REVIEW: McDonald’s Cinnamon Melts

McDonald’s Cinnamon Melts

Much like Angelina Jolie’s collection of adopted Third World children, the menu at McDonald’s has gotten larger and diverse.

Along with the usual fare of burgers, fries and toys that some people think will make them rich someday when they sell them on eBay, McDonald’s has been offering large salads, premium chicken sandwiches, and gourmet coffee.

Recently, they came out with their Cinnamon Melts, which proves once again that just like drunk college kids who need an idea for a video they want to put on YouTube, McDonald’s will stick anything in a microwave.

I like the direction that McDonald’s is taking because diversity is good. Sure, most of their food isn’t the healthiest thing you can stick down your gullet, but when you’re tired and hungry after a long day at work or school, a Filet-O-Fish can look like a Filet Mignon.

You know what they say, “Variety is the spice of life” and in this case, the spice is cinnamon. Sure, you could live your life without variety, but what fun would that be. I believe a wise man once said, “To make life interesting, sometimes men have to piss sitting down and women have to piss standing up.”

Anyway, every container of McDonald’s Cinnamon Melts is basically a bunch of donut hole-sized pieces of bread with a cinnamon sugar glaze and frosting. It would be easy for me to say that these bite-sized cinnamon balls totally bite, but they don’t. Actually, they’re pretty good…for something that comes out of a microwave.

The McDonald’s Cinnamon Melts were sweet, but not sickly sweet like eating a Cinnabon or listening to hours of the Teletubbies talk, and they weren’t as messy as eating a Cinnabon since they were bite-sized and came with a fork. But if you enjoy sucking on your own fingers, you don’t have to use the fork.

The cinnamon sugar glaze was good and it had a nice crystallized crunch to it. The bread was warm, fluffy and soft. Speaking of soft, with the McDonald’s Cinnamon Melts they have found another way to possibly kill us softly. With 460 calories, 19 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat and 32 grams of sugar it isn’t something I would buy on a regular basis, unless I wanted to do more good than Angelina Jolie by feeding more Third World children than she has adopted.

Item: McDonald’s Cinnamon Melts
Price: $1.89
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Pretty good for something that comes out of a microwave. Under two dollars. Not overly sweet like a Cinnabon. Diverse menu at McDonald’s. Men occasionally pissing while sitting down. Women occasionally pissing while standing up.
Cons: Serving might seem small to some. High calorie. High saturated fat. The health of most of the McDonald’s menu. Those people who think they’ll be rich selling McDonald’s toys on eBay.

Taco Bell Zesty Nachos

I think nachos were invented by someone who was either really high or really hungry. That is perhaps the reason why nachos look so good when you’re really high or really hungry.

Just like boob jobs, nachos come in different forms. I think someone’s momma once said, “Life is like a plate of nachos, you never know what you gonna get.”

Sometimes you get nachos with just cheese. Other times you get nachos with chili and cheese. Some nachos come with cheese and refried beans. Nachos can come with guacamole, sour cream, and/or salsa. Some nachos come in a tortilla chip sombrero you can wear outside to protect you from the sun.

Sometimes you get a whole bunch of chips and not a lot of other toppings, but that’s not nachos, that’s just chips somebody accidently spilled some stuff on.

(Editor’s Note: That last paragraph sounded like a Mitch Hedberg joke and I can imagine him saying it in my head, but I don’t think it’s one. I hope.)

Nachos may not be the prettiest food when you’re sober or not really hungry, but you have to admit they look much better than Tara Reid or Courtney Love in a bikini. Actually, nachos do a great job with satisfying one’s appetite, while seeing Reid or Love in a bikini makes one lose their appetite.

Just to let you know, I’m not high right now, but I do think that the new Taco Bell Zesty Nachos are a metaphor for life. It comes with tortilla chips, seasoned beef, zesty nacho cheese sauce, tomatoes and sour cream. Each of those ingredient represents a part of every individual.

The tortilla chips represents one’s mind. Much like tortilla chips, the mind can easily crack, but also like tortilla chips, your mind can hold a lot. A single tortilla chip has the power to hold seasoned beef, cheese, tomatoes and sour cream, while your mind can hold memories, online passwords, lame knock knock jokes, dialogue from Star Wars movies and horrifying images of celebrities in bikinis.

The seasoned beef is like the muscles on your body, because the beef is technically muscle from a cow. The zesty nacho cheese sauce is like your soul, because when you pass on your soul will still be around and when you pass gas the nacho cheese sauce smell will still be around. The tomatoes represent your heart, because just like your heart, tomatoes are red as well. Finally, the sour cream is your experiences. Your bad experiences are the sour part, while your good experiences are the creamy part.

All that stuff put together makes you and who you are, and unless you’re an asshole, it’s a good thing.

Okay, those last few paragraphs sounded like I was high, but I was not. I think I’m just hungry, because one of these Taco Bell Zesty Nachos wasn’t enough to fill me up. I’ll admit that it was good and for a buck and a half I shouldn’t expect much, although for the rest of the United States, it costs only 99 cents.

Despite having the meal-like nutritional values of 470 calories, 32 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of trans fat, 40 mg cholesterol, 730 mg of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 4 grams of dietary fiber and 10 grams of protein, I think the Taco Bell Zesty Nachos make a much better snack than a meal.

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Impulsive Buy reader Daniel for letting me know about the Taco Bell Zesty Nachos. Thanks to him, I think my trans fat intake is about to go up.)

Item: Taco Bell Zesty Nachos
Price: $1.49 (99 cents for the rest of the country)
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros: Tasty. Kind of cheap for me, but really cheap for the rest of the United States. Makes a great snack. Nachos are a metaphor for life. The human mind.
Cons: Small serving size and not filling, but kind of worth it for the price I paid. Messy. 1.5 grams of trans fat. Tara Reid or Courtney Love in a bikini. Nachos without a bunch of toppings. Being an asshole. Taco Bell prices on this rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Jamba Juice Tahiti Green Tea

Just like closing your eyes to get beyond the extremely crooked teeth, unevenly drawn in eyebrows, and mysterious boils on the skin of the troll you’re getting it on with, closing your eyes while sucking on the new Jamba Juice Tahiti Green Tea smoothie will help you experience it beyond its color, which as you can see from the picture is possibly the same color as a cat’s diarrhea after drinking lots of egg nog.

Once you go beyond its color, you will find out that the Tahiti Green Tea smoothie is quite delicious and possibly one of the tastiest ways to get green tea antioxidants, which is one of the most popular health supplements out there.

It’s wayyyy more healthier than the ThighMaster and wayyyy more popular than Jazzercize.

The Tahiti Green Tea smoothie’s combination of green tea powder, mango, lemonade, orange juice, orange sherbet, nonfat frozen yogurt, ice, and extremely loud Jamba Juice blenders creates a concoction that I’ll be buying a lot of since I’m tired of my usual means of green tea consumption, which involves dipping a tea bag into a mug of hot water for two to four minutes and giggling to myself as thoughts of teabagging circle my immature head.

I really do like green tea, although it isn’t my favorite tea name to say — which is oolong tea. I drink it for its health benefits, caffeine content, and it allows me to do something Asian other than using chopsticks, eating sushi, watching anime, driving a Toyota, and taking something the United States invented and making it better.

Mango is the dominant flavor in the Tahiti Green Tea smoothie and the texture of it is slightly mango-ish. The green tea flavor is very light and there is a slight sourness from the lemonade.

An original size also contains 360 calories, 1.5 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 85 grams of carbs, 3 grams of fiber, 77 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein, 140 percent of your daily recommended allowance of Vitamin A, 100 percent of your recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C, 100 percent of your recommended daily allowance of awesometasticness because you’re drinking a Jamba Juice, and 30 milligrams of caffeine.

Oooh! Oooh! 30 milligrams of caffeine! Sense my sarcasm!

That’s less caffeine than a can of Coke. It’s a nice amount if you’re trying to wean yourself off of the stimulant and it might be enough to kill an ant, but it’s not enough to get me through two pages of the Old English poem Beowulf or two minutes of anything with Ryan Seacrest in it.

But I like the Tahiti Green Tea smoothie so much that I’ll drink it for the antioxidants and great taste and then follow it up with a Red Bull chaser for the caffeine.

Item: Jamba Juice Tahiti Green Tea
Price: $4.72 (Original size)
Purchased at: Jamba Juice
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros: Green tea antioxidants. Very tasty. Mango-ey. Low fat. Saying oolong. Contains 100 percent of your recommended daily allowance of awesometasticness.
Cons: Doesn’t look green. Looks like a cat’s diarrhea after drinking too much egg nog. Entire review consisted of only 15 sentences. Only 30 milligrams of caffeine. Just like having sex with trolls, drinking one is much better with your eyes closed. My inability to relay sarcasm with words without blatantly pointing it out. Reading Beowulf.

McDonald’s Honey Mustard Snack Wrap

I wonder what’s a worse fate for a chicken: To be a grilled or crispy piece of chicken in the new McDonald’s Honey Mustard Snack Wrap.

Sure, there are even worse fates for chickens, like bird flu, being used in some screwed up way in a Jackass stunt, Chicken McNuggets, dancing naked in the Peter Gabriel “Sledgehammer” music video, or being eaten by Nicole Richie, then being regurgitated by Nicole Richie.

Unlike the original Ranch Snack Wrap, which only comes with crispy chicken, the honey mustard one come with either crispy chicken or grilled chicken, which is probably healthier than the crispy version, unless McDonald’s has found a way to grill things by sticking them in hot oil.

Along with your choice of chicken, the Honey Mustard Snack Wrap also comes with shredded cheddar jack cheese, lettuce, a sweet and tangy honey mustard sauce wrapped in a flour tortilla, and for some, it also comes with the guilt of knowing that you’re eating another McDonald’s product despite your promise to swear off of it after watching the documentary Super Size Me.

After trying both the crispy and grilled Honey Mustard Snack Wrap, it’s hard to determine which one I like better. It’s like trying to choose which Olsen twin I like best, because just like Mary-Kate and Ashley, both versions of the Honey Mustard Snack Wrap look alike, are kinda pale on the outside, and don’t have much meat in them.

The crispy version has 320 calories, 15 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 750 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbs, 1 gram of dietary fiber, and 14 grams of protein.

The grilled version has 260 calories, 9 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 800 milligrams of sodium, 27 grams of carbs, 1 gram of dietary fiber, and 18 grams of protein.

Both versions are about six or seven inches long, which is either small, big, or just right, depending on how big your hands or cock is. For me, the size of the Honey Mustard Snack Wrap was wayyyyyyyy too small and I wished that it was a more reasonable nine to ten inches. But then again what do you expect for some thing that costs just $1.29?

So in the end, which Honey Mustard Snack Wrap do I prefer and which is the worst fate for a piece of chicken, crispy or grilled?

Well, the crispy version tastes better, but the grilled one is healthier. However, the honey mustard sauce had kind of a weird sweet deli mustard spicy taste to it, so it turns out that the worst fate for a piece of chicken would be to end up in a Honey Mustard Snack Wrap and I prefer neither the crispy nor grilled versions of it and I’d rather go buy the much better original Ranch Snack Wrap instead.

I’ll leave the Honey Mustard Snack Wraps for Nicole Richie to regurgitate.

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to Impulsive Buy reader Danton for letting me know about the McDonald’s Honey Mustard Snack Wrap.)

Item: McDonald’s Honey Mustard Snack Wrap
Price: $1.29
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 2 out of 5
Pros: Now able to choose between grilled and crispy chicken. Decent price. Grilled is healthier. Crispy is better tasting.
Cons: Honey mustard sauce is kind of weird tasting. Kind small for my big…um, hands. Breaking your promise to not eat fast food. Being in a Jackass stunt. Being regurgitated by Nicole Richie.

McDonald’s Banana Pie

Isn’t technology great?

Thanks to people who make way more money that I do — the engineers and scientists who advance society — computers have gotten faster, cell phones have gotten smaller, hard drives have gotten larger, sex dolls have gotten more realistic (kind of SFW), and robots have come even closer to making human beings their slaves.

It doesn’t seem like it was too long ago when cell phones were the size of a concrete brick, gave off enough radiation to cook a hot dog, and to talk on it would cost about the same amount per minute as any 1-900 number found in the back of Juggs or Booty Magazine.

Today, cell phones can easily fit in a pocket, can play music, take scantily clad pictures of yourself to post on your MySpace or blog, and thanks to small wireless Bluetooth earpieces, they can also make you look like a crazy person talking to yourself.

Cell phones are a more recent technology, but even one of the pillars of home entertainment — the television — has seen dramatic improvement over the decades of its existence. When I was growing up, televisions came in black and white or color, screen were small, knobs were used to change channels, and PBS had Monty Python and occasional nudity.

Televisions today can come in sizes greater than 100 inches and show a vivid color picture in high-definition which allows you to see blades of grass blowing on a football field or the wrinkles on Larry King’s face that show the number of times he’s been married (It works much like how the rings in a tree can determine its age).

Advances in technology doesn’t stop with just consumer electronics and sex dolls, it’s been also seen in the fast food industry. Burgers have gotten bigger, french fries have gotten fryer, cup sizes have gotten taller, the waists of fast food eaters have gotten wider, and Happy Meals have gotten happier.

However, there has been one area in the fast food industry that hasn’t seen many technological advances — fast food pie technology. Over the years, the only change the McDonald’s Apple Pie has seen in its almost 40-year history was having the fried version replaced with a baked one in 1992. Although despite it being baked, along with Nick Nolte and Tara Reid, today’s McDonald’s Apple Pie is probably the only other thing in existence that is really baked, but looked fried.

Recently, other people who make way more money than me — chefs, nutritionists, and pieologists — have taken the apple out of the McDonald’s Apple Pie and replaced it with exotic fruits like, cherries, taro, and bananas.

Recently, I ate the McDonald’s Banana Pie, which was apparently available for a limited time at participating McDonald’s, because it doesn’t seem to be around anymore. From the outside it looked like a normal fried McDonald’s Apple Pie, but inside was the potassium-rich goodness of bananas, which is also the number one cause of accidents in cartoons.

The pie itself was good and sweet and the bananas inside weren’t mushy at all, but despite it being tasty, I don’t know if just replacing the fruit in a McDonald’s pie is enough of an advancement in fast food pie technology. I was hoping for a bigger pie, a pie that heats itself, or a pie that can make itself a la mode.

Item: McDonald’s Banana Pie
Price: 99 cents
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Tasty and sweet. Crispy. Potassium from bananas. Bananas weren’t mushy. Advances in sex doll technology.
Cons: Fried not baked. For a limited time. No major advances in fast food pie technology. Cartoon accidents caused by banana peels.