OK, this the last of the Halloween candies I’m going to review. We had a few more but I decided to lay off the sweets for a bit.

Even if you’re not a parent, there’s little chance that you haven’t come in contact with Bob The Builder toys. A relative with kids has no doubt had them lying around. As is the case with all kid toys, they eventually make their way onto food items that kids may enjoy. These Bob The Builder Fruit Snacks are made by Brach’s candies. I have these memories from when I was younger of going to the Sav-On’s and heading toward the Brach’s candy bins where you can choose from a whole assortment of their candy and shovel them into a bag. They still have these bins around, but it doesn’t seem the same, maybe because it’s just not as cheap.

Anyhow, I didn’t expect much from these Bob The Builder Fruit Snacks because all that usually matters is the branding. The actual snacks are generic, although these are so-called “fruit snacks”. I always wonder what kind of fruit they use in these things, and since I only got the small non-resale pack I have no idea.

Interestingly, I know for a fact that there are the colors Blue, Purple, Red and Orange and maybe other colors. But in this particular one I got about 10 Purples, one Red and one Orange. No Blue! Sad…

I’m also not certain what the shapes are. The Purple one is definitely a woodsaw. The Red one has these wheels that look like they’re from a tank so I figure that must be from a Caterpillar type dump truck vehicle. The Orange one also has wheels but I can’t tell whether it’s a grocery cart or a wheelbarrow. Probably a wheelbarrow.

By now, you probably guessed that because I’m so interested in what shape was that the taste might not have been so swell. The actual fruit snacks are very generic. But I much prefer Fruit-Rollups that really taste like a certain fruit. These fruit squares were a bit pasty. I’ve had other fruit snacks like these that were a bit chewier. These tasted a bit like flavored playdough. The “Cherry” one and the “Orange” tasted pretty artificial. I wonder what kind of fruit puree is used to make these things. I think the purple one was supposed to be “Grape” but it was pretty awful. Luckily, this was the trial size. I wouldn’t have finished off the pack if it wasn’t.

Cheap Eats Score: 5/10

Here’s another quickie candy spotlight courtesy of the recent Halloween haul. I had recently “Tasted The Rainbow” through a free package of Smoothie Mix Skittles from Impulsive Buy. Those were very Miami Vice / 80s with the pastel colors, though they had some good flavors.

These newest Sour Skittles I tasted were pretty good too. They had Grape, Lemon, Orange, Strawberry and Blue Raspberry. They have a powdery coating which is where the pucker-up power resides. According to a few candy specials (Food Network’s Unwrapped), the sour stuff is pretty popular with kids. I think they had showed this one place where you just bought the Sour Powder on its own in different flavors, poured it into a tube, and then ate it straight up.

OK, that’s seems to be overdoing it. But I’ve always liked sour candy so this was kind of nice to have it on Skittles.

I ate a few of them quickly and hardly tasted the sourness. If you crunch them straight through they taste just like tangy normal Skittles. However, if you try and put one in your mouth and let the outer sour powder dissolve in your mouth, you’re hit with a fairly decent jolt of acidity. It goes away in about 10 seconds though after the powder dissolves. I actually preferred to crunch them up since Skittles aren’t the type of candy you suck on, so it works out in the end.

I think my favorite flavor of the Sour Skittles was the Blue Raspberry… I have never figured out why they came up with the flavor of Raspberry being blue. This just does not make any sense.

I don’t have the info on how much Skittles cost since it was free, and anyhow it’s the Halloween mini-pack size. I think it’s probably about 50-60 cents for a normal size pack which makes me shudder. I still cannot get used to candy inflation and how much less everything cost when I was a kid… it drives me insane!

Cheap Eats Score: 7/10

In honor of the post-Halloween candy bellyaches you probably all have, I decided to feature some candy in some upcoming episodes of Cheap Eats. (For constant candy craving addicts, you need to visit Cybele’s Candy Blog to get a constant candy fix!)

First up is the venerable Hershey Milk Chocolate Candy Bar. Founded in 1894 by Milton S Hershey, the Hershey company is the world’s largest according to Wikipedia. I have lots of good memories from Hershey bars when I was a kid. The one pictured here is the small snack size, which is actually not too much smaller than what passes for a “full size” bar nowadays.

In the 70s, which is when I ingested the most candy, you could buy a Hershey bar for 30 cents if I remember correctly. Interestingly, I remember it wasn’t always the cheapest candy bar per size and weight. The one thing it had going for it was that it was a solid chocolate bar. No nuts, nougat, caramel. Solid. I know some people who swear by the bar as opposed to kisses but I like both of them.

I actually got these Hershey bars for free from my in-laws which is why they qualify for Cheap Eats. Let’s face it: candy in general ain’t cheap, nor is it necessary to survive (though many might argue that’s not true!). You can get much cheaper chocolate from any number of companies. But Hershey bars strike me as sort of the blue collar working man’s milk chocolate bar. The chocolate ain’t anywhere near top notch. Personally, I’ll take their Special Dark Chocolate mini bar any day over the normal bar. The milk chocolate isn’t very smooth and it just seems way too sweet. But I guess it’ll do in a pinch and for the price it’s not horrible.

Cheap Eats Score: 6/10

So I couldn’t find a suitable item to review for Cheap Eats today so I made way to my trusty box of goodies that I recently won off of The Impulsive Buy for inspiration. Hm… Hershey Reese’s COOKIES? Sort of weird to be snarfing cookies, seeing as it’s still 10:00 in the morning. Let alone Chocolate Dipped Cookies with Peanut Butter in them.

Marvo gave them a 5 out of 5 score in his earlier review in March and they were only 99 cents according to him which is a quarter a cookie. Free for me though, hooray says wallet.

Interestingly, he said he bought 2 packs and then reviewed one while freezing the other. I wonder if this is the “other”. =) In that case, I can also comment on how the cookies stand up to freezing as well as the taste.

I’m not even going to get into how bad these things probably are for you, but on the bright side the package proudly states that there are 0 grams of Trans Fat in it. They don’t tout the quantities of the other kinds of fat in them though. Nor the sugar.

Speaking of sugar. Wow. These were super delicious, I mean unbelievably decadent – delicious. But boy were they sweet. Even with some milk to take off the sweet edge. My teeth were almost retracting into my gums to avoid contact.

The picture is a little blurry because my hand was shaking while holding the camera. Because I was drooling in anticipation of chocolate covered cookie goodness…

Continue reading “Hershey Reese’s Cookies” …

(ed. note: TEE HEE I WUZ CHECKING TO SEE IF YOUS ARE AWAKE, I ARE NOT VERY BRIGHT AT GETTING NAME RIGHT: JIFFY POP EQUALS JOLLY TIME IN ALL SENTENCE BELOW, THANKS U KISS KISS)

Popcorn. I hadn’t had it in awhile, so this was perhaps good timing to try this Jiffy Pop Mallow Magic in that “Mystery Box” I won off of The Impulsive Buy. Indeed, this seems to be the item that most readers wanted to hear about so let’s get to it.

This is a sort of interesting idea, though in no way original. It’s basically like that flavored popcorn that you can buy in specialty stores, except that this one you pop yourself and then add the flavor. And the flavor that they’re going for here is “Yummy Marshmallow”. Very interesting choice.

Here is what the back of the box says:

“Ready for a little pop corn hocus pocus? Start with flavorful, crunchy pop corn kernels, charmed with a hint of sweetness. You add the magic by pouring on the luscious, creamy marshmallow topping. Ta Dah – there’s nothing to it! You’ll be enchanted by each crispy kernel’s delectable, mallow-y melt-in-your-mouth flavor. So magically scrumptious, before you know it … poof … your Mallow Magic Microwave Pop Corn has disappeared!”

I wonder who has the job to write the copy for the boxes of these products, because I want that job. A great opportunity to use words those words you studied for on the SAT, like “mallow-y“, “poof” and “Ta Dah“. Also, the illustrations on the box show some kids eating corn with eyes the size of anime characters. But they don’t look cute, they look mighty scary… like some zombification has taken place from eating the popcorn.

Before I get to how it tastes and stuff, here is a warning for all potential Jiffy Poppers. I’ve had this happen before, but I must have forgot. The “flavoring” for flavored microwave popcorn contains oils and that directly contacts the bag. Now, when you heat oil in the microwave for a long time on high, it no doubt starts to get a little hot. So it was an extremely stupid of me to put the Popcorn Bag on top of a microwave plastic container. I usually put it straight on the glass bottom, but I just was lazy to take it out. The picture at right shows the wonderful results.

Continue reading “Jiffy Pop Mallow Magic” …

I’ve been eating Shrimp Chips from Calbee for near 30 years I think. I don’t know how long they’ve been making these, but the packaging has pretty much remained the same over that time… Pink polka dots on white with the gigantic words “Shrimp Flavored Chips” on the front.

Calbee makes a whole host of other Asian type snacks like this, including Veggie, Potato and Sweet Potato chips. I don’t know how common they are where you live but they are pretty much in every supermarket where I am. This is the 10 ounce bag which is definitely more than a couple bucks so it’s not exactly the cheapest thing. But hey, neither are potato chips when you get down to it. They also have smaller bags that cost somewhere from 79 cents to $1.50. [Edit: This particular 10 ounce bag was actually $1.99 which wasn't as bad as I thought.]

The chips themselves aren’t round, but have been extruded in the shape of twisted, ridged “twigs”. In case you are wondering, here is how they describe them on the back of the package:

“A toasted light snack, with a touch of shrimp”

A delectable new snack made with tidbits of shrimp, wheat flour and pure vegetable oil blended together and toasted to a golden crispy crunch.

Amazingly, there actually IS shrimp in the chips themselves according to the ingredients although I don’t want to hazard a guess as to which parts are ground up in here.

Continue reading “Calbee Shrimp Chips” …

Over at The Impulsive Buy, Marvo recently held a drawing for a box of “goodies”. All you had to do to enter was to add a comment to the post about the drawing. I entered it as I usually do, not really thinking about it, and to my surprise I won! I never win anything, so it was kind of cool.

Even more cool was that the box ‘o goodies that I received containted quite a few “reviewable” products for Cheap Eats. Interesting things, like Jolly Time Mallow Magic Popcorn, S’mores Poptarts, Lo-Carb Pears, Reese’s Cookies, Aquadrops, and Dentyne Fire.

The fact that they were free is probably the greatest thing about it (and thus the high score), and it was extremely good timing since most are snacks that I wouldn’t ordinarily buy. Anyhow, look for some of them to appear in upcoming weeks at Cheap Eats…

Cheap Eats Score: 10/10