If you’ve watched more than 10 minutes of live television in the last few weeks, you’ve almost certainly seen the ubiquitous commercials for the new Wendy’s Flatbread sandwiches. And if you’ve already seen the commercials, then you invariably have two questions. These are the two answers:

1) Yes, the sandwiches are actually quite good.
2) The redhead’s name is Morgan Smith Goodwin.

If you want to learn more about 2), you’ll have to go down that internet wormhole for yourself. I do, however, have plenty more information on 1).

Let’s start with the Smoky Honey Mustard Flatbread. The simpler of the two sandwiches, it’s got grilled chicken, mixed greens, two slices of tomatoes, and a whole lot of honey mustard inside the flatbread. The flatbread itself really is the star of the show here – with various grains and seeds offering some crunch to complement the otherwise thick and chewy bread, it’s tasty and filling and just feels healthier than everything else on the menu.

The greens are also useful in that regard, with leafier and presumably more nutritious varieties than plain old iceberg lettuce. All good news if maybe you’re getting a late jump on your spring diet, and maybe your friend is throwing a too-early-in-the-season-and-no-one’s-swimsuit-ready party in the Hamptons soon, and maybe your mother recently told you your pants look tight from the extra pounds in your butt. These are all complete hypotheticals, so you definitely didn’t hurt my feelings, Mom.

The nomenclature of these new products is weird but appropriate; perhaps the flatbread comes before the grilled chicken because there’s so much more of the former than the latter. The chicken was juicy and well-seasoned and generally very tasty, but there just wasn’t enough of it. Each flatbread contained what looked to be half a grilled chicken fillet sliced into four or five strips, which couldn’t cover the entirety of the sandwich.

I took several bites that consisted of only bread and honey mustard, particularly around the hinge of the flatbread. And speaking of the honey mustard, I couldn’t detect any smokiness at all. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was the exact same honey mustard as the dipping sauce for the chicken nuggets. I guess “smoky mustard” is one of those phrases that gets thrown around but actually means nothing, like “elegant wine” or “corporate values” or “do you know who I am? I’m Reese Witherspoon!”

The Asiago Ranch Flatbread Grilled Chicken Sandwich has a couple more ingredients than the Smoky Honey Mustard, with three strips of bacon, asiago cheese, and ranch dressing instead of honey mustard. As you might expect, this sandwich had a much stronger taste.

The excellent-as-usual Wendy’s bacon added texture and flavor, while the cheese and ranch dressing made for a very rich combination. Again, I thought there was too little chicken. Also, the extra toppings here made for a much messier eating experience, which should be an extra consideration if your spring diet is a subset to the overall life goal of being less of a slob.

I liked both of the new Wendy’s Flatbread Grilled Chicken sandwiches, and each of them would make for a decent-sized meal on its own (I bought them at the same time but saved half of each for lunch the next day). If I had to choose just one, I would probably go with the Smoky Honey Mustard Flatbread – it’s cheaper ($3.59 vs. $4.19) and has fewer calories (370 vs. 530), and its milder flavors suited my taste buds better than the richness of the Asiago Ranch. I’d recommend you go try either one for yourself. If nothing else, Wendy’s franchises seem to have lots of Morgan Smith Goodwin cardboard cutouts these days.

(Nutrition Facts – Smoky Honey Mustard – 370 calories, 150 calories from fat, 15 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 550 milligrams of sodium, 38 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 8 grams of sugar, and 22 grams of protein. Asiago Ranch – 530 calories, 270 calories from fat, 30 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 90 milligrams of cholesterol, 940 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 4 grams of sugar, and 30 grams of protein.)

Other Wendy’s Smoky Honey Mustard Flatbread & Asiago Ranch Flatbread reviews:
Grub Grade
Foodette Reviews
Brand Eating
Man Reviews Food

Item: Wendy’s Flatbread Grilled Chicken Sandwich (Smoky Honey Mustard & Asiago Ranch)
Purchased Price: $3.59 (Smoky Honey Mustard)
Purchased Price: $4.19 (Asiago Ranch)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Wendy’s
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Smoky Honey Mustard)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Asiago Ranch)
Pros: Flatbread is thick and chewy. Grains and seeds make it feel healthier. Chicken is juicy and well-seasoned. Greens are leafier than regular iceberg lettuce. Wendy’s bacon is always excellent. Both sandwiches have relatively few calories. Morgan Smith Goodwin is an Alyson Hannigan lookalike. Celebrity DUI jokes.
Cons: Not enough chicken. Honey mustard wasn’t smoky at all. Asiago Ranch was a little too rich for me. Asiago Ranch was very messy to eat. Spring dieting. Yes, fine, I didn’t wait for lunch to finish the sandwiches. Please don’t steal any Morgan Smith Goodwin cutouts.

I know you all think the life of a part-time junk food/fast food review writer is incredibly glamorous, but really I’m exactly like you.

I spent my Sunday working through a totally normal checklist. Doing some laundry. Catching up on the last few episodes of Top Chef. Carefully inspecting all the frozen food aisles at ShopRite and harassing the stock boys. (“Do you have the newest flavors of Ben & Jerry’s, and if not do you know when you’ll get them, and if not can I speak to ShopRite’s manager of frozen confectionery products?”)

I couldn’t find a good item to review, so I reacted much as you would to minor inconveniences – I shrugged my shoulders and went looking for my favorite beer.

Luckily, my search for a 6-pack of Magic Hat #9 guided me directly to a solution. Magic Hat has released a spring variety pack that introduces two new brews, the German-styled Saint Saltan and Ticket to Rye, an IPA. And since “I have to drink all this beer for work” is an excuse my girlfriend somehow bought, I’m now able to review these new seasonal products.

I started with the lighter Saint Saltan. It’s a Gose, which is a type of German beer that I’d previously never tried before. A quick Wikipedia search told me to expect saltiness and helped explain the origins of the Saltan name. The beer was a clear golden yellow with a white head and smelled heavily of coriander.

Taste-wise, it was very crisp and refreshing with moderate carbonation. The coriander was again a primary flavor, yet I could definitely taste the sweetness and maltiness from the lemon and wheat flavors, respectively. The saltiness manifested mostly in the after taste, which certainly made the beer more interesting but didn’t spark some divine revelation of a beer-drinking experience.

At 4.6% alcohol by volume, the Saint Saltan goes down very smoothly, almost like a wheat ale. I could imagine myself throwing one or two back on a hot summer evening, but I could just as well imagine the salty flavor losing its appeal very quickly.

Moving on to the second new offering: even the most casual music listeners would recognize “Ticket to Rye” as a play on a song title, but Beatles fans might remember that the phrase was rumored to be the original title of “Ticket to Ride,” with Rye referring to a small town in England. I don’t know which reference Magic Hat intended, though I do know that I intend to come off as both a beer snob AND a music snob in this review.

In any case, Magic Hat’s “Spring Fever Mix” variety pack’s packaging is very much music-themed. Their marketing has always been fun and a little wink-wink, and I loved all the small touches on the box that represent performing equipment and radio buttons.

As for the actual beer, I thought Ticket to Rye was very, very solid. It was a dark amber color with no haze whatsoever in the pouring. As expected from an IPA, it smelled hoppy but also had a nice pine scent with some spiciness from the rye. The first thing I tasted was the spiciness, which was followed with some pine and citrus and maybe a little bit of caramel. The beer was nicely hoppy without being overwhelming so, but I thought it lost carbonation a bit too quickly. Anyone who generally enjoys IPAs would definitely find that this one goes down easy, though at 7.1 percent ABV, you’ll want to take it slow.

I enjoyed both of these new offerings, and along with the old Magic Hat standbys of #9 Not Quite Pale Ale and Pistil Dandelion Beer, they make for an excellent variety pack. These Magic Hat 12-packs were on promotional display at my local ShopRite, so you probably won’t even have to harass the stock boys to find them – go pick one up the next time you’re at the supermarket or liquor store.

Other Magic Hat Saint Saltan reviews:
Behind the Tap
Good Beer Better Hats

Other Magic Hat Ticket to Rye reviews:
Behind the Tap
Good Beer Better Hats

Item: Magic Hat Saint Saltan and Ticket to Rye
Purchased Price: $12.99 (Spring Fever Mix Variety 12-pack)
Size: 12-pack (12 oz. bottles)
Purchased at: ShopRite
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Saint Saltan)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Ticket to Rye)
Pros: Saint Saltan was light and crisp. Nice coriander and lemon flavors with interesting salty after-taste. Ticket to Rye was nicely hoppy with great rye spice, pine, and citrus flavors. Magic Hat marketing and packaging. Top Chef on the DVR. The glamorous part-time junk food/fast food reviewer lifestyle. My girlfriend doesn’t actually mind drinking on Sundays anyway.
Cons: Saint Sultan’s salty aftertaste could lose its appeal quickly. Ticket to Rye lost its carbonation a bit too quickly. Not finding any of the new Ben & Jerry’s flavors. I don’t really know anything about music.

The story of Torani’s Chicken ‘N Waffles syrup presents internet marketing at either its best or most contrived (quite possibly both). To recap:

March 26, 2012:

Torani announces they’ll be releasing a chicken & waffles flavoring syrup. The Internet collectively says, “That’s disgusting. I MUST HAVE IT.”

April 1, 2012:

Torani reveals the new flavor was an early-April Fools’ prank and simultaneously launches a social media campaign to generate support for the creation of the “potential new cult favorite”.

The Internet expresses outrages over the prank, rolls its eyes at a corporation raising grassroots support for its own non-existent product, and goes back to watching Call Me Maybe parody videos.

November 20, 2012:

“Due to unprecedented demand,” Torani announces actual debut of Chicken ‘n Waffles Syrup.

January 1, 2013:

Due to a need to immediately sabotage his resolutions of losing weight, not wasting money on novelty food items, and writing less often in the third person, Jasper tries the Chicken ‘n Waffles Syrup.

January 14, 2013:

Due to the syrup being awful, Jasper waits two weeks before working up the spirit to actually write down all the awfulness.

The bar for the Chicken ‘n Waffles Syrup was set pretty low – since it started as a marketing gimmick that was likely rushed through development and production, its best-case outcome was always going to be “gag gift that’s actually serviceable.” Alas, the syrup can only serve as another cautionary reminder against buying novelty foods.

I first tried a spoonful of the syrup on its own. It smelled very sweet and a little bit malty, which is about as positive as I’m going to get in this review. As expected, it tasted incredibly sweet, but the malty-ness was really a yeasty-ness, and there was a lingering aftertaste that was yeasty and greasy (presumably to reflect the fried chicken component) and nearly induced my gag reflex.

Of course, syrup isn’t meant to be consumed by its lonesome, so I added it to other meals. I had a brief, almost-ontological debate with my girlfriend on whether you could, in fact, eat Chicken ‘n Waffles syrup with the dish from which its essence is distilled. Since the Torani bottle recommends you eat it with biscuits, we figured waffles were close enough and ordered some waffles and chicken fingers.

To establish a fair baseline of comparison, we first ate the chicken and waffles with regular Aunt Jemima maple syrup. It goes without saying that I loved that combination. It probably also goes without saying that the Torani syrup didn’t measure up in the least. The Chicken ‘n Waffles Syrup was still too sweet and so thin that it seeped into the waffles and made them soggy. The yeasty and greasy aftertaste was only more prominent and artificial in the face of the actual dish.

I then followed a recipe on the Torani website for a bourbon drink, and I tried it in my coffee the next morning. I had similarly negative impressions in those settings, though I suppose I’d find the syrup more tolerable if my palate were compromised by the dulling effects of alcohol or the tongue-burning effects of coffee.

Even the price felt dissatisfying, at $6.95 plus $5.95 shipping and handling. Just don’t buy the Torani Chicken ‘n Waffles Syrup, not even as a gag gift or as a novelty food item for yourself. And hey, Internet: let’s avoid demanding that any more April Fools’ 2012 jokes be developed into real products.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 fl oz – 90 calories 0 calories from fat, 0 grams of fat, 40 milligrams of sodium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, 22 grams of sugar, and 0 grams of protein.)

Other Torani Chicken ‘N Waffles Syrup reviews:
LA Mag

Item: Torani Chicken ‘N Waffles Syrup
Purchased Price: $6.95 (plus $5.95 S&H)
Size: 375 mL
Purchased at: Torani website
Rating: 1 out of 10
Pros: Smelled mostly OK. Call Me Maybe parody videos. Clever April Fools’ Day gags. Aunt Jemima maple syrup with chicken and waffles. I would use Catblock.
Cons: Tasted yeasty and greasy. Gross, lingering aftertaste. Bad by itself, bad and too thin to have with waffles (and probably biscuits), bad with bourbon and coffee. Pricey. Contrived internet marketing. Immediately breaking my New Year’s resolutions. Ontological debates about syrup.

Taco Bell (in)famously reconfigures the same few ingredients into “brand new” menu items quite often. If they ever wanted to offer actual new products and services, there are a few obvious candidates.

They could sell single servings of Pepto-Bismol, hand out business cards for good local plumbers, or provide complementary euphemisms for gastrointestinal unrest when the explanation, “I drunkenly ate a Taco Bell Party Pack at 2 a.m.” just won’t do. Investing in a new line of bakery goods wasn’t an obvious choice, but that’s the direction Taco Bell went with their new Cookie Sandwich and Churro.

On the Friday night after Thanksgiving, while you were likely getting ready for your high school reunion or engaging in the cherished annual tradition of contemplating how you could murder that one annoying cousin and make it look like an accident, I decided to venture out to the Taco Bell in my hometown. After downing a couple Doritos Locos Tacos (the fake Brad Pitt ad is really effective marketing), I tried out these new dessert offerings.

At first glance, the cookie sandwich looked almost like a toy, as though three layers of Play-Doh had been hastily pushed through a miniature pie mold. My tactile first impression was also quite negative, since the cookie sandwich was cold, hard, and clearly just removed from a storage fridge.

Taste-wise, the item performed a bit better, but not by much. The cookies were fine – appropriately sweet and chewy, and with a decent number of chocolate chips. After 10 seconds in the microwave, I imagine they could’ve resembled a poor man’s Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookie.

The frosting, however, was awful. It was much too sweet, much too rich, and much too much, as the excessive frosting quickly made eating the cookie sandwich a very messy experience.

For my tastes, the churro fared significantly better. It came out as warm as the cookie sandwich was cold, with a noticeable and pleasant scent from the exterior dusting of cinnamon sugar.

The shell was nice and crispy, and provided a great contrast to the soft, moist innards (which was just barely on the good side of the line between moist and mushy). I actually thought this product could’ve used a little more sugar, and I wished there had been a dipping sauce on the side. But for 99 cents, the churro provided solid value.

While I’ve written a mixed review, I do like that the folks at Taco Bell, between these items and the Cantina offerings, are making real strides in adding to their menu, and I definitely enjoyed my churro. Next time you drop in for your Doritos Locos Tacos fix, make sure to pick up a couple churros, too.

And if you happen to be a plumber, maybe consider leaving some business cards there. You never know how else Taco Bell might be trying to improve the business.

(Nutrition Facts – Cookie Sandwich – 390 calories, 160 calories from fat, 17 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 130 milligrams of sodium, 56 grams of carbohydrates, 44 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fiber, and 3 grams of protein. Churro – 190 calories, 80 calories from fat, 8 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 230 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrates, 5 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fiber, and 2 grams of protein.)

Other Taco Bell Cookie Sandwich reviews:
Grub Grade
Brand Eating
The Smidview

Item: Taco Bell Cookie Sandwich and Churro
Purchased Price: $1.29 (Cookie Sandwich)
Purchased Price: 99 cents (Churro)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 3 out of 10 (Cookie Sandwich)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Churro)
Pros: Cookies were appropriately sweet and chewy with decent number of chocolate chips. Churro was warm and smelled great. Churro’s crispy shell and moist inside contrasted nicely. Taco Bell offering actual new items. SNL Brad Pitt ads. Seeing high school friends over Thanksgiving break. 2 a.m. Taco Bell runs.
Cons: Cookie sandwich was cold and looked toy-like. Frosting was awful. Churro could’ve used more sugar or a dipping sauce. Your annoying cousin. 2 a.m. Taco Bell runs.

I always feel a little depressed once Labor Day passes, as I can’t wear white pants anymore. But other people generally have a lot to rejoice over: there’s football and tailgates, every food and drink gets flavored with pumpkin, and I can’t wear white pants anymore.

Right on cue, Starbucks has re-released their seasonal Pumpkin Spice Lattes. This year, they’re providing an extra treat in the form of the new limited edition Pumpkin Spice VIA Ready Brew. I love the Pumpkin Spiced Lattes (PSLs for those of us who really love Starbucks and also really love obnoxious acronyms), but have never tried any other VIA flavors before, so I’m in pretty much the exact demographic Starbucks is hoping will try their new Pumpkin Spice VIA and get hooked on their instant coffee offerings.

We’re approaching the section of my reviews where I like to offer an explanation of the preparation process. Not that this ever gets too complicated (“Step 1, buy ice cream. Step 2, eat ice cream. Step 3… um, go slow or you might get a headache”), but explaining the steps for preparing instant coffee feels particularly silly when Starbucks dedicates precisely 15 words to explaining it. I heated 8 fluid ounces of 1% milk. I poured packet into cup. I added hot milk. I stirred and enjoyed.

Here’s the precisely 15-word version of my review: for instant coffee, it was perfectly fine, but it just didn’t have enough pumpkin flavor.

There was just a slight whiff of pumpkin scent, both when I had only the content of the packet in the cup and after I stirred in the milk. Instant coffee always tastes indescribable, but noticeably off, and the Pumpkin Spice VIA offering was no different. In a blind taste test, I could have guessed that this was meant to be pumpkin-flavored coffee, but it definitely didn’t compare to the rich, distinctive flavor of a PSL. On the plus side, I thought the amount of sugar in the VIA packet was appropriate; I often find real PSLs to be too sweet.

Again, I’ve never sampled any other VIA flavors, but from reading our past reviews I gleaned that the instructions on other varieties recommend mixing with water, so I tried it that way, too. I actually found that adding mostly hot water and just an ounce or so of milk allowed the zest of the spices to shine through better.

Compared to other instant coffee, these Starbucks Pumpkin Spice VIA Ready Brew packets are good, but they don’t compare to actual Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Also, at more than one dollar per packet, they’re kind of pricey for instant coffee. Still, in hopes of drinking pumpkin spice beverages and wearing white pants at the same time, I’ll stock up on a couple boxes and stash them away for those long months between Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 packet/unprepared – 60 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of sodium, 16 grams of carbohydrates, 13 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.)

Item: Starbucks Pumpkin Spice VIA Ready Brew
Purchased Price: $6.95
Size: 5 packets
Purchased at: Starbucks
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Easy to prepare. Does smell and taste of pumpkin. Appropriately sweet. Tastes better with mostly water. Real Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Football and tailgates. Pumpkin flavors are back.
Cons: Pumpkin flavor not strong enough. Instant coffee always tastes a little off. Kind of pricey. Unnecessary acronyms. I can’t wear white pants anymore.

There are times when I sit down to review a new product and have a solid framework for writing the piece. A primary analogy is established, jokes tie along the way, and the central conceit is stretched beyond the readers’ willingness to suspend their disbelief. (“We get it, Jasper, every junk food item somehow relates to the angst of your mid-20s.”) Other times, I get sent a package the size of a refrigerator box filled with samples for a whole hodgepodge of new products, and I struggle to develop any cohesive theme for the review. Guess which kind of review this will be?

The folks over at Popsicle are rolling out a new line of products (and a new portmanteau!) called Yosicles, These “Popsicle pops and yogurt together” come in three forms: Torpedo!, Layerz!, and Duos!. Additionally, they’re introducing Popsicle Sour Patch Kids, the latest item in the proud tradition of Popsicles with candy tie-ins. Layerz!, Duos!, and the Popsicle Sour Patch Kids all come in multiple flavors.

For the sake of simplicity, I am going to offer just four separate scores (Layerz, Torpedo, Duos, and Sour Patch Kids). For the sake of readability and my own sanity, I am going to stop using the exclamation points at the end of the product names.

Shaped exactly like the classic Firecracker Popsicles, the Torpedo Yosicles had three flavor segments (all yogurt-based) of Purple Berry, Watermelon, and Vanilla. The yogurt component clearly wasn’t meant to have the tartness of Pinkberry-style frozen yogurt; I would say its taste profile was much closer to soft-serve. The vanilla flavor was perfectly fine – the skim milk muted the richness, but at least I understood that it’s supposed to taste somewhat like vanilla ice cream.

For the other two segments, I tasted lots of mild and artificial flavors without really tasting any “purple berry” or watermelon. Even if they had executed the flavors perfectly, I might’ve still found the choices to be strange, as I feel like a number of other flavors are generally a better fit with any cream-based treats. On the plus side (and this goes for all the Yosicles), they melted much more slowly than I had expected. Also, every Yosicle is a good source of calcium, so I’ve pretty much ingested a kidney stone’s worth of calcium in the process of reviewing these products.

The Layerz Yosicles were very similar to the Torpedos, but with just two segments instead of three. The bottom segment was always vanilla, while the top segment was either cotton candy or orange. Again, I liked the vanilla fine, so I preferred the Layerz (50% vanilla) to the Torpedos (33% vanilla). The orange flavor was reasonably reminiscent of an orange Creamsicle, but the cotton candy flavor managed to taste extremely artificial while not capturing what cotton candy actually tastes like. (Isn’t cotton candy just sugar with food coloring? And isn’t “sugar with food coloring” the primary description for a lot of things we consume – frosting, cereal, purple drank? I don’t know how that was meant to be a differentiated flavor that I should have recognized.)

Differing from the other two Yosicle varieties and instead emulating the structure of a Creamsicle, the Duos Yosicle had a creamy vanilla center that was surrounded by a flavored ice shell of either purple berry or cherry. I liked the Duos much more than the Torpedos and Layerz, as the yogurt was limited to the vanilla flavor, and the flavored ice shell provided a contrast in texture and offered the familiar tastes of a classic cherry Popsicle.

Although they’re unrelated to the Yosicle product line, I thought the Popsicle Sour Patch Kids were the stars among the new product releases. The idea was simple but well-executed: take three single-fruit, tried-and-true Popsicle flavors (orange, lime, and raspberry) and coat them in sour sugar. The sour sugar on actual Sour Patch Kids is granulated and sandy, while the Popsicle versions I tried had a smooth, solid sour sugar shell.

Still, the satisfying sensation of sour subsequent to sweet stayed the same. (Sorry for all the alliteration – I was really on a roll there.) I thought these Popsicles would’ve been even better with a sourer coating, but they were still far and away my favorite new offering. Next time you hear the ice cream truck drive by this summer, definitely run outside and pick up a Popsicle Sour Patch Kid, and maybe consider trying a Duos! Yosicle, too.

(Editor’s Note/Disclosure: Jasper received all this frozen goodness from the wonderful folks at Popsicle for free, so right now I imagine his freezer looks like a treasure chest to eight-year-olds.)

(Nutrition Facts – Torpedo – 2 bars – 90 calories, 2 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 16 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein, and 25% calcium. Layerz – 2 pops – 90 calories, 2 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 50 milligrams of sodium, 16 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein, and 25% calcium. Duos – 2 pops – 110 calories, 2 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 45 milligrams of sodium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 17 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein, and 20% calcium. Sour Patch Kids – 1 pop – 40 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of sodium, 10 grams of carbohydrates, 8 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, and 10% vitamin C.)

Item: Popsicle Yosicle (Torpedo!, Layerz!, and Duos!) and Popsicle Sour Patch Kids
Price: FREE
Size: 12 pack (Yosicles)
Size: 18 pack (Sour Patch Kids))
Purchased at: Received for free from Popsicle
Rating: 4 out of 10 (Yosicle Torpedo)
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Yosicle Layerz)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Yosicle Duos)
Rating: 9 out of 10 (Popsicle Sour Patch Kids)
Pros: Yosicle vanilla segments were perfectly fine and appropriately vanilla ice cream-like. Orange Layerz tasted somewhat like an orange Creamsicle. Duos had only the vanilla flavor as its yogurt component. Duos followed the Creamsicle structure, so ice shell had classic flavor and added textural contrast. Yosicles melted slowly and are good sources of calcium. Popsicle Sour Patch Kids had sour sugar shells that were awesome. Free samples. Alliteration. Purple drank. Looking for one Simpsons clip and spending 2 hours watching old highlights.
Cons: Vanilla flavor was pretty mild. Non-vanilla Yosicle yogurt flavors were weird and artificial. Cotton candy flavor was particularly bad. Isn’t cotton candy just sugar and food coloring? Popsicle Sour Patch Kids could use a little more sourness. Exclamation marks at the end of product names. Not having any thematic cohesion in a review. Kidney stones.