Here are a few product reviews posted this week from other blogs we follow.

A Wienerschnitzel Junkyard Dog comes with chili, cheese, onions, fries, and mustard. Sadly, it does not come with a wheel from a 1970′s Datsun Sunny. (via An Immovable Feast)

The British sure love mystery. They gave us Sherlock Holmes and the PBS show Mystery! I wouldn’t be surprised if the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine was a Vauxhall. Now the British have mystery flavored potato chips. (via Foodstuff Finds)

Here’s a fun little game: Get completely wasted and try to click one of the links in this sentence that lead to the alcohol-related candy reviews Candyblog posted this past week. (via Candyblog)

Trader Joe’s Choczilla Nut Pie makes me giggle. Perhaps it’s because choczilla, nut, and pie have all been used in porn titles. (via What’s Good at Trader Joe’s)

If you hear the name Sweet Blossom Lavender Flowers and think it’s either a women’s deodorant or perfume, you’d be wrong. (via Thirsty Dudes)

I once had a vivid dream that I traveled back in time to 1980. I don’t exactly remember why I’d chosen to time travel to that particular year, but I do recall being acutely aware that I had to avoid running into my parents at any cost. I also recall eating at a McDonald’s and being freaked out that I received my fast food in un-biodegradable Styrofoam containers. Faster than you could say “Marty McFly,” my alarm clock started buzzing, and I was whisked from my 80’s dream world, back to the present. I still have no idea what instigated my impromptu fast food run across the space-time continuum. Guess I was seriously jonesin’ for some junk food.

Which brings us to Doritos. Thanks to them, not only can we time travel in our sleep, we can also time travel at snack time! Old-timey, discontinued flavors, Sour Cream and Onion and Salsa Rio Doritos are out once again, sold in jaunty retro packaging, which I am assuming is Doritos’ attempt to duplicate the success of its re-released, late-60s era “Taco Flavor.”

Sour Cream and Onion Doritos were originally introduced in the early 80’s (… so I guess that means I could’ve bought some of those in my dream instead of destroying the environment with Mickey D’s). It’s strange that the Doritos people think we’d want that flavor again NOW, especially considering that we already have, like, eight thousand other Doritos flavors that more or less duplicate or improve upon the simplicity of sour cream and onion. Anyway, having come back to us now in the 21st century, Sour Cream and Onion Doritos have a robust onion flavor, which is balanced nicely by the sour cream taste. Not bad. But I can’t really tell the difference between this and Cool Ranch — a fact that does little to convince me that this flavor needed to be re-released.

Salsa Rio Doritos are also visitors from the recent past… this time, from the late 80s. And we all know how awesome the late 80s were! I’m looking at you, Gorbachev! Just like glasnost, Salsa Rio Doritos are bold and delicious. These chips approximate the flavor of fresh tomato salsa with chopped onion very well and even have a little kick of heat. It’s interesting to note that this flavor had the shortest shelf life of the two when it was first introduced 25 years ago. Maybe people were too busy being coked up and rocking out in their leggings and Members Only jackets to Terence Trent D’Arby to go shopping for salsa-flavored tortilla chips.

I posit that Sour Cream and Onion and Salsa Rio Doritos have come in special Limited Edition retro bags so that they will attract more attention. Well, it worked. I like the detail and both flavors make charming little additions to the Doritos flavor spectrum, even if their Limited Edition status means they won’t be around forever. Not unlike Terence Trent D’Arby.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bag (28g) – Sour Cream & Onion – 290 calories, 17 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 380 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 4 grams of protein. Salsa Rio – 290 calories, 16 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 430 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 4 grams of protein)

Other Limited Edition Doritos (Sour Cream and Onion & Salsa Rio)
Junk Food Guy (Salsa Rio)
Option Pitch and Waffle Crisp
Food Junk (Sour Cream & Onion)
Fatguy Food Blog (Sour Cream & Onion)

Item: Limited Edition Doritos (Sour Cream and Onion & Salsa Rio)
Price: $1.09 (on sale)
Size: 1 ounce

Purchased at: CVS

Rating: 7 out of 10 (Sour Cream and Onion)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Salsa Rio)
Pros: Time traveling in your sleep. Retro packaging. Two swell additions to the pantheon of flavored tortilla chips. Delicious, fresh tomato salsa flavor. Glasnost. Terence Trent D’Arby.
Cons: Styrofoam fast food containers. Being too coked up to care about salsa. Sour Cream and Onion tastes similar to Cool Ranch. “Limited Edition” means these Doritos won’t be around forever.

Here are a few product reviews posted this week from other blogs we follow.

If I ever want to see two peanut mascots fight, I’d like to see the monocle-wearing Mr. Peanut in an olde tyme bare knuckles brawl with the handlebar mustache-wearing Lord Nut Levington. (via Eat!Drink!Snack!)

There are all kinds of gummy vitamins, but I think drug companies need to make gummy pharmaceuticals like Gummy Viagra. I can imagine the slogan right now…It’s soft, but it’ll make you hard. (via Healthnuttxo)

This everything bacon bullshit has to end! It was awesome in 2009. It was funny in 2010. It got a little old in 2011. But now it’s 2012 and we need to end it. If we don’t, I hope the Mayan calendar does it for us. (via Food Junk)

I’ve always wanted to eat my vegetables in chip form. I already get my dairy in chip form thanks to Doritos. (via Junk Food Guy)

Update: Click here to read our Limited Edition Doritos (Sour Cream and Onion & Salsa Rio) review

Do you remember the 1980s?

Don’t remember the 1980s because your parents hadn’t met until the 1990s? Well, back then we had Sour Cream and Onion Doritos and Salsa Rio Doritos. I didn’t get to try those flavors because my parents bought generic chips in black and white packages, which is also something you young whippersnappers don’t remember.

Thankfully, Frito-Lay has brought back Sour Cream and Onion Doritos and Salsa Rio Doritos for a limited time. Option Pitch and Waffle Crisp has a review of both flavors, while Junk Food Guy reviewed Salsa Rio Doritos.

I look forward to eating these chips while wearing a Members Only jacket and listening to Duran Duran on a record player.

If you’ve tried them, let us know what you think and where you found them in the comments.

Oh, potato chips. I wish I could quit you, like I’ve stopped downloading freaky foreign internet porn and buying awful movies from the $5 DVD bin at Walmart with laughable titles like Mexican Werewolf In Texas and Hoochie Mama Drama. But you’re so difficult to shake, like a guy with vice grips for hands holding on to the roof of a speeding car while it goes around the Nürburgring in Germany.

I wish there was some kind of 12-step program to help me overcome my potato chip addiction because I have a weak soul that easily gives in to tater temptations. It’s so hard for my tongue to resist the equation: potato + hot oil = delicious. Once I pop, I can’t stop until half the bag is gone or until I get a sore stomach or until the bag is taken away from me using force.

It wouldn’t be so bad if potato chips had less fat. Although folks have tried to make low-fat potato chips using the synthetic oil, Olestra. However, for some reason people didn’t care for its possible anal leakage side effect.

A one ounce serving of Lays classic potato chips has 10 grams of fat, which is 16 percent of our daily value. So if I ate half a bag of Lays potato chips in one sitting, while watching a NCIS marathon on the USA Network, I would have consumed 60 grams of fat or 96 percent of my daily value. Oh, if only there was a way I could eat half a bag of potato chips without the guilt and the need to eat raw vegetables for the rest of the day to compensate for the potato chips.

Oh wait, it looks like Kettle Foods might have something with their Kettle Brand 40% Reduced Fat Sea Salt Potato Chips.

How did Kettle Brands make these chips have less fat? Don’t know and don’t care, unless it involves Olestra or a deal with the Devil. But it’s not the ingredients since it’s as simple of a list as their regular Sea Salt potato chips — potatoes, safflower and/or sunflower oil, and sea salt. It probably involves something that includes the word “proprietary” in its name.

As a fan of regular Kettle Brand Sea Salt potato chips, I’m quite familiar with its flavor. Heck, I’m such as fan that just thinking about them makes my mouth water and my hands shake. God, I need a potato chip fix right now. So does this reduced fat version taste just as good as the full fat version, which has 9 grams of fat per serving? Not quite. Does it taste good for a 40% reduced fat potato chip? Most definitely.

(Sidenote: The 40% is determined by comparing these chips with “regular potato chips” (i.e. Lays potato chips) and not their own regular sea salt potato chips.)

The chip’s potato flavor isn’t as robust as the regular version, but it does have the same delightful crunch. It seems Kettle Foods tries to make up for the slight loss of flavor due to the reduction in fat by including 45 milligrams more sodium per serving than the regular stuff, but I don’t think it’s saltier. However, the flavor difference is slight enough that I think if you emptied a bag into a bowl and left it out for your guests, no one would be any the wiser. After all, not everyone’s tongue and gut fat is as familiar with Kettle Brand Sea Salt potato chips as mine.

The Kettle Brand 40% Reduced Fat Sea Salt Potato Chips are pretty gosh darn good and I’ll probably end up replacing the regular stuff with it so that I can go on a potato chip bender with less guilt.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 ounce/about 13 chips – 130 calories, 50 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 1 gram of polyunsaturated fat, 4.5 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 160 milligrams of sodium, 480 milligrams of potassium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 0 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Kettle Brand 40% Reduced Fat Sea Salt Potato Chips
Price: $4.00 (on sale)
Size: 8 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Pretty damn good for 40% reduced fat potato chips. 40% less fat than “regular potato chips.” Less calories than Kettle Brand Sea Salt potato chips. Less guilty. No preservatives. Non-GMO ingredients. Gluten free. Potato + hot oil = delicious.
Cons: Flavor isn’t as robust as the regular stuff, but most won’t notice. My potato chip addiction. More sodium than the regular stuff. More expensive than “regular potato chips.” Some of the movies found in the $5 DVD bin at Walmart.

Here are a few product reviews posted this week from other blogs we follow.

No beverage can improve someone’s golf game. But I know having extramarital affairs with enough women to fill a bus and having to look into the eyes of a betrayed ex-wife and children can hurt someone’s golf game. (via Thirsty Dudes)

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal…understandable. Peanut Butter Toast Crunch Cereal…I eat peanut butter on toast all the time. French Toast Crunch Cereal…of course. But now General Mills is just making shit up. (via Option Pitch and Waffle Crisp)

Hey, Starbucks! You offer your breakfast blend in VIA form, but how about making a special VIA morning blend for the I-Can’t-Believe-I-Had-A-One-Night-Stand-With-You crowd that’ll help us forget about it. (via Hot Ink Reviews)

Four words: Japanese hospital food review. (via Japanese Snack Reviews)

I didn’t know potato, tortilla, and pita chips could be so festive. Maybe I’ll hang them on my Christmas tree next year. Or eat them while looking at my Festivus pole. (via Junk Food Guy)

I really wish these soylent green crackers were made from real humans. Because if they were, I wouldn’t have to hunt some random unsuspecting stranger walking alone in a shady part of town to be able to enjoy human flesh. (via Food Junk)