Category: Foodstuffs

The Amazing Exploding Circus

I’ve been listening to the new(ish) I Fight Dragons CD like once a day for the duration of this month. You should go buy it. It’s a little considerably more radio-ey than either of their EPs, but the quality is still there. And yeah, maybe the lyrics to “The Geeks Will Inherit the Earth” are edging a little too close to Good Charlotte territory, but it’s such a fun song! Really, the point is that they use a GameBoy as an instrument, and that’s more than enough to keep a firm grasp on my attention and my ten dollars.

And to switch up the topic completely, when I was searching for the Kaboom album cover, I found this:

Upon further investigation, I discovered that this cereal was only discontinued in 2010. For the last five years at least, anytime I go down to the States on vacation I spend more time in Wal-Mart’s cereal aisle than anywhere else. How is it that I never once saw this? I understand that it would have had a different, more modern (though less amazing) box design, but I never saw anything close. Too bad. It looks like it would really make breakfast fun. Guess I’ll have to stick with the stupid Fruity Pebbles flakes.

Twist and scarf

To the right of this test box is an image of a bag of Twistos, my new favouritest cracker. If the bag is to be beleived, they’re pretty new in general, too.

You see here the bruschetta flavour, and there are a couple other cheese-themed varieties, but they aren’t worth remembering because bruschetta is the best of the bunch, hands down. The other ones aren’t bad, mind you, they just pale in comparison to the deliciousness of the crumbelievable bruschetta flavour.

The crackers themselves are more like little bits of toasted bread than your traditional cracker, incidentally giving them a very similar texture to actual bruschetta. They’re have a very satisfying crunch to them but aren’t nearly as tough as bruschetta, and they pose little to no threat of tearing up the roof of your mouth. In fact, now that I think of it, they’re almost like croutons, just repurposed to be a stand-alone product.

The really best thing about these Twistos is that they are a semi-healthy snack and they’re cheap! Usually you only get one of those benefits, but the Twistos have got it all. There really isn’t much to them nutrient-wise, but they’re relatively low in sugars, which is my big problem area. They aren’t necessarily the healthiest snack in the grocery aisle, but they’re still worlds better than the crap I usually stuff in my gullet.

I had no idea what company produces these bad boys, and a quick Google search revealed that they were originally a Spanish-language snack that only recently made its way to North American shores. Either that or PepsiCo is ripping those guys off like there’s no tomorrow. There are other snacks in the Twistos catalogue, but give the fact that our version doesn’t have a subtitle, I doubt PepsiCo intends on bringing the other types over anytime soon. Doesn’t bother me though, because those other ones don’t interest me terribly.

I just wrote 300+ words about crackers. New low?

The Star Wars Mega Egg

I love Star Wars.

Let’s pause for a moment to let that sink in. I feel like after the prequel trilogy, a lot of the love for Star Wars has waned. Not without good reason, but still! Me, I still love Star Wars. I make sure to watch A New Hope at least once a year. Ideally I’d make time to watch the original trilogy once a month (and the prequels once a year), but I have tons of other stuff on my plate, be they things I am required to do or just other frivolous time-wasters. So I generally don’t watch the Star Wars movies more than once a year.

It should be noted that this fanboy love is directed almost entirely at the original trilogy and works that spin off from those three movies. I have played very few Star Wars games that don’t star Luke Skywalker and friends, and I’ve only read a handful of Star Wars novels, in most of which the main character is Han Solo. This one time I thought about playing Knights of the Old Republic, but I didn’t own an Xbox and my PC was not equipped to run it. I only own the prequel trilogy because they came packed-in with my blu-ray copies of the first three films.

All that said, I’ve never seen the Clone Wars movie, nor have I watched the equally fugly Star Wars: Clone Wars television series. I own the DVDs of the (comparatively beautiful) 2D animated Clone Wars series, but that’s about all I’ve ever had to do with whatever happened between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. So if I hadn’t been actively seeking a curiosity to write this article about, I wouldn’t have given this Star Wars Mega Egg a second glance. Heck, I might not have even noticed the durned thing at all.

So Star Wars Mega Egg. Thar she blows. It’s a big, blue egg with a hideous, computer-generated likeness of Hayden Christensen on it. More importantly, it’s exactly the kind of thing we love around these parts! It’s been a while since we’ve seen any surprise bag action around here, and this Mega Egg is just what the doctor ordered. Check out that label, it says “surprise inside” and also “candy gift with surprise.” I don’t see how I could possibly lose when it’s promising a surprise two times in such close proximity.

The rest of the label is curiously devoid of any more mentions of a possible surprise, but it does go to great lengths to scientifically describe exactly what the candy gift will be. Of course, I’m no scienceist, so I have no idea what any of that jargon means aside from the fact that it’s all just chunks of sugar. That’s pretty much all I expect from candy gifts though, so I’m sure it’ll be great! Acceptable, at the very least.

I won’t lie, I’m pretty darned excited about the jelly candy that’s rumoured to be inside. You have no idea the jellified wonders I’ve got parading around in my mind.

Apparently the Mega Egg wants me to join the Official Star Wars Fan Club. I’m not certain, but I have a feeling that the Star Wars website that the provided web address is pointing me to is of a very different demographic than I would expect. My idea of a Star Wars fan club is a bunch of fanboys (and maybe a girl) poring over their favourite series of movies, trading various cards and/or comics, showing each other their fan art and home-made costumes, and other such nerdly activites. You know, somewhere I’d really feel at home. The Mega Egg is likely just to attract eight-year-olds who think the Clone Wars TV show is the bomb (or whatever the kids say these days) and have no idea that the original movies exist.

Upon actually typing that link into my browser, I have discovered that the Official Star Wars Fan Club no longer exists. Well, visiting the site just proved that the site was gone, the actual discovery came from a cunning Google search and the skimming of a brief FAQ.

Either way, the OSWFC is gone and I now understand why the Force has felt so sorrowful for some time now.

Back to the matter at hand, the Mega Egg has a trio of holes in the top. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t candy generally sealed in airtight packages? Do sugar chunks need to breathe? Is my candy gift more than I’d bargained for, or is that surprise going to be even more surprising than I’d expected? Man, I’m getting way to into this Mega Egg.

Guys, it’s opening. It’s opening!!

I suppose that this would be a good point at which to give you a little better feel for the Mega Egg you see before you. To keep you on the edge of your seat, you see.

The Mega Egg, as far as surprise-bearing eggs go, is pretty big. It’s roughly three to four times the size of a regular Kinder Surprise egg. I had originally intended to take a picture of the Mega Egg next to another object -ideally a Kinder Surprise egg- to better illustrate its Meganess, but alas, I didn’t feel like combing Zellers’ candy aisle for a Kinder Surprise egg, and I forgot to take a comparison shot whilst taking all these other pictures.

The large size of the egg is also why I feel so compelled to capitalize the words “Mega Egg” every time I type them. It would be wrong not to give the Mega Egg the distinction of being a proper noun. I feel almost like I should be capitalizing every letter, to further glorify the Mega Egg, but it seems like the kind of thing that’s only funny for a paragraph or two. Besides, if I’d done that, I’d be out this great filler paragraph.

I’m a little worried about this, guys. It… it kind of looks like the Star Wars Mega Egg is just full of a bunch of the same packets of candy. That can’t be right. Surprise bags aren’t full of a bunch of the same thing, they’re full of different things! A surprise egg should be held to the same standard!

Speaking of surprises… I don’t see one here. Just packets of samey-lookin’ candy. Guys, I’m scared. The surprise… It’s gotta be under the candy, right? That’s what’s going on here. Yeah, that’s it.

Well, colour me disappointed. I’m not sure what colour that would be, exactly. Possibly a shade of blue? Not out-and-out sad blue, but maybe a faded blue, to show that I’m sad and also my joy has faded and been replaced with cold, gray disappointment. Yep, a faded blue would definitely be the right colour for disappointed.

This is not what I look for in any type of surprise package, be it a bag, cone, egg, or crate. Not since the Peter Puck surprise bag have I been so disappointed. What’s that? Why don’t I have a link to the Peter Puck surprise bag article? Because there isn’t one! The Peter Puck surprise bag was just several packets of puck-shaped candy and a plastic puck in which to place the candy. And every single one is the same! The Star Wars Mega Egg just barely avoids being so disappointing by containing three different kinds of candy, but I’m betting all the Star Wars Mega Eggs are the same. This is almost as big a let-down as The Phantom Menace.

You’ll have to excuse me if typos start getting really bad from here on out. I just spent three minutes banging my head against the wall in a mix of frustrations, disappointment, and just a little bit of my natural insanity.

Why? Because my twice-touted “surprise” is a stupid little sheet of stupid little Star Wars stickers. I suppose that when whatever candy company Lucasfilm contracted to make this thing was deciding on a demographic, they probably opted to shoot for a younger crowd. A crowd that would piss their pants in excitement when they saw that they got a buttload of candy AND more Star Wars stickers than they can count. I’m not part of that demographic.

My negative emotions are somewhat swayed by that cool C-3PO sticker though. His knee joints are monstrously oversized, but still, how could I be mad at Threepio?

Being an adult, I have absolutely no need for a copious amount of tiny Star Wars stickers, so I just mashed them all over the Mega Egg. It was looking a little naked and ashamed after being stripped of its flashy packaging.

I don’t really have a need for a huge plastic egg covered in tiny Star wars stickers either, but let’s not go splitting hairs here.

The Threepio sticker, being the biggest and bestestist sticker in the bunch, was given the honour of gracing the name tag on my lunch bag. I think it’s a pretty great spot to wear my love for Star Wars, and there really isn’t any other surface in the immediate vicinity of my computer desk where I felt like placing a sticker wouldn’t be a waste. I guess that since I’ll be moving out soon I could have pasted them all over my walls to cause my parents a minor annoyance, but I feel like they’d probably make me pull them all off. I’m not in the business of finding ways to annoy myself.

So that’s about it, I guess. No, wait. I didn’t try the candy. Let’s go have a taste, shall we? I mean, you won’t because you’re on the wrong side of the internet, but I’mma go enjoy some sugar lumps now.

I was let down immediately by the jelly candies. Mostly because they were the ones I was looking forward to the most and there ended up being only two packets of them. Also because they came exclusively in lemon flavour. They weren’t that bad, but I feel like the confectioners missed a huge opportunity by not making them all delicious red and green. Possibly blue.

The hard candy, shaped like stars, was pretty boring all around. They were all red and yellow, but both colours tasted pretty much the same. That taste, BTW, could be best described as “bland, with a hint of nothing.” Lastly, the minty-looking candies, which I assumed would taste minty as well, were not minty. I have no idea what the flavour is called, but they were pretty yummy! They weren’t overly tasty, but they certainly beat the stars. Another plus is that the stars and the mint-looking things were quite a bit softer than I’d imagined. They were still technically hard candies, but they put up just enough resistance so that chewing them didn’t hurt my feeble little girl teeth.

Overall, the Star Wars Mega Egg was a pretty big bust. That’s what I get for buying a surprise dealie from a big chain instead of a dollar store that never left 1983. I have a burning curiosity to see if there are any other possible “surprises” in the Star Wars Mega Eggs, but I don’t feel like risking another $3 for what will most likely be the exact same contents. I might luck into better-flavoured jellies, but at that point it might just be better to buy a $1 bag of jellies. They don’t come with the thrill of the surprise, but there’s also that lack of crushing disappointment, which some might consider a perk. I’ll have to think long and hard about this one…

As a little side-note, Kinder Surprises generally aren’t especially surprising, but there was a pretty neat little line of hippos dressed as Star Wars characters in them at one point. As far as I can tell, the line never reached Canada, but by that point in time I was already too old to care about Kinder Surprise toys, even if they were hippos cosplaying Star Wars characters. My point here is that this is how you whore out your brand, not with boring junk like the Mega Egg.

The mighty Pepwich

I had Monday off this week, and didn’t use it to do anything productive at all. I just sat in my room, with the nice spring breeze flowing through the window, playing video games all day. It was pretty much the perfect day.

But trouble arose when I decided that it was time for lunch. The house was suffering from a severe lack of instant lunch foods, and I was ready to resort to PB+J, but there was no J! Crazy, right? A PB and banana sandwich was out of the question because there were no bananas around, and a normal sandwich was impossible because there was no lunch meat in the fridge. Things were looking pretty bleak.

In the end, the best I could cobble together was a pepperoni sandwich. Not really an appetizing prospect, but it was all I had! Pepperoni is fine when you’ve got other meats in there, but it’s not the best meat to anchor a sandwich on. I rounded out the sammich with a couple cheese slices, two kinds of mustard (regular and spicy), tomatoes, and pickles. I took half a box of Wheat Thins “Stix” as a side, because they are the best cracker.

The final product wasn’t something that I’d care to reproduce. It wasn’t a bad sandwich though; I feel like the pickles (which were an 11th-hour addition) really saved it. But at least I was able to make a small meal for myself without resorting to spending money, which is really the ultimate goal at this point.

Journey to the southeast

Remember back in November when I posted a short list of video game goals I’ve set for myself? Well I haven’t completed any of them, but I’ve set myself down the path to a few! For one, I stayed up late one night plucking green stars in Super Mario Galaxy 2 and spent most of my Christmas break plowing through Batman: Arkham Asylum. Mostly though, I’ve been getting back into Fallout 3.

I picked it up again mostly because I feel like I should finish one massive open-world adventure before starting a new one (Skyrim), but I quickly remembered just how much I love playing it. I was a little worried that since I’d put it down for so long that I’d completely lose my bearing, but I got right back into it and had no trouble reorienting myself. I credit that mostly to the level of detail in the game, which allowed me to easily look up the quests I was working on and the places I’d been exploring.

I haven’t completed any quests that have elements outside of Megaton, and where the main story is concerned I haven’t even been to Galaxy News Radio yet. I do have a fairly long to-do list, though. While I’ve decided that my main objective is to find Rivet City (trying to find a new home for an orphaned boy), I constantly get distracted by other landmarks I pass by, especially since I’ve been trying to get there by going through the city. I’ve spent hours upon hours getting lost in the maze that is the ruins of the metro system.

After giving up on making my way through the ruins of D.C. I decided I’d head back to Megaton to sell off all my garbage and resupply. Form there I figured that I’d skip around the city and just head south, which is fairly open terrain. Not far from Megaton I ran into a pack of wastelanders who were unusually happy, and tried to sell me what they only described as “strange meat.” I declined, but one of them game me some for free, claiming I’d get hooked after one taste. I still haven’t eaten it.

Continuing southward, I came upon a small “town” which was just three houses among the rubble of a bigger community. I talked to a young boy there (he was the only person around when I arrived), and he told me that he thought it was strange that people who visited  never stayed long. I then talked to an old man who told me to run away and not to try getting into the shed behind his house.

Being the ever-curious wandered that I am, I waltzed over to the shed to see what was inside. Finding it locked, I was about to try to pick it when I heard a stern voice say “I hope you’re not planning on breaking into my shed.” I told him I was just passing through, and subsequently went into his house and had a chat with his wife. The both of them were a little odd; something was definitely up. So I went upstairs and stole the key to the shed. Before I got back downstairs, I overheard the woman telling her husband that she was suspicious of me and that he should keep an eye on me.

I then proceeded to wander back to the shed and went in. It was exactly as bad as I’d thought. The shed was filled with cages, torture devices, and fridges full of “strange meat.” Oh, and human skeletons were all over the place. I immediately left, and found myself surrounded by the couple and another man, all pointing weapons at me. I had more than enough weaponry on my person to take them, but I decided not to cause trouble and pretended that I was cool with what was going down in town. They put their weapons away and went back to their own business. Needless to say, it was time for me to get the hell out of Dodge.

I continued to the southern border of the capital wasteland and then eastward toward Rivet City. On my way there I helped the Brotherhood of Steel find some not-destroyed books in the Arlington Library and killed my first mirelurk king, among other things. Currently I stand at the door to the Citadel, staring out over the river at the silhouette of the huge ship that is Rivet City. While my trek seems like it’s nearing its end, I can’t imagine that whatever still lies between me and my destination is going to make that last leg easy. I’m sure looking forward to it though! Unless it’s super mutants. I’m sick of those guys.

Ice is nice

It should be pretty well known by now that I’m a big fan of Mike & Ike candies. There are a few little things that regular folk don’t know about them though. The average person knows the original flavours in the green box, and the Berry Blast variety in the blue box can almost always be found next to the originals. The Tropical Typhoon flavour (red box 1) is the best of the basic triad by leaps and bounds, but is significantly harder to find. These all come in the long, rectangular box in which the candies are loose. There is one flavour that comes in a slightly more squareish box, Tangy Twister. These are the worst. Not only do they taste bad, but there is a plastic pouch inside the box that holds the candies, resulting in considerably less candies than you’d find in the long box. There are some other flavours, like Red Rageous (the best), Jolly Joes, and Lemonade Blends. However, these flavours are either incredibly rare or not sold in Canada., because I’ve only ever seen Red Rageous when I drive down past the border.

Last week, we were down at the Forks Market, and while perusing one particular candy shop (I can’t be bothered to remember what it was called) I found these babies. While I was thrilled to find a flavour of Mike & Ikes that I’d never seen before, I was immediately suspicious of the squareish box. I bought it anyway because I like Mike & Ike.

Arriving back at home, I broke into the box with haste and discovered that it did indeed contain the plastic baggie of candies. Less candy than a standard box? That’s one strike against Italian Ice. Then I looked at the back to see what the flavours were… and they were all the same as the original Mike & Ikes, albeit swapping lime for watermelon. What was going on here?

I popped a few in my mouth, and at first it seemed like just the regular old flavours going on, and then it hit me. The Italian Ice candies produce a very strange taste sensation that I really have no idea how to describe. It’s sort of reminiscent of eating a freezie that tastes like Mike & Ikes, just without the cold. It’s totally weird, but wonderful in a way. I probably won’t buy them again because I’m never at the Forks and they cost like a dollar more there (plus you get less in this dumb box), but I liked them. If Walmart started selling them, I’d probably pick up a box every once in a while.

What a twist!

Nearing the end of our ComicCon adventure, Stephanie was getting a little thirsty. We’d been there several hours and hadn’t stopped for sustenance since leaving home. We were about to head out to find a refreshment stand when I saw this baby at a kiosk.

It was surrounded by other, potentially much healthier foreign beverages, but I was determined to get me some foreign Pepsi. They were ridiculously expensive at $3.00 a can, but hey, at least it was something to write about. The Pepsi Twist was streets ahead of the terrible, terrible Pepsi Lime, but it still wasn’t great. It was more like drinking a 7up with a splash of Pepsi, rather than the other way around. Not bad, overall, but I certainly wouldn’t spend three more dollars on another can. A six-pack, maybe. I’m assuming it’s pretty much the same thing as the North American version of Pepsi Twist was, but I haven’t seen that stuff in forever, and don’t recall ever trying it back when it was available.

I can’t read a lick of this because my knowledge of the Japanese language is extremely limited, but I’m pretty sure it’s telling you that this stuff is going to kill you. That or it’ll give you a serious case of the diabetes. But then again, isn’t that the case for all soft drinks?

Holy peanut butter, Batman!

Years ago I would have tried to type up at least 1000 words about this sucker. Now I realize that the photos tell you pretty much all you need to know (and they’re worth approximately 3000 words). Except maybe the fact that eating one of these by yourself in a single sitting is probably a bad idea. That one should probably register under “common sense” though.