Pot smokers, couch-dwelling sports fans, and menstruaters rejoice! Sweet and salty have been reduced to their lowest common denominators and magically recombined to form the freaky wonder that is Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack ice cream.

Hell, provided it’s available in your immediate area and you’re as curiosity-driven as I am, you’ve probably already tried the stuff. It has been a little while, and this ice cream is a smidge high profile, on account of the late night talk circuit involvement. I, for one, am willing to throw caution to the wind and try anything Stephen Colbert claims is tasty. I see this as one fun and easy way to fulfill my monthly patriotic acts quota. I’m now just one eagle cuddle away from being done for April!

Sorry to be late for 420 day, too, but I’m guessing most of the dedicated celebrants out there will understand. Any time can be munchies time. It’s all relative, and it’s all good.

I’ve been jogging my ass off to make up for all these ice cream reviews. Somehow Late Night Snack just feels more hip-widening than Ben & Jerry’s other offerings, even though it really isn’t any worse. Every pint they produce is already verging on a caloric supernova. If they tried adding any more, I’m pretty sure their products would explode, and then slowly begin absorbing everything else in the freezer aisle, from the neighboring Häagen-Dazs all the way to the Hungry Man entrees. Anyone brave enough to try a spoonful would instantly blow up like the Stay Puft marshmallow man. As is, it takes at least two pints of the stuff to attain that kind of comical weight gain. Not that I know.

Maybe, and I’m just throwing this hypothesis out there, the riotously calorie-rich issue at hand is the chocolate covered potato chip clusters. Similar to a rice crispy treat in texture, fresh deer poo in appearance, and a chocolate drenched kettle chip in flavor, they’re sprinkled liberally and fairly evenly throughout the ice cream like little treasure nuggets. I have a feeling South Park’s Chef would either highly approve of these salty balls or sue the company for stealing his lucrative vision.

The clusters are surrounded by a protective chocolatey armor roughly the texture and thickness of the outside of a Butterfinger bar, which sometimes manages to preserve a good crunch but more often than not fails, allowing the sogginess to creep in as the ice cream thaws. This is sad, because the crunchy clusters are far tastier than their squishier friends. I felt compelled to shovel the ice cream in faster and finish the pint in one sitting just to preserve the little balls of joy.

The base for this tour de force is vanilla ice cream, with a salty caramel swirl which I found to be kind of thin in places. I would happily eat these two elements on their own, but that flavor would probably be a store brand, gallon-size-only offering in this Xtreme day and age. If wanted to go that route, I might as well buy a Costco-sized drum of Neapolitan and softly lull my taste buds into an eternal frozen slumber. Ben & Jerry’s leads the pack, time and again, ratcheting the ice cream norm up about ten notches, I suspect through controlled exposure to sandalwood essence and the tunes of Iron and Wine, plus a pinch of good, old-fashioned stoner ingenuity. No spoon? No problem. You’ve got Fritos. They’re sturdy AND 100 percent more edible. BAM. A food revolution is born.

Initially, the flavor is a nice blend of chocolate, vanilla, and caramel with a salty edge. But the aftertaste? As long as you manage to scoop up a cluster or two, it’s pure potato chip. Somehow the two never clash or overlap. They just peacefully and deliciously co-exist. The world could learn a thing or two from this ice cream. Namely, that the key to harmony lies in coating everything in chocolate and then adding salt. Lots of salt. I apologize again to the lactose intolerant community. Attaining world peace is going to be a bit tougher for you guys.

The biggest problem arises when you stop eating this ice cream, because the sweet amalgam is no longer there to continuously balance out the potato chip essence, which lingers. Everything about this flavor practically begs for continual consumption. If you notice my giant pasty form lumbering through the streets of New York sometime soon, sporting a jaunty sailor’s cap and little else, well, you know who to call. What? Wait, no. The authorities. Call the authorities.

(Nutrition Facts – ½ cup – 270 calories, 140 calories from fat, 15 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 milligrams of sodium, 31 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 21 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein, 10% vitamin A, 10% calcium, 0% vitamin C, and 0% iron.)

Other Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack reviews:

On Second Scoop
Freezer Burns
Rodzilla Reviews
Serious Eats

Item: Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack
Price: $3.99
Size: 1 Pint
Purchased at: Albertson’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Salted caramel. Eagle cuddling. Fresh, unthawed chocolate covered potato chip clusters. Ice cream by the drum, in theory. Stoner ingenuity. Jaunty sailor caps. Ben & Jerry’s not skimping on the clusters. Frito-based revolutions.
Cons: Deer crap ice cream. Caloric black holes. Soggy potato chip balls. The lingering, persistent aftertaste of soggy potato chip balls. Ice cream by the drum, in practice. Becoming the Stay Puft mascot. Caramel swirl thins out in places. Lactose intolerant community unable to participate in my vision of world peace.

OMG! Slumber party time, you guys!

So I was thinking we’d get together, maybe start the evening with the 3½ J’s of awesomeness: Jammies, Jock Jams, and Justin Timberlake pictures ripped from last month’s Tiger Beat! After that we can break out Häagen-Dazs’ Limited Edition Sweet Chai Latte ice cream and re-watch 2ge+ther! Quinn’s not invited. She knows why.

This is going to be absosmurfly fabtacular!

Heather, you’re in charge of scrunchies and also ranch dip for the pizza. Rizzo, we’ll be using your yearbook this time to add commentary and mustaches to the people we currently hate. Tiffany, this is your last chance with the nail polish selection. Orange and coral are not “sort of” the same thing. Veronica, you can bring the TP for Quinn’s house. And Buffy, you bring the funk.

The highlight of the evening is, totally, this chai ice cream I found. That’s really the whole reason I’m inviting you all over. That, and, I need help getting back at Quinn. Did I mention how awesomely sophisticated this ice cream tastes? It’s literally just like that stuff at Starbucks we drink to look mature without having to endure the redonkulous awfulness of coffee, except they turned it into a dessert. If we all share, that’s only like… well it’s not that many calories per person. And we’ll probably get our exercise running away from Quinn’s house afterward anyway. Everybody remember to pack your dark colored clothing but don’t wear it over here because my parents will get suspicious. ‘Kay?

Oh, sorry, wait…

What year is it?

No, I didn’t hit my head, or at least I don’t think I did. I got in this fight with an upside-down garbage can this morning and, well, it’s all a little blurry.

The point here is that Häagen-Dazs Sweet Chai Latte ice cream takes me way back to the days of my youth and the discovery of coffee houses amongst my group of budding intellectual friends who still worshipped boy bands.

We had a new favorite drink every week back then. Mondo always tasted like fruity plastic packaging. Orbitz was creepily chewy. But chai, that was the good stuff, an accessible beverage both imbibed and endorsed by adults, something with real staying power and just as much sugar as the crap we were already drinking.

We were Southern Illinois girls. Most of us had never experienced what Häagen-Dazs refers to as the “distinctive tastes of India”. World Market was still our idea of “exotic”. Tea for us came from little bags marked “Lipton” and was immediately sweetened to within in an inch of its life. Chai lattes felt so familiar and yet so new. The good ones bore definite black tea undertones with the spice range of a good Germanic Christmas cookie and enough milk and sugar to make one wonder if the barista didn’t accidentally dump in heavy cream. I latched onto the stuff and stuck with it through college.

Yesterday, I found myself milling around the freezer section at Ralph’s, amped up on fair trade Tanzanian Jubilee coffee, when suddenly, the ice cream in question practically leapt out at me. There it sat, perched just above my eye level and slightly off-kilter, a cozy mug of freshly blended chai emblazoned across the front. The package was strikingly soft and pretty, with a purple cap instead of the typical Häagen-Dazs red. Next to the ingredients, Häagen-Dazs helpfully included a guide to the tastes I would be experiencing as I ate their product, divided nicely into “top notes” and “finish notes” as if this were a fine wine instead of an ice cream. The absurd, transparent attempt at classiness charmed me even as it harkened back to the darker side of middle school. I had to take it home. It needed a mentor and a hug.

The “top” notes? Basically a spice list – anise, cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves. And the “finish”? “Cream and lingering spice”. Oh Häagen-Dazs, you had me there until “lingering”. Why dance around the term “aftertaste” if you’re going to leave in “lingering”?

In reality, all those flavors combine into one sweet, and yes, creamy layer that isn’t super licorice-like or pumpkin pie spicy or like anything you may be grasping at to complete your analogy, and the aftertaste is kind of just a complex back-porch sun-brewed sweet tea. It’s distinctively chai. If you like your tea with milk, provided your tea isn’t green or fermented, you will probably enjoy both chai lattes and this ice cream approximation. And if you’re drinking non-traditional teas to begin with, you’re probably adventurous enough to try this anyway, unless you’re lactose intolerant in which case I’m sorry I bothered you. You can go back to your Kombucha now.

Eating this ice cream made me realize just how deeply being an adult has managed to crush my once free spirit. I seriously forgot how utterly devoted I once was to this beverage. On winter evenings, chai thawed me out, perked me up, and made Bleak House and the political parts of Anna Karenina bearable.

Yet, somehow, I let that love fade away. Thanks to the cruelties of the real world, coffee’s insidious and unshakable grip has taken over my life. This ice cream, though, threatens to break that stranglehold and lead me back to my old standard. It’s very creamy, very indulgent, very pretty-pretty princess turned haggard queen watching romantic comedies from 1998 with a guinea pig as her only companion. It’s the kind of comfort food people on TLC bizarre-mega-weight-loss-o-rama night specials would refer to as a true friend.

If you’re able to find a pint in your area, I highly recommend diving into it, maybe even stockpiling a few just in the case they mean business with the “limited edition” label. This might finally be the ice cream we’ve all been looking for that turns regrets into happiness. Maybe. Shut up. IT COULD HAPPEN.

(Nutrition Facts – ½ cup – 250 calories, 140 calories from fat, 16 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 80 milligrams of cholesterol, 45 milligrams of sodium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 21 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein, 10% calcium, 10% Vitamin A, 0% Vitamin C and 0% iron.)

Item: Häagen-Dazs Limited Edition Sweet Chai Latte
Price: $3.99
Size: 14 ounces
Purchased at: Ralph’s Fresh Fare
Rating: 10 out of 10
Pros: Ranch dip. 2ge+ther. Revenge. Mom’s sweet tea. Package tries adorably hard to appear mature. Ice cream made of real, identifiable ingredients. German Christmas cookie spices. Creaminess. My pet guinea pig.
Cons: Junior high. Time travel tangents. Evil trash cans blocking garage doors I want to open. The cruel realities of adulthood. Contains many more calories than an iced chai latte while accomplishing the same goals. Lactose intolerant sector once again snubbed. Nightmares caused by TLC specials.

O’hi there, lasses and leprechauns!

St. Patrick’s Day is almost upon us, and I’ve chosen to take the fast food company approach to celebrating. As long as it’s a nice, radioactive shade of artificial green and it’s edible, it’s holiday appropriate. This brings us to Quaker’s Chocolatey Mint Granola Bar, one of the new, real cocoa-laden entries into its Chewy line of snackables. It contains eight grams of magical whole grains and absolutely none of that banshee HFCS.

In the past I’ve found that the only thing at the end of granola rainbows is a very dry mouth… and sometimes, if I’m really Irish-level lucky, honey or berries. Quaker, however, has always taken the concept in a very rice-puffed, kid-friendly direction. Chewy bars aren’t meant to see much non-paved wilderness action or to blend serendipitously with Kombucha. These are the snacks that litter the ground below the granola rainbow. That is why I chose them for St. Patrick’s Day instead of Earth Day. For Earth Day, they’d have to ramp it up about a thousand notches, maybe add some actual clover.

The bar itself imparts little to no flavor beyond a whispered hint of cocoa. It’s basically just a whole grain home for the wee little flavor chips, which are left to do all the heavy lifting. While delicious, they’re constantly falling off the bar and finding places to melt at bizarrely low temperatures, so that by the last bite, I’m left with green spotted pants and a bland rolled oat has-been bragging about a cacao tree it once knew.

“Like hell,” I say. “Little cocoa bar, you’ve no more rubbed elbows with Brazilian beans than you’ve hung out on the cliffs of Moher in the late evening mist, pining for your lost love, Little Debbie.”
If that isn’t a woeful pub ballad in the making, I don’t know what is. I’m pretty sure I’m like three green beers away from penning the defining junk food anthem here. Shall we make it two?

In response to my disbelief and persistent need to make this culinary experience all about me, the chewy bar drops several more mint chips onto the carpet in my living room.

Turns out my fridge contains no green beer. My options are Belgian ale or week old two buck chuck with green food coloring. Both seem like fitting choices for this completely non-Irish snack. I graduated from a college that celebrates St. Patrick’s Day two weeks earlier than the rest of the world and, honestly, I’m not even slightly Irish, so I feel neither compelled nor qualified to include anything authentic in my holiday choices. I need a shirt that says, “Kiss me for my minty breath and do not question my heritage.”

Surprisingly, pairing the oat brick and scattered mouthwash chips with a bit of ale actually kind of brought out the missing chocolate flavor, like a secret key. Not that I’m suggesting anything to any of you wee lads and lassies, but to you hardcore, daylong, age-appropriate St. Patty’s celebrants, all I’m going to say is that these are super convenient and breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, especially if the rest of the day’s meals are going to be imbibed in liquid form. Also, let’s face it: Lucky Charms are so passé. And, bonus, you get complimentary minty freshness in this deal, which is vaguely close to attempted personal hygiene. What’s not to love?

Now, if you’ll excuse, I’m going to get back to writing that soon-to-be-beloved folk ditty. Oh, chewy bar, my taste buds they are call-ing…

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bar – 90 calories, 20 calories from fat, 2 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 80 milligrams of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 6 grams of sugar, 1 gram of protein, 8% calcium, and 4% iron. Not a significant source of any vitamins whatsoever.)

Item: Quaker Chewy Chocolatey Mint Granola Bars
Price: 3/$5.00 (on sale)
Size: 10 – .84 ounce bars
Purchased at: Albertson’s
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Yummy mint chips liberally sprinkled about. Inspires me to write folk ballads. Pairs well with festive spirits. Unguarded pots of honey and berries. Minty fresh breath.
Cons: Lacks hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, and blue moons. Chocolate bar is a tasteless brick. One must eat multiple bars to equal even a child-sized breakfast. Unrequited snack food love.

The Popeyes Red Hot Popcorn Chicken combo meal kicked my ass.

I eat fast food once a month, maybe less. Until this most recent adventure, I had never even been to a Popeyes. This probably makes me a terrible American. Having publicly admitted to these failings, I doubt they’ll let me back into the Midwest unless I overcompensate with an NRA card and at least two prominent Jesus-themed accessories.

It wasn’t the heat that got me. In fact, I fear my Sriracha sauce addiction is beginning to screw with my heat sensors. It’s just so delicious on everything! Today, I think I may have some on chocolate. Maybe a Sriracha s’more. This won’t even be a new low for me, assuming it doesn’t taste worse than canned Chinese water bugs or KC Masterpiece on a Twinkie.

Based on my damaged sensibilities, I felt that while the popcorn chicken offered a nice kick, the heat didn’t ever seem to build, likely thanks in part to the biscuit and ranch dip, both of which offer up tongue relief in addition to scary quantities of buttermilk (more on those supporting characters in a few paragraphs).

In the end, it was the sheer amount of greasy carb-loaded things that brought me down. The meal itself comes in a box roughly the same size and shape as a brick, which is exactly how it felt once it hit my stomach.

No one warned me that combo meals are a thing one needs to train for. I should’ve started on this months ago with a small order of Cajun fries every few days, maybe a sweet potato pie on the weekends. But I like my new jeans and wish to continue fitting into them, so it’s probably better that I didn’t make that much of a commitment.

The oh-so-convenient brick box is supposedly designed to be easy to eat on the go. I ate a good portion of it on the way home without incident, only to spill ranch all over my coffee table ten seconds after getting home. To my roommates: I am sorry if the Swiss army knife on the shelf smells like rancid buttermilk forever. Just try not to get it near your faces. It’s not my fault that those things have so many strange, hidden crevices. Point being, dip will always be the downfall of on-the-go meals.

Oh – and sorry everybody else. I never properly introduced the cast of today’s lunch. The meal includes Cajun fries, the new Red Hot Popcorn Chicken, a signature biscuit, and ranch dip (the nameless character actor visible in the background of so many of chicken’s greatest appearances). The ranch felt like an afterthought, at worst the lazy answer to an otherwise one-note tub ‘o carbohydrates, at best a beacon of salvation for the stereotypically wimpy American palate. When the girl at the counter lovingly flung my ranch dip into the bag as she handed it over the counter, even the best five star service was put to shame, and my mounting ranch doubts were all but confirmed. That’s not to say the goop didn’t function as a delightful contrast to the spices in the chicken. There’s a reason ranch has earned its place of high acclaim alongside chicken bites and wings from sea to shining sea. I just wish Popeye’s had used this opportunity to shine by offering up some sort of creative twist harkening back to the bayou, perhaps gator sauce or fresh, warm oil.

The Popeye’s website describes the Red Hot Popcorn Chicken as being marinated in a “unique four pepper blend of Cayenne, white, black, and Habanero peppers.” Right. Okay then. For starters, black and white pepper are technically the same thing: shriveled almost-berries on a vine. For real. I found this out when I moved to California. Habaneros and Cayenne, like all other chili peppers, grow as flowering plants and are part of the nightshade family. Those guys also offer capsaicin, which makes them hot, unlike black peppercorns, which just sit there looking like a cluster of sun-baked BBs. So really we’re dealing with two heat-producing peppers and two standard, under-achieving spices in this red hot popcorn chicken. Color me unimpressed and pour me another shot of Sriracha. This concludes your horticulture lesson for today, kids.

What else have we got here in this box of wonders? Oh yes, the biscuit. I kind of love the extraneous biscuit thing Popeye’s does. It’s like a little acknowledgement that there is no hope in your meal choice. At this point, the most they can do is go ahead and throw the buttery behemoth in the box from the get-go to save you the shame of ordering it separately. So thank you, Popeye’s, for understanding me so well and reacting with discretion.

Everything inside the box was flavorful, providing the illusion of variety. The combo even seemed to hit all three of the main fast food groups: meat, starch, and sugar.

I’d declare this box my food of choice for bad days if the nearest Popeye’s wasn’t inconveniently far away, in the opposite direction of my workplace, nestled back into that one strip mall out by San Diego State where everyone goes for the good FroYo.

If you’re looking for nutritional sustenance or the five-star treatment, look elsewhere, but if you’re feeling rebellious, either toward your digestive tract or to the world at large, this is your winner. Remember to allow for the standard post-fast food bathroom time the next morning, and to bring along an extra dollar on your Popeye’s trip for some sweet potato pie. The unassuming little sign at the register burrows into one’s heart like a sad puppy and does not let go. Mmm… pie.

(Nutrition Facts – conspicuously impossible to track down, which is probably ultimately for the best)

Other Popeyes Red Hot Popcorn Chicken reviews:
Brand Eating
An Immovable Feast

Item: Popeyes Red Hot Popcorn Chicken
Price: $2.99 with chicken, fries, biscuit, and ranch dip ($3.99 with drink)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Popeyes
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Excellent crunchy/meaty ratio amongst all the popcorn chicken bites. Good baseline spice level. Sriracha. Black pepper vines. Chicken is juicy. Cajun fries-based training regimen. Biscuit!
Cons: Sad puppies. Barbequed Twinkies. Bringing shame to my Midwestern relatives. Sriracha not already present in this meal. Half the featured peppers not actually the hot kind. Buttermilk funk permeating certain areas of my living room. Oil spill joke too late to be topical, yet not outdated enough to no longer be in bad taste.

I basically picked up the two new varieties of Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut cereal (Roasted Nut & Honey O’s and Golden Honey Nut Flakes) because the boxes just made Kellogg’s seem so desperate. I figured that, based on the rebate offer covering half the front of the Golden Honey Nut Flakes box and the large coupon plastered on the side of both varieties, these things had to be either the best kept secret in the whole flippin’ breakfast aisle or some sort of unmentionable abomination created by the CEO’s nephew. As usual, my curiosity outweighed my gnawing suspicions. I still have my qualms about Kellogg’s calling the peanut-bedazzled cereals “nutty” and not “legumey”, but I’m willing to let that rest. There are bigger fish to fry here. Honey-peanut-molasses fish.

I had heard next to nothing about these cereals until they practically jumped out at me from the shelves. Hell, the product website even failed to locate either variety within a thirty mile radius of my zip code for some odd reason. I have my theories on this simultaneous lack of marketing and desperate push for acceptance. Perhaps they’re a failed vehicle for some early-90’s kids TV show. I imagine them as rebranded Slappy the Squirrel cereals from a never realized Animaniacs spin-off concept, found in a repossessed storage locker somewhere, still sealed and intact thanks to scads of preservatives.

I think part of the problem is that both varieties taste so gimmicky-sweet, so inherently child-friendly. But where are the goofy characters — the tigers, toucans, and Quisps – with their insatiable draw and plush dolls for bar codes offer? Why isn’t there a maze on the back?

This isn’t your average adult cereal, either. There are no berries, no gourmet Georgia pecans, no multi-grain wholesomely fortified goji oat nuggets. Nowhere is heart health even mentioned. They don’t even tout the fact that the O’s are HFCS-free, though this is perhaps a ploy to keep us from noticing that the flakes conspicuously aren’t. In any case, real sugar, molasses, and honey take top billing. Aside from the vitamin additives, the ingredient list is fairly short and brimming with various states of run-of-the-mill ground corn (It’s okay to hate me for that one).

I expected to taste Corn Flakes and Cheerios, respectively, with peanuts stuck all over them. What I got was a Cracker Jack laden nostalgia trip back to lil’ lassie softball and family game nights past. Sadly, both cereals lacked a cheap prize to fight over and retrieve from mom’s hiding spot on top of the refrigerator in the middle of the night. On the bright side, I wasn’t picking little popcorn husks off my back teeth days later.

The O’s tasted both puffy and crispy, like coated rice cakes. They in no way actually resembled Cheerios. My brief disappointment gave way to delight when I introduced them to milk, however. The O’s stayed crunchy for a good while, unlike the flakes, which reached Soggyville far too soon.

I am easily distracted, especially in the mornings. I have a habit of pouring a bowl of cereal and then running off to put in forgotten contacts or hunt for sunglasses. I therefore require industrial levels of steadfast crunchiness. I’m always impressed when any cereal manages to hold up to my unreasonable standards. Eaten dry, the O’s taste a little bland, while the flakes become quite addictive, exactly like Cracker Jack.

At first, I wondered to myself why Cracker Jack doesn’t have a cereal line, and then, with horror, I thought maybe this was supposed to be that cereal line, once upon a time, possibly in the dot com era, back when anything was possible. If these cereals are, in fact, resurrected failures, they must’ve just been ignored by marketing people too entranced by their Tigers, because, beyond the identity crisis, both varieties are pretty gr-r-reat.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a one-way ticket to the mysterious Soggyville and the train is boarding.

(Nutrition Facts – 3/4 cup – Golden Honey Nut Flakes – 120 calories, 10 calories from fat, 1 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 160 milligrams of sodium, 40 milligrams of potassium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 11 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein and a bunch of vitamins and minerals. Roasted Nut & Honey O’s – 100 calories, 10 calories from fat, 1 gram of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 125 milligrams of sodium, 25 milligrams of potassium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 10 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein and a bunch of vitamins and minerals.)

Other Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cereal reviews:
Yum Yucky

Item: Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cereal (Roasted Nut & Honey O’s and Golden Honey Nut Flakes)
Price: $2.50 each (on sale – was $4.89)
Size: 10.8 ounces (Roasted Nut & Honey O’s)
Size: 14.1 ounces (Golden Honey Nut Flakes)
Purchased at: Albertson’s
Rating: 9 out of 10 (Roasted Nut & Honey O’s)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Golden Honey Nut Flakes)
Pros: Ever-crunchy rings. Slappy the Squirrel hawking cereal. Cracker Jack for breakfast. The early dot com era, when everything was possible. Very snack-worthy throughout the day. Fairly health-conscious choice for sweet cereal lovers. No popcorn husks.
Cons: No prize. Flakes seemed to have pre-booked their tickets to Soggyville. No mazes. Rings dependent on milk for maximum deliciousness. Rampant family game night cheating. No healthy nuggets. Decade-old Cracker Jacks for breakfast. No adorable mascot. Weird softball league groupings.

Super powers come in varying degrees. You have your laser-breath and invisibility on one end of the spectrum, and on the other you’ve got typing 200 words per minute and psychically communicating with tropical birds. Where does Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Superfruit Fusion Cherry Pomegranate fit in? Well, it’s complicated.

From the front of the box, one would be led to believe that both fruits hold equal footing, a kind of dynamic duo of breakfast treats, but the text on the back of the package tells another story: “We’ve taken traditional fruit and blended it with superfruit flavors…” (bold text comes from them, not me).

It appears that ol’ cherry with its artful stem knotting and crude virginity joke inducing powers is being nudged slowly into retirement to make way for pomegranate which, according to certain rumor mills, possesses a hypnotic stare and an arsenal of secondhand batarangs. Cherry has gone all mellow and senile but the higher-ups aren’t about to can him outright because he has so much knowledge left to impart, including the passwords to all of the Nutrigrainland computers.

One taste of these snack bars and you’ll know it’s true. That little bit of an edge cherry used to have? Gone. In its place? Subdued, confidence-lacking pomegranate. And when their powers combine they form something in the same flavor family as a sugar-dulled cranberry.

Both flavors are threatened by the gooey machinations of the highly controversial Mad Dr. Corn Syrup. As usual, our heroes manage to persevere in spite of the odds. Unfortunately, it becomes impossible to taste the subtle flavors of truth, justice, and the American way with everything else going on.

As for the super whole grain, nutrient-fortified outer shell, which Kellogg’s is now calling a “crust”, well, Fortress of Solitude it is not. It’s actually much crumblier than the regular Nutri-Grain shell, but still soft enough to not actually feel like what I would traditionally consider a “crust”. It tastes like maybe they got a hold of some dried out Trader Joe’s Walks into a Bar shells and sprinkled wheat chafe on top. While tasty, the casing has a tendency to fall apart and crush everything inside with no regard for the distinctions of hero and villain. There’s definitely a gritty reboot of a lesson hidden somewhere deep within this breakfast.

So on the super spectrum this ranks right up there with Elastigirl’s stretchiness or Robin’s hand-me-down range of bat-gadgets. It’s a secondary hero of a breakfast food. I’d certainly trust it to get my cat out of a tree or discreetly spy on my neighbors, but if the world were ending at eight in the morning, I’d still either flash the Odwalla signal or phone up oatmeal.

Would I buy this again? Maybe if I found it on sale, otherwise I’d take a pass. While the super bars managed to make one morning way more compelling than usual, I’m just not sure how well they’d hold up to repeated breakfasting.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bar – 130 calories, 30 calories from fat, 3 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 85 milligrams of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein, 15% vitamin A, 20% calcium, 20% Vitamin E, 25% Riboflavin, 25% Vitamin B6, 10% zinc, 20% vitamin C, 15% thiamin, 25% niacin, 10% folic acid, and 10% iron.)

Other Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Superfruit Fusion reviews:
We Rate Stuff

Item: Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Superfruit Fusion Cherry Pomegranate
Price: 2/$5.00 (on sale)

Size: 6 bars

Purchased at: Schnuck’s

Rating: 7 out of 10

Pros: Laser breath in a battle situation. Pomegranate and cherry working in harmony to defeat evil. Nice jam texture. Yummy without overwhelming sweetness. On board with the whole grain fad. Tastes more naturally derived than regular Nutri-Grain bars.

Cons: Laser breath in a non-battle situation. The bird psychic end of the super spectrum. Outer crust makes for a terrible secret lair. Truth and justice flavors undetectable. Crumbs and wheat chafe. Verges on mundane. Not actually that much more “natural” than its non-super snack bar cousins. Unable to save the world.