REVIEW: Cheez-It Wendy’s Baconator Crackers

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Wendy’s has made several forays into the grocery store in recent years, starting with its canned chili, then ground beef patties in select stores, and now it’s entering the cracker and chip aisle. After a recent Takis collaboration at Wendy’s restaurants, we can also find its popular Baconator lending its flavor to Cheez-Its. Does the taste of those bacon-topped square burgers translate to the orange squares of Cheez-It crackers?

Well, like many snacks that try to replicate meat flavors, these are going to be divisive. After opening the package, I didn’t find the smell to be particularly strong, but when I got a little closer and actually sniffed a cracker, I didn’t like the scent of these at all, nor did I think they smelled like something I would choose to put in my mouth. They look much like a standard Cheez-It but have more powdery speckles of seasoning. I expected them to lean into the bacon part of the flavor and have an artificial smoky taste like many things that try to mimic bacon, but I didn’t get much of that here. In fact, I don’t think they remind me of bacon at all. They have a strongly savory, umami aspect to them, and in addition to the regular cheesy flavor, I mostly picked up on onion and garlic. I think those were included to enhance the burger flavor, but a Baconator itself doesn’t actually have onions, so it seems like an odd choice to me that they’d come through this prominently.

I thought I was going to hate these after first smelling them, and there is no doubt they have a strong flavor that will put off many people. My husband is one of those people; he equated the smell to a urinal (I thought it was more BO) and instantly spit the single cracker he tried into the trash can. I can’t honestly say I would pay money to eat these again, but I also didn’t hate them as much as he did. They’re salty and kind of compel me to eat more, even when I’m not sure I actually want to. A look at the ingredients offers a possible explanation for this: these Baconator Cheez-Its contain MSG. I personally have no problem with MSG, and it’s probably the reason I’ve made it through as much of this box as I have.

The back of the box features a code to scan that gives you a coupon for $2 off a Baconator in the Wendy’s app, which could be some consolation if you hate these so much that you have to trash them all and immediately need to eat an actual bacon cheeseburger to cleanse your palate. Will I finish this box of Baconator Cheez-Its that taste nothing like a Baconator? Yes. Will I try to share them with anyone else? No, for fear that anyone I offer them to may no longer trust any food I give them again.

Purchased Price: $5.99
Size: 12.4 oz box
Purchased at: Jewel
Rating: 4 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (26 crackers) 150 calories, 7 grams of total fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 270 milligrams of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 0 grams of total sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Awesome Sauce Goldfish Crackers

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If there are two things the internet loves, it’s tier lists and sauces. That’s it – just those two things. Nothing more.

Don’t act like you’ve never glared at a fifteen-minute YouTube video of some dork ranking their favorite… I don’t know, band-aid shapes and raged out when they put “butterfly” in the C-tier. That’s a great functional shape! Who is this hypothetical fool I’m inventing out of thin air?!

Then you’ve got the social media sauce epidemic we’ve been living in for the past decade. Every “viral” sandwich, burger, burrito, etc, looks delicious… until it’s smothered with a waterfall of multi-colored sauces. Who’s eating these wet disasters?! A little dab’ll do ya!

So, in honor of the internet’s two biggest (fact-checked) obsessions, I decided to make my own sauce tier list. Rapid fire, ready:

S-Tier – None.

Yeah, that’s as far as I got. I don’t have a favorite sauce. I’m desperately seeking a favorite sauce to fill my S(auce)-tier. If only there were a new sauce out there to knock my socks off, a great sauce, maybe even an… oh, hey, Goldfish has a new “AWESOME Sauce” flavor. Let’s do it.

If you’re like me, seek help, but also, you’re probably wondering what “awesome sauce” is. I ate two handfuls, and I’m still curious.

Pepperidge Farm doesn’t even know, as the bag reads, “Sweet, smoky, tangy… Awesome. The taste that’s hard to describe and impossible to resist.”

I agree with half of that statement. They’re hard to describe but quite easy to resist.

My initial assumption was that these would be a generic “burger sauce.” I think I was hoping for that because deep down, I feared what was coming, and let’s just say it’s a flavor that would probably land on my C tier – Chick-fil-A sauce.

I know people swear by it, but you can keep Chick-fil-A sauce. I think it’s a strange concoction that isn’t better than the individual sum of its parts. I’m pretty sure that’s what they’re going for.

Initially, these taste like a sweet-ish BBQ sauce, and right when you start to enjoy that, the tang gets a bit vinegary, and if you start to enjoy that, the flavor flat-out dies in a time span shorter than a real goldfish’s memory.

This is one of the worst Goldfish crackers I’ve ever had, even beyond the flavor itself. The cracker is so bland and… crackery. As dumb as it sounds, it’s the first time I’ve ever been cognizant of the cracker. I’ve never gotten that from other varieties because the flavors persist.

I mean, I can’t argue with the bag; these are sweet, smokey, and tangy. They would’ve been quite good if they were also a little spicy. They could’ve been saltier too.

I can’t say these are awesome. They’re not awe-ful, but I’m not a big fan. If you love Chick-fil-A sauce, you’ll probably wanna catch ’em all, but again, it’s one of the quickest flavor drop-offs I can remember in a savory snack like this. These probably should’ve been “Flavor Blasted.”

D-tier confirmed.

Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: 6.1 oz.
Purchased at: Shop Rite
Rating: 4 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (53 pieces) 140 calories, 5 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 300 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of total carbohydrates, 0 grams of total sugars, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 2 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Limited Edition Harry Potter Butterbeer Goldfish

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Apparently, it’s Butterbeer Season, a March-through-May festivity at Universal Orlando Resort that Google has just informed me is traditionally celebrated with a frothy glass of the titular butterscotch beverage. But, like Harry Potter’s Patronus, a new crop of Butterbeer-flavored products has poofed onto the market as if by magic, and thus Butterbeer Season can now be celebrated in the comfort of your own home (or local grocery store parking lot if you really can’t wait). From this flood, I reeled in quite the catch: Butterscotch Goldfish (or, as their parents would call them when they’re angry, Harry Potter Butterbeer Butterscotch Flavored Graham Crackers).

Goldfish’s Grahams line swaps the classic savory flavors of the “snack that smiles back” and cracker-like texture for a sweeter, more cookie-esque style. Rather than being brittle and cheesy, these Butterbeer Goldfish are dense and dessert-y. Beyond that, though, I’m honestly finding them a bit hard to explain. They certainly smell like butterscotch, but when I took my first nibble, the immediate flavor wasn’t what I was expecting: it was salty. As far as I can tell, this saltiness didn’t come from the Goldfish cracker itself but rather from the gritty seasoning it’s covered with. These aren’t nearly as powdery and messy as, say, orange-dust-engulfed Cheetos, but I still found the coating inconvenient and mildly unsettling.

That taste quickly gave way to a richer graham cracker flavor, but it wasn’t one that I would have immediately identified as “butterscotch” had that word not been literally written on the bag. Sure, I can kind of taste the “butter” element, but I was expecting some additional caramelized creaminess that never surfaced. Puzzled by how to pin down this agreeable, comforting, but rather indistinct flavor, I sampled another piece… which turned into a handful… and soon I found myself as full of fish as a patron of an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant, but not necessarily full of insights. (Well, okay, they’re not all shaped like fish—there are fun Butterbeer barrels and foaming glasses in there, too.)

These Goldfish are tasty and toasty, sugary and brown sugar-y, and have a subtle treacly aftertaste that reminded me a bit of maple syrup. But they left me wishing I was a Hogwarts student so I could use an “Accio” spell to conjure up an understanding of why exactly they have been branded as butterscotch-tasting… or how exactly they’re different than the other similar flavors of Goldfish Grahams I’ve had in the past.

But I don’t mean to Avada Kedavra with faint praise: Butterbeer Goldfish are not bad by any means, it’s just that in order to differentiate them from any other graham snack on the market, you might need a Sorting Hat.

Purchased Price: $3.19
Size: 6.1 oz bag
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (31 pieces) 140 calories, 5 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 gram of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 6 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Cheez-It Snap’d Extra Crunchy Margherita Pizza

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If I was exploring a seaside cave in Northern California, or maybe Oregon, and came across a magic genie lamp, and a genie came out and granted me three wishes, one of those wishes would be for Keebler to bring back Pizzeria Pizza Chips. (Any of the flavors would do, frankly.) Once that was solved, I’d turn my attention toward world peace and ending global hunger and that sort of stuff.

But the Pizzarias would be first.

I love pizza-flavored things. Though it is distinctly its own flavor — and mostly only shares its name with its namesake — there’s something uniquely wonderful about the combination of garlic, onion, and tomato powders, plus the oregano and strange fake mozzarella extracts that make up the taste. To borrow a tired cliche, I would eat a pizza-flavored shoe if you gave me one.

So it was with great joy that I saw the new Cheez-It’s Snap’d Extra Crunchy Margherita Pizza crackers on our “to-review” list.

First, a few housekeeping notes. 1) I have never had Cheez-It Snap’ds. 2) Or is it just a Cheez-It Snap’d? 3) If I’m attributing ownership, is it Cheez-It Snap’d’s _____? 4) Why did they do this pesky apostrophe? 5) Anyway, my original point was that I’ve never had this particular type of Cheez-It, so I don’t know how much crunchier the “extra crunchy” version is as opposed to the “standard crunch” kind. These were pretty damn crunchy, though, so if you have an aversion to crunch as a texture or perhaps as a noise, these will be problematic. While I don’t like hearing other people crunch, I’m totally cool with doing it myself, so I enjoyed this aspect.

The other thing I enjoyed, probably quite obviously, is the pizza taste. While I didn’t necessarily denote nuances of “Margherita pizza” — you know, the whole fresh mozzarella and basil thing — these had a very distinct pizza flavoring. But it was a pretty generic pizza taste. (Which, again, I enjoy. Immensely.) I wish the pizza powder was upped by about 10%, though. I think that would have elevated the score by a point or so. As it is, the flavor is fairly mild.

And so, really, that’s the tale of the Snap’d Extra Crunchy Margherita Pizza crackers. If you like crunchy things with a mild pizza taste and don’t mind unnecessarily weird apostrophes, you’ll probably enjoy these.

Purchased Price: $3.98
Size: 7.5 oz
Purchased at: Hy-Vee
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (30 g) 140 calories, 6 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 gram of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 260 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, less than 1 gram of sugar, 0 grams of added sugar, and 2 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Cheez-It Hidden Valley Ranch Crackers

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I grew up in the Midwest, where ranch is synonymous with ketchup and mustard in most quick-service restaurants. It’s almost everywhere and used on almost any food. I know this isn’t specific to the Midwest, but I think there are certain parts of the country where this is NOT common, and people abhor ranch with as much passion as most folks in my neck of the woods adore it. If you fall into the former category, perhaps skip this new product mash-up. If you fall into the latter, Rejoice! Cheez-It and Hidden Valley Ranch (HVR) have launched a limited-release collab, Cheez-It Hidden Valley Ranch Crackers!

This particular mash-up feels like a no-brainer. In fact, several Pinterest-style recipes out there show you how to douse Cheez-Its, oyster crackers, or whatever little crunchies in powdered HVR seasoning as a DIY seasoned snack. But this officially licensed version got me excited because it meant the real Original Ranch seasoning would be used on my oh-so-beloved Cheez-Its.

I could smell the ranch immediately upon opening the box. The seasoning is visible and distinctly speckled in a way you’d expect from Hidden Valley Ranch. The Cheez-It base cracker is the white cheddar cheese flavor. This differs from their inverted collab, the Cheez-It Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing, which is orange and, therefore, strangely off-putting. Yes, they made the Cheez-It white and the dressing orange.

Anyway, back to these crackers, the ranch seasoning is not too overwhelming on the white cheddar base, and they’re very snackable. Some crackers have a heavier coating, so as I went through my taste test, I would occasionally be delighted with a little extra kick of flavor.

What I realized pretty quickly, however, is that ranch powdered seasoning and powdered Cheez-It seasoning are not incredibly different. The main powdered dairy components are either powdered buttermilk or powdered cheddar, and these just really aren’t THAT different when you’re downing snack crackers with salt and other flavors. If I were tasting these blind, I’m not certain I would pick them up as distinctly ranch or just an onion and garlic-flavored Cheez-It. Still delicious.

To summarize it directly, these Hidden Valley Ranch Cheez-Its are subtle but great. I think the power of this collaboration is the ubiquitous success of onion and garlic flavors mingled with white cheddar and the powerhouse brand mash-up of Cheez-It and Hidden Valley. Available for a limited time, I’ll likely buy them again and again until that time runs out.

Purchased Price: $4.99 (sale)
Size: 12.4 oz box
Purchased at: Jewel Osco (Albertson’s)
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (30g or 25 Crackers) 150 calories, 7 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 240 milligrams of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, less than 1 gram of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

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