SPOTTED: Lucky Charms Limited Edition Hidden Dragon Cereal

If General Mills is reading this, offering pouches of Just Hidden Dragon Magical Marshmallows in 2024 would be pretty sweet. (Spotted by Robbie at Sam’s Club.)

If you’re out shopping and see new products, snap a picture of them, and send them in via an email ([email protected]) with where you found them and “Spotted” in the subject line. Also, if you want to send in photos and are wondering if we’ve already covered something or if they’re new, don’t worry about it. Let us worry about it.

REVIEW: Sonic Strawberry Shortcake Snowball Slush Float

Sonic sells Strawberry Shortcake Snowball Slush Floats now, and I gotta tell you, they’re a mouthful.

Sonic. Sells. Strawberry. Shortcake. Snowball. Slush. Floats.

Yeah, that’s literally a mouthful. Sally should ditch the seashells and lace up some roller skates. I’m sure there’s a Sonic drive-in near her sea town.

How fast can you say that? Because I honestly get a little tripped up at “shortcake,” which will be a running theme of this review.

Sonic sells Strawberry Short—ah!

Yeah, I can’t get past that without slowing down. Brain freeze before the brain freeze, right? Anyway…

The S5F consists of “strawberries and a sweet shortcake flavor all swirled into an icy slush. Topped with a snowball of ice cream and sugary snow crystals.”

The float starts with a huge plop of vanilla ice cream sprinkled with crystalized sugar, which really got the snowball off and rolling. Not sure why simply adding a little generic sugar helped the ice cream, but man, was it good. I mean, it’s ultimately unnecessary and quickly gets swallowed up in the rest of the float, but those first couple of crunchy spoonfuls were awesome.

Once I dug around the ice cream blockade a little, I got into the nitty-gritty of the float, which was the strawberry and shortcake (?) flavored slush.

I don’t know why this threw me off so much, but I don’t understand which flavor was doing what here. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked it, but the shortcake flavor just seemed to exist as its own entity, which I couldn’t pinpoint. I thought I was gonna get a bunch of actual cake at the bottom, but no, an air of cake was just there, emanating.

Sonic’s site simply calls it “shortcake flavor,” with a picture of a generic powdery swirl underneath it. The ice cream isn’t cake flavored, and the cake pieces never came.

Why are there no genuine cake pieces in this thing? They toss stuff like that into floats and shakes all the time. I thought for sure that was gonna be a lock.

Whatever, I’m overthinking it because this genuinely tasted like a strawberry shortcake. The syrupy pieces of real strawberry blended in popped, and that strong unexplainable angel’s food cake flavor powder tasted real to me.

So, I guess this is simply crushed ice, strawberry, cake flavor swirls, and vanilla ice cream. Let’s go with that. Hey, it works. It reminded me a lot of Little Debbie’s Strawberry Shortcake Rolls, which recently got an ice cream spinoff, so I definitely need to try that.

Even without real cake, I’d recommend this. I’d also recommend just dumping it in a bowl and eating it like ice cream if you can. Half the float is too thick for a straw, and I didn’t think mine was layered all that well. You could even toss some actual cake in the bowl, like Sonic should have.

Oh, and a small one is plenty. You’ll be more than satisfied unless you were really hoping for cake pieces. Ok, that’s enough of that.

Sonic sells Strawberry Shortcake Snowball Slush Floats. Got it.

Purchased Price: $2.79
Size: Small
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 280 calories, 9 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 48 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 41 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

SPOTTED: 6/13/2023

Here are some interesting new products found on store shelves by your fellow readers. If you’ve tried any of them, share your thoughts in the comments.

Wrigley’s Extra Limited Edition Pink Lemonade Gum

(Spotted by Sage G at Target.)

Nice Cinnamon Squares Cereal
Nice Fruit Circles Cereal
Nice Toasted Honey O’s Cereal
Nice Toasted O’s Cereal

(Spotted by Robbie at Walgreens.)

Circle K Brownie Made with Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Chips

(Spotted by Robbie at Circle K.)

Simple Mills Cocoa Almond Flour Pancake & Waffle Mix

(Spotted by Sarah R at Whole Foods.)

Signature Select Artisan Style Honey Wheat Bread

(Spotted by Rachel J at Safeway.)

Sprouts Blueberry Cheese Strudel
Sprouts Blueberry Cheese Strudel

(Spotted by Sarah R at Sprouts.)

If you’re out shopping and see new products, snap a picture of them, and send them in via an email ([email protected]) with where you found them and “Spotted” in the subject line. Also, if you want to send in photos and are wondering if we’ve already covered something or if they’re new, don’t worry about it. Let us worry about it.

REVIEW: McDonald’s Grimace’s Birthday Meal feat. Grimace’s Birthday Shake

Happy 52nd Birthday, Grimace!

I have to admit; Grimace doesn’t look 52 years old. It’s like he’s the Paul Rudd of McDonaldland. (By the way, Paul Rudd is older than Grimace.) To celebrate the occasion, McDonald’s is offering for a limited time Grimace’s Birthday Meal that features your choice of either a Big Mac or 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, fries, and a limited edition shake that’s inspired by the big guy’s color and sweetness.

Look, if you’re reading this, you probably know what a Big Mac, Chicken McNuggets, and McDonald’s fries taste like. So let’s spend the rest of this review on Grimace’s Birthday Shake, which I wonder if Grimace has actually had because wouldn’t it be like eating himself since, according to McDonald’s, he’s “the embodiment of a milkshake”?

Anyhoo, since Grimace represents a shake, one of the mysteries about it was, “What shake flavor is he?” Well, we now might have an answer. Grimace’s Birthday Shake has a delightful blueberry flavor that reminds me of the fruit at the bottom of a blueberry yogurt but a little more intense. It’s mostly sweet, and at some points I thought it was reaching the level of being too sugary, but there’s also some tang to it. I also think this blueberry flavor would be great in an Oreo McFlurry. Maybe do that for Grimace’s 53rd birthday, McDonald’s? For now, I’ll just dip my fries into it, which is surprisingly good.

If there’s one issue, it’s that in order to get it, I have to purchase Grimace’s Birthday Meal. Look, I get it, money, demand, growth, customer traffic, valuation, shareholders, Hamburglar’s constant bail, yadda yadda yadda. But the only barrier to getting the shake should be a broken or currently being cleaned soft serve machine and not wondering if I want to eat several hundred calories to suck up a few hundred purple calories. Although I admit, it’s worth it the first time because that’s how tasty the shake is. But I don’t want to do it every time.

Purchased Price: $13.19* (meal)
Size: Medium shake
Rating: 8 out of 10 (shake only)
Nutrition Facts: (shake only) 580 calories, 15 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 milligrams of sodium, 97 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 75 grams of sugar (including 62 grams of added sugar), and 12 grams of protein.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

SPOTTED: Utz Mike’s Hot Honey Potato Chips

Apparently, Mike’s Hot Honey is America’s leading brand of hot honey. Maybe it’s because I don’t hang out in the condiments aisle like I used to, but this is the first time I’ve heard of Mike’s Hot Honey. (Spotted by Taylor M at Giant.)

If you’re out shopping and see new products, snap a picture of them, and send them in via an email ([email protected]) with where you found them and “Spotted” in the subject line. Also, if you want to send in photos and are wondering if we’ve already covered something or if they’re new, don’t worry about it. Let us worry about it.

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