to visit, a great wild country full of fun things. Lots of polar bears. Haha, made you wikipedia. Yeah, I KNOW there’s no polar bears in Alaska. Polar bears grow on islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

What I like about Alaska, should I choose to visit one day before I die (I’m assured this is NOT their official slogan, but hey, why not?), is that the soil is composed of teeny tiny toasters. Quite handy to just reach down and grab a miniaturized toaster when you need it. These toasters, while obviously handy in case you have miniaturized your muffins a la Fantastic Voyage, will also cook up miniaturized Pizza Bites. Except, you don’t really need to miniaturize your pizza bites, since they’re so small already.

That was lame. What I really need are some miniature polar bears. I would put them in a shoebox, call up Conan O’Brien, and tell him “God damn do I have a hot ticket to the top for you, brotha.”

But seriously, Sarah Palin ain’t all she’s cracked up to be. For instance, I bet she wouldn’t know how to cook these Pizza Bites, bears or no bears. I tried making them in my Alaskan toaster, and I didn’t have much luck. I made two separate batches of them, and both exploded all over the foil I’d thoughtfully placed on the rack. I baked up the first batch at 425F for about 10 minutes. The second batch, I did at the same temperature but for only 8 mintues. I still had 2 out of the bunch explode on me. Maybe my old school toaster is too powerful. Or maybe it’s only meant for Baked Alaska.

I’m wondering if, instead of baking them in the oven, I should’ve instead hired a polar bear chef to deep fry them for me. You just can’t have enough deep-fried-ness. Plus, it’d be nice to have a hairy paw in the kitchen.

The crust on these bites was surprisingly good. A bit crispy and chewy at the same time. I don’t even want to guess the types of things they put in there to make it taste like that.

In general, the filling was paste city. Tomato based, a bit on the salty side, but not the worst I’ve had. There were all sorts of unidentifiable objects in the filling. After reading the ingredient list, it became apparent these were miniscule chunks of pepperoni and both real and fake mozzarella cheese. There’s also parmesan cheese in there. But don’t get too excited. My polar bear friend tells me there’s more Beet Powder than Parmesan Cheese in these.

By now, you’re bored. And I’ve run out of wankling juice. So we’ll just cut to the chase. These pizza bites don’t necessarily bite. They do taste pretty accurately like really cheap frozen pizza. Frozen, like the frozen tundra of Alaska. However, with low grade frozen pizzas being so inexpensive, I’d probably spring for that instead. But the Bites were 99 cents for about 15 of them, so it didn’t break the bank. The novelty factor was also there, and if you were in a hurry, it might be faster than throwing a frozen pie in the oven.

I was going to say portability may be a consideration – it’s difficult to put a full size pizza under your arm and gallop off with the polar bears. But you know what, if the leakage on these things wasn’t just from my overpowered monstro-Alaskan toaster, portability ain’t going to be a possibility. Unless you like tomato paste ‘n cheese glue all over your clean white shirts.

[Editor's Note: I apologize to Alaska and Alaskans. The allusions and references to Alaska in this review are no doubt far-fetched and untrue. I haven't even been there yet, sadly. However, you must give me at least some props for not making more Palin jokes. That would be too easy. Like shooting polar bears in a barrel.]

Price: $0.99 for 7.5 oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 3/10

Spicy Bung

Ah, yes.

There are many roads I could have gone down with this review. Many, many roads. Roads not taken. Roads passed by and gone forever. Two roads diverged in a mofo woods, and I said screw it.

I said “woods”, not Tiger Woods.

Yes.

When presented with choices, I inevitably choose the most difficult route. Or at least the one that annoys the most people. Here is a Shin Bowl by Nong Shim, one of those instant noodle and soup contraptions. I planned to review it a few weeks ago. But I couldn’t really think of what to say about it.

Scorched poo hole

I could have gone down the “Shin Bowl Is Connected To The, Knee Bowl” route. Easy peasy. But I chose not to confound you with Hokey Pokey. I could have gone down the “Tastes Exactly Like Cup O Noodles If You Add Cayenne Pepper” route. Because, it does sort of taste like a cup of Cup O’ Noodles. Sorry, I mean a Cup ‘O Cup ‘O Noodles. Hell, let’s just add another “cup” to it and call it Cup ‘O Cup ‘O Cup ‘O Noodles. That’s Cup Cubed Noodles. Haha, says the math major dropout.

As usual I’ve chosen the road of grade school goofiness. Playground puerility. As is my wont.

Wont wont wont. Wont. As a side note, I sometimes imagine a parallel universe where everyone only has ONE word in their vocabulary. If that universe were ours, I would hope my word would be “wont”. It would be so entertaining to run around and just say “Wont, wont wont wont? Wont wont WONT wont.”

Anyhow, I’ve already guessed you may not like this review approach. It’s so tired and abused. Not amused.

Anal ring of fire.

In fact, I’ll lay you ten to one that right about now, you are wishing this was a Youtube video of an ambitious cat trying to climb into a box. Go ahead – change the channel. I don’t blame you.

Truth be told, I’m no longer the fake-fried-instant-noodle aficianado I was in college. Still, I regularly eat another one of Nong Shim’s products. That one is called “Neoguri” Udon Type Noodles, and I get the “Spicy Seafood” variety. Not sure if that’s the only variety they have, but it’s the one they sell in a giant bulk pack. I decided to try out this instant Shin Bowl (hmm… why isn’t it called a “Shim” Bowl) for old time’s sake.

Holy hole of burning, Batman.

One difference with the Neoguri one is that it doesn’t come in a styrofoam bowl, so you have to cook it in a pot. Yes, a pot – those things you put on the stove and boil water in. It also has two seasoning packets as opposed to one for this bowl.

Overall, the Shin Bowl didn’t come close to the texture or taste of the Neoguri package. For one thing, the noodles do really taste like spongy Cup ‘O Noodle noodles. The flavor of the soup was not as spicy as the Neoguri either, but I wonder if that’s because I didn’t dump all of the packet in.

Raw and red flaming cornhole

The “vegetables” in these things are awful – I almost wish they didn’t put them in and just made the bowl bigger. It had carrots, shiitake (not shittake or shitocky) mushrooms and green onions. Sometimes for grins, I crack an egg in noodles like this. But that only works if they’re the type you cook on the stove.

I also felt like the amount of noodles wasn’t as substantial. But this could be because I was punch drunk hungry at the time.

Squinting, fiery turtle head poking out of it’s carapace

OK, I will stop with the rectum allusions. But I don’t apologize for them. To be honest, I couldn’t think of any other synonyms for bungholes. (PLEASE DO NOT WRITE IN TO TELL ME WHAT THEY ARE. THANK YE)

You see, I want people to read this review and think, “This is NOT the intelligent, musings of a high-bred (or in-bred) college student having fun with a blog.” I want people to read this review and think, “These are the projectile vomitings of a prickly, gross thirty seven year old idiot loser who eats instant noodles for breakfast lunch, dinner and dessert and then talks about how he has to take a spicy crap.”

Indeed.

Price: $0.99 for 3 oz bowl
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10

Man, what a day.

I mean, man what a week. Hmm… let’s extend that to, man what a month. Man, what a year.

Man, what a life.

Et cetera, exaggerated and so on.

In case you haven’t noticed, I am very, very old. I once had a reader tell me that judging by the way I spake (speaked, spoke?) I was probably a 55 year old crotchety wizard living in his parent’s van down by the river, typing grumbly food review posts by day and selling Depeche Mode T-shirts to ex-New Wave disc jockeys by night.

I THINK he was being insulting, but to this day, I’m not sure.

He will never know how close he was to the truth. Actually, he’ll never know because I deleted his email, blocked his IP, ISP, erased his face. Excuse me, I mean erased his Facebook. Whatever that is.

But enough about trolls. Let’s get back to the heart of the matter, the kernel of the nugget of truth, lies and videotape.

And that is that yeah, I’ve been around for awhile. I remember Back In The Day™, we had these things called Fruit Roll-Ups. All these Johnny-come lately frou-frou fruity bogus bars make me laugh. Back In The Day, we actually had to harvest our fruit rollups from our brown paper lunch bags.

That’s right. Oh, it was hard times back yonder, moseying down through dusty playgrounds and school hallways. I remember a fellah, what was his name… I think it was Samson. Nice guy, but near dang didn’t make it through past recess. Had a jonesing for some Fruit Rollups, so he tried to harvest ‘em early from his sack. Teacher caught ‘im and strung ‘im up on the fence as an example. But we was always doin’ stuff like dat back in dem der days. And our rollups was all flat an’ simple-like. Plain fruit for plain folks. None of this Scoobie whatchee-callit printed on it.

Tough times, and so on.

But seriously, it’s been awhile since I’ve had Fruit Roll-Ups. I just remember that they seemed to show up in my brown bag lunches quite a bit. Before I go on, I just wanted to show everyone a pic again of my good friend “Better If Used By“, which appears on the new box:

This still makes me laugh out loud. It makes me LOL, man. Or is that “Lots of Laughs”? Sorry, I failed BBS Abbreviation class Back In The Day. I also failed Leetspeak 101, though I did manage to figure out that 55378008 typed into a calculator actually meant something.

These new fruit rollups are packed individually in a new-fangled metallic cellophane or mylar wrapper. I don’t know if it stays fresher that way, but it sure allows me to see a reflection of my aged and ancient face squished in disturbing, carnival-esque ways.

A note to self and/or others: when they say “Peel from cellophane backing before eating,” what they reallly mean is “No one, not even Bryan, would make the mistake of forgetting to peel off the cellophane before eating, but just in case he is having an off day, let’s remind him.”

I think the size of these fruit rollups may have gotten just a little smaller. I don’t have one from the 1980s to compare it to, so I’m not sure. One thing that I definitely did not remember was just how many Pears exist in a Fruit Roll-up. This is somewhat disturbing, considering that these are “Strawberry” Fruit Roll-Ups. Also, there is no mention anywhere else on the packaging of pears, pear-like substances or pear shaped things. (By the way, try and google “pear shaped girl”. It is amazing how many non- Sissy Bar references are returned, since that is that only reason I know that phrase.)

So I guess the biggest surprise is how these rollups are imprinted with edible ink featuring the likeness of fricking Scooby Dooooo. Don’t get me wrong. I dig him and his pot-smoking buddy Shaggy (I call him Scooby Doobie, hahahaha). But, Like Wow, I’m just surprised to see Scooby show up on my fruit roll-up, especially since there was no mention of him on the packaging. Not that I’m complaining. It’s all “Ro Kay!” to me.

I’d forgotten how sweet this stuff is. Kinda like dropping a few chunks of sugarcane into a glass of sugar water and then pouring in some sucralose. Or Stevia. Or whatever it is they’re using nowadays. No wonder I loved this stuff as a kid. We used to barter with Fruit Roll-Ups. “I’ll trade you my mint condition plastic R2D2 windup toy for your fruit rollup.” Guess who got the shite end of that deal…

I got a small pack of them with four roll-ups inside. I think this isn’t the typical number you get, but that’s what they had at the dollar store. Not too bad for a quarter each, I guess.

I have to admit, I didn’t find them as fun as I probably could have. Oh, I did try and stretch the fruit rollup and see if it would mold around my hand. Actually, I would like to make myself some hockey gloves out of fruit rollups. You see, they’re so sticky that they’d help me keep a hold of my hockey stick while being checked into the boards by all the goons that come after me since I’m a small 5’5″ defenseman with no slapshot.

Go Kings. And so on.

Price: $1.00 for 4 0.5 oz Rollups
Found At: Dollar Store
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10

Greetings from the Land of Macaronia.

I bring you good tidings in December. Nutmeg cheese dip parties and Santa Claws Hats.

Fa la la la la, la la la Not.

Well, OK, I’ve just been a little slow on the uptake. Again. It began with getting some sort of wacky stomach ailment the day after Thanksgiving. Monty Python Turkey’s Revenge or something. That put me out for a few days and dampened my holiday cheer. The gastro-problematicos also knocked me off drinking coffee which does not a happy camper make me.

It has also affected my vocabulary skills. (Laughing in the background are readers who insist that nothing has changed: run-on sentences have always run wild, spelling eeror saarienens are everywhere, I make up words and grammatical trees. And snow on.)

Thusly and thus, I will keep this short. I’ve reviewed a few Macaroni and Cheese products on Cheap Eats previously, but they’ve all been of the dry variety. The kind you just add hot water to and pray that all the artificial cake-like preservatives and elbow joints will congeal in an approximation of noodles and sauce.

This is actually the second variety of Fresh & Easy Macaroni and Cheese products I’ve tried. This particular one is called “Classic” Macaroni and Cheese and comes in a box in the frozen food section. The other one was of the “fresh” variety that they produce every day in the prepared foods section. The latter is “decent” as far as sauce goes, but the noodles suffer, like most F&E fresh pasta creations. It is also, surprisingly, more expensive (pound for pound) than this “Classic” boxed variety that I decided to try the other day.

I wasn’t expecting too much with this macaroni and cheese, so I was surprised it actually seemed to have real grated cheese on the top. The enormous two pound serving comes in a large plastic tub that has plastic wrap film over the top. You pop holes in that and nuke it from frozen for like 10 minutes or something.

One of the other things that surprised me is that the noodles were of the larger variety. I’m actually an equal opportunity pasta shape eater when it comes down to it, but I kinda prefer the larger ones for Macaroni and Cheese. So that was nice. After nuking, the whole chittybangbang came out pretty decent looking.

I was pleasantly surprised that the noodes did not suffer the same issues that haunt most Fresh and Easy “daily” pasta items. The macaroni wasn’t mushy and had a tiny bit of bite to them, but it wasn’t raw on the insides. The sauce is light years better, and I mean LIGHT YEARS better, than the orange cheese crud in dry macaroni box packets. I have to admit that there are some days that I like the radioactive orange powder, but I’ll take this kind of macaroni and cheese almost every other time.

The cheese sauce isn’t completely silky. I think part of it has to do with the sauce thickening a bit when cooking, and the external cheese melting down into it. It’s not so much the “custardy” version of macaroni and cheese that you get at restaurants, but it’s not smooth either. I actually like this better than some of the more solid varieties I’ve had. The flavor is pretty good, extra cheesy, but not too overpowering.

The best news was that this was a TON of food. Two pounds of noodles. I know there are big eaters out there, but if you weren’t eating this as the main entree as I was, you could easily get two or more meals out of it. I only managed to finish about 1/2 of it.

I’ve made many a homemade macaroni and cheese simulacrum in my day, and you can probably make it cheaper – but not by a whole lot. Assuming you like this stuff and don’t have a problem with dairy, this is pretty much a home run bargain at under $3. I usually buy one as a backup in the freezer for those late nights (or early mornings, or afternoons) when I’m trying to write up a lame review like this one…

Price: $2.87 for 24oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 8/10

[Editor's Note: This stomach issue is bugging me because now I feel like eating Macaroni and Cheese. I also feel like drinking eggnog. With a side order of beer. P.S. note to self: I wonder if anyone got the spelling eeror reference. P.P.S. note to self: stop writing notes to self, it does not bode well.]

I have something to say. Here it is:

I am a Sucker.

Yes, a sucker. Maybe an unintentional, half-baked or day-old sucker, but a sucker nonetheless.

I reminisce. I nostaligicize. I ponderificate. I make up words. I think back to the Day.

Back to the Day when you had to be a nerd kid to use a computer. (Commodore 64 programmer, thank you very much. 40 characters across the screen was a luxury. Run-stop Restore that bizatch.)

The things you did in your wee moo-cow childhood dayz will always float to the surface like Dexter’s trash-bagged, hacksawed body parts in the bay.

Ok, maybe that’s going too far. Especially when talking about meat products.

We used to eat Hormel Corned Beef Hash on camping trips. This fleshy, fattening substance, studded with Rubik’s Cube corner chunks of potatoes was the highlight of breakfast. Fried up crispy and usually with scrambled eggs, this kind of corned beef hash reminds me of our clunky, yet reliable, motorhome. If you can believe it, my parents still have the SAME motorhome from the early 80s rusting in back of their house. The floor of the motorhome still smells faintly of motorbike dust and packets of Lipton instant cream of chicken soup.

I absolutely think Hormel knows that I’m a Sucker for old timey meat-in-a-can. I think they’re watching me from a spy satellite orbiting the Earth. Like that Simpsons episode. They have special punch cards in their satellite (yes, they use punch cards in case they need to burn the incriminating evidence) that contain food preference data on every single American citizen. I think they sent word to their flunkies on Earth that I was due for a corned beef purchase and thusly they moved quicky to place their product in the aisle I was walking down last week.

I am not paranoid, he sayeth as he dons his foil hat.

Corned Beef Hash in a can is an interesting experience. I’ve earlier reviewed Hartford House Corned Beef and if memory serves me correctly I didn’t like it very much. I wish I had a can of that to test side by side with the Hormel variety today, to see if my old score still stands up. Because I’m wondering just how different it can be from the Hormel variety.

Incidentally – who the hell is Mary Kitchen? I know Hormel has been around since 1891, and Mary Kitchen has been around since 1949. But I’m not sure when Hormel bought the brand. I’m trying to think back to the 1980s and remember if the old cans had the Mary Kitchen name on it. Strange, I don’t seem to recall it. I’m sure old fart out there will remind me. Or a new fart would be fine, someone who thinks that he knows stuff because he can read Wikipedia.

Back to the corned beef hash – I’m actually a pretty big fan of this stuff as a special occasion treat. I wouldn’t eat it more than a few times a year. If you do decide to take a trip down memory lane, or if you’re a newcomer to the wonderful world of canned meaty products, I would suggest you do NOT go and smell the unfried stuff straight out of the can. That would be unwise.

You just put it in a frying pan, flatten it slightly, and let it crisp up. I don’t really put oil in it, I just use a nonstick pan. Flip it once and then crack some eggs onto or around it. The best part is the crispy edges, so make sure it’s really flattened. Some people dislike the little Rubik’s Cube potato chunks, but I find that they actually go well with the corned beef. If that’s not enough potato for you, cut up some baked potato from the day before, fry that ahead of time, and then just add it in.

Hormel Corned Beef has a sort of roasty taste to it, but I’m not sure if that’s not from me nearly burning it to get the crispy edges. I paid over $2 for my 15 ounce can, but I think that it’ll occasionally go on sale. Like I said before, it’s not something I’d eat every day, but it’s worthwhile to pick up a can for the pantry. (Do you hear that, Hormel Sky-Watchers? I’m going to buy some more cans, so you better go put them on sale soon.)

And all you dieting nay-sayers out there will be glad to know that they have a “reduced fat” variety. If you still feel guilty, throw some veggies in there for god’s sake. Work with me here, people.

Price: $2.35 for 15oz
Found At: Fresh & Easy
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10

[Editor's Note: Unfortunately, I never learned how to solve the Rubik's Cube. I think I could've done it if I applied myself, but for some reason, the instructions my friend photocopied for me didn't make any sense. So instead, I learned an ancient, time-honored secret method to solve it: it's called the Screwdriver...]

Stop the presses.

Hear ye, hear ye.

Po-tee-weet. And other such flatulent remarks.

You say you want a revolution. Well, you know, we all just want some Bugles.

I keep typing Buggles instead of Bugles. Buggles is an infinitely (as x approaches the snack axis) better name because it doth rhyme with “Fuggles” (and also, “Ruggles“, may they spoof the Beatles in peace who I apparently have confused with the Rutles). But I will let it slide.

I will let it slide because I’m just that type of guy. Actually, “Bugles” seem tangentially related to flatulence as well, so all’s well that ends well. Bugles, as in the cavalry musical instrument, go “toot-toot”. Toot de Sweet. Chitty chitty bang bang we’ve come full circle in less time it takes for Lindsay Lohan to get another arrest warrant.

Ex-squeeze me, I have just wasted 3 minutes of your time. Sorry.

So then, just what is going to be the “meat” of this review? That juicy, carnivorous nugget of off-colour humour that keeps people bellying up to the erratically published Cheap Eats review bar?

Well, I took some pictures of the words on the packaging, and I’m going to make fun of them.

After all, for most products like Bugles, this is just another attempt to re-package the over-surplus of subsidized corn that farmers in Iowa (sorry, Iowans, I actually like your state, especially the Corn Palace but don’t know anything about it) have to deal with. So, the most important thing about Bugles is the packaging. Right?

Actually, that is not exactly true. Bugles and I (Bugles and me?) go back many, many years. We’re fricken bed buddies. Back then, when it wasn’t a heinous sin to put hydrogenated oil and god knows what else into these snacks, I used to really look forward to eating a handful of Bugles. Oh, the shape seems the same today, and the taste is pretty much the same. It’s whatever fat that they used to use in copious amounts that really made me excited about a bag of Bugles.

I used to take a Bugle, stick it on my tongue, and wait for the fat to seep into my taste buds. It was a really interesting experience – you started to feel your tongue get COLD. I suspect you’ll get the same effect by putting a scoop of Crisco on your tongue, but don’t let your cardiologist know I told you about it.

It still works with modern Bugles, but I don’t seem to get as great an effect. Try it. It’s interesting and will keep you entertained while you wait for your cup-o-noodles to jell.

In the mean time, here are my observations in true picturesque form.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha. What a pointless pun. I guess they’ve never heard of Doritos before. Actually, Bugles look like dunce caps. Or worse.

Nice. I love the “better if used by” date expirations on certain products. As opposed to “best if used by.” It’s like they’re saying, “Hey, we’re on the same wavelength here, Cheap Eater. These will probably will taste better if you eat them by the date, but we know you’ll probably feel the need to keep them for years and years beyond the date. It’s no skin off our back, we just have to put this on the package because the FDA requires it.”

I don’t know about you, but if I’m a racecar driver, I’m not getting in a Cheerios car. Or a Hamburger Helper car. This is like asking [insert name of famous American football player here because I don't know any] to wear a pink helmet and a ballerina tutu. You can’t pay me enough to do it.

I seriously still think that this would be 10 times more awesome if they would change the name to “Buggles“. Come on, who’s with me. I want to drive the Buggles car. It’s a sweet ride.

I’ve always wanted to write into companies who DON’T put this disclaimer on the box and complain about being confused about the size of the snacks on the packaging. I would write that I was so excited that I would be getting 12 inch life size bugle-shaped snacks, because I’m a Civil War researcher looking into corn cakes shaped like bugles, and when they turned out to be only 2 inches long, my whole day was shot. I would drip fake tears on the letter and then send it in.

And so on.

Price: $1.00 for 5oz
Found At: Dollar Store
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10

[Editor's Note: Hi. I'm curious about the reason Bugles make your tongue go cold like that. I never really looked into it, plus I'm not a nutritional anthropologist. Or someone with even half a lazy brain. I know they use coconut oil - does that make a difference? I guess I never really even tried it with other snacks, maybe it works with all chips like this.]