Tag: Skippy

REVIEW: Skippy P.B. Fruit Bites (Strawberry and Grape)

Sarah 2 Comments

Skippy P B Fruit Bites Strawberry and Grape

“Mommy, I want a snack!” “Mommy, I need a snack!” “Mommy, can I have a snack, please?” “I’m soooooo hungry, mommy!”

If you saw us out in public, you might believe that I never feed my kids by the way they are always asking for food. But, if you have young kids, or if you haven’t yet fully repressed the less-endearing memories from when your children were preschoolers, you know that snack management is at least 50 percent of your parenting responsibility at that age.

Snacks are essential to mom life. Bonus if the snacks are quick and relatively healthy. But, just like adults, kids get bored with the usual options, which is why finding something new is exciting for all of us. Enter the new Skippy P.B. Fruit Bites.

Skippy P B Fruit Bites Strawberry and Grape 2

Skippy P.B. Fruit Bites are available in two varieties, grape and strawberry. They feature fruit-flavored centers with a Skippy peanut butter-flavored coating and are advertised as “portable, pop-able snacks.” They resemble yogurt or chocolate covered raisins in size and texture.

Skippy P B Fruit Bites Grape

We tried the Grape bites first as I was curious to know how a “dried grape center” would differ from a raisin center. The answer is that it tasted like dried grape flavored bubble gum. I think a full raisin, and not a manufactured dried grape, would have resulted in a snack that more closely resembled a peanut butter & grape jelly sandwich.

The textures of the peanut butter coating and the fruit center did not blend well and were distinctly obvious in each bite. The grape-flavored center was artificial and not fruity tasting at all. Each bite tasted like a piece of cheap, old grape-flavored candy and oily peanut butter powder. I did not feel compelled to eat more than a few and couldn’t even pawn them off on my hungry, snack-loving kiddos.

Skippy P B Fruit Bites Strawberry

The strawberry P.B. Fruit Bites were a different story, though. The Skippy Peanut Butter coating had the iconic Skippy flavor, slightly sweet with a smooth and creamy peanut flavor. The coating melded well with the fruit center and did not disintegrate into separate pieces like its grape counterpart.

The fruit center tasted more authentic than the grape one, with natural strawberry flavor (in the form of a cranberry). It was more convincingly fruit than just “fruit flavored.” This matters when you’re trying to convince yourself, as a parent, that your kids’ snacks have some value other than to buy a few minutes of peace and quiet.

Overall, I liked the strawberry P.B. Fruit Bites enough to add them into the snack rotation, but not as a regular addition. At over $3 for a small bag of bites, they are too pricey for an everyday snack but will be an occasional sweet treat.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 oz. – Grape – 140 calories, 8 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 70 milligrams of sodium, 14 grams of carbohydrates, 11 grams of sugars, and 4 grams of protein. Strawberry – 150 calories, 8 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 70 milligrams of sodium, 15 grams of carbohydrates, 11 grams of sugars, and 4 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $3.29 each
Size: 4 oz. bag
Purchased at: Food Lion
Rating: 2 out of 10 (Grape)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Strawberry)
Pros: Quick snack with some nutritional value. Strawberry one tasted more authentic than grape. Didn’t melt in summer heat. Real fruit in centers.
Cons: Grape one tasted like a piece of cheap, old grape-flavored candy and oily peanut butter powder. Expensive as an everyday snack. Choking hazard warning on front of package suggests that these are not for kids under 3.

REVIEW: Skippy Graham Cracker P.B. Bites

Kyle

Skippy Graham Cracker P.B. Bites

Let’s get one thing straight. Skippy’s Graham Cracker P.B. Bites aren’t “bites.”

They’re balls.

Which is fine, because the country is in love with balls right now. You’ve got Pokemon Go, baseball season, Powerball, and the Olympics crowding the scene, but Skippy’s Graham Cracker P.B. Bites are what you should be focusing on.

Skippy introduced their P.B. Bites line about a year ago with Double Peanut Butter and Pretzel varieties, and they’ve proven to be a hit with the public. I’d never noticed the P.B. Bites previously because choosy reviewers like me choose Jif, but for TIB I decided to give it a shot and picked up a pack of their new Graham Cracker variety.

The P.B. Bites come in small cup-holder sized containers, because I assume Skippy thought people might take a swill of these during the morning commute. While I advise against that (due to the legal threat of causing something similar to a Pokemon Go-induced car accident), the peanut butter poppers are certainly portable and are easy to take to work or school.

Upon opening the package, I was hit with a strong wave of peanut butter scent. The smell is of a nicely roasted peanut butter, and gave off none of the artificial notes you may typically find in the peanut butter candy at the bottom of your Halloween spoils.

Skippy Graham Cracker P.B. Bites 3

The P.B. Bites glisten in the light (note to self: make Mom a peanut butter diamond necklace for Christmas), and that sheen is indicative of the oily nature of the balls. Since the bites’ exteriors are coated in peanut butter, they’re soft and tacky to the touch and can only be handled for a few moments before eating (lest you want to have a real big mess on your hands). Thankfully though, the bites aren’t sticky, so you’ll be able to pop a few before getting club hand.

While you may expect the P.B. Bites have a little bit of chew to them, this is furthest from the case. The soft peanut butter exterior of the balls melts away to reveal a small, crunchy graham cracker center. The peanut butter tastes surprisingly more natural than what you typically expect from a jar of Skippy, with a deep peanut flavor. And while peanut butter from the jar has a tendency to collect on the roof of your mouth, I am pleased to share that Skippy’s P.B. Bites do no such thing. Glass of milk be gone!

Skippy Graham Cracker P.B. Bites 4

Regrettably, while the Bites’ crunch is satisfying, the tiny graham cracker center lacks any discernible flavor and is overwhelmed by the peanut butter. This makes sense, because I can imagine if I covered myself in peanut butter and ate myself, I’d be incredibly delicious. And while the bites may not provide any graham cracker flavor, you’ll find yourself not caring because the rest of the bite is just so damn good.

Overall, with their natural flavor and pleasing crunch, Skippy’s Graham Cracker P.B. Bites are a pleasant snack that any peanut butter connoisseur would appreciate. Just don’t try to throw one at a Charizard.

(Nutrition Facts – 15 pieces – 160 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 125 milligrams of sodium, 15 grams of carbohydrates, 9 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.)

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: 6 oz. tub
Purchased at: Star Market
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Pop ‘em in your Pontiac. Natural peanut butter taste. Satisfying crunch. Good for people with Arachibutyrophobia.
Cons: Melts in your hand and also in your mouth. Tiny, flavorless center. Thoughts of self-cannibalism.

REVIEW: Skippy P.B. Bites (Pretzel and Double Peanut Butter)

Vin 49 Comments

Skippy Pretzel P.B. Bites

When it comes to peanut butter and the pronunciation of animated internet images, I – like all of those choosy moms – always choose Jif. I can’t even remember the last time I had Skippy. In fact, I’m so trained on my Simply Jif; I almost forgot Skippy was even a brand. One might say I skipped…

Nope, this one is not gonna roll with that cornball pun. Let’s get to the review instead.

A couple months back, these popped up in the “Spotted on Shelves” section of this site. A commenter named “JETKITTY” mentioned these reminded him or her of the greatest snack in the history of our time – Planters PB Crisps. Just off that mere mention alone, I made it my life’s mission to track these down. If they were anywhere near the quality of the dearly departed PB Crisps, I would have found the heir apparent to one of my five favorite snacks of all time.

So do they stack up?

Drumroll, please…

No! But they aren’t bad.

Pretzels and peanut butter are a marriage made in heaven. How could these be bad?

The peanut butter coating is creamy and not nearly as synthetic as I anticipated it to taste. I was expecting the fake peanut butter type filling from say a Nutter Butter or a Peanut Butter Oreo, but this is really smooth.

Skippy Pretzel P.B. Bites 3

It’s also a reasonably thick coating, giving each piece a nice balance with the pretzel inside. There’s a brief sweetness to the peanut butter, but once you crunch into the pretzel, it’s gone. That was a tease. Skippy P.B. Bites basically land on the “savory” side of the snack scale. As you eat them, your mouth gets saltier. So if you expect these to be a sugary snack, you might be a bit disappointed.

Peanut butter on its own isn’t exactly “sweet” per se, but I always expect a snack built around it to be really sweet. I needed more of that out of the peanut butter. If it somehow held the brief hint through the entire bite, these would be excellent. All I could think while eating them was how much I’d appreciate a thin layer of chocolate around the outside.

Skippy Pretzel P.B. Bites 2

I dig the shape and “poppability” of the bites. If they sold a bag of pretzels in this shape, I’d snatch them up, because they’d be fun to eat. You’d think by having a pretzel that small and compact, it would be on the hard side, but these have a really palatable crunch.

So while they’re not “Top 5 Dead or Alive” like PB crisps, they’re tasty and worth a buy. Just make sure you get the pretzel flavor, because…

Double Peanut Butter is terrible. While it has the same creamy peanut butter coating, the center has a texture I can barely describe. Once you get past the good peanut butter, you hit a square of hard, gritty chalk-like peanut butter. Have you ever gotten Cookie Dough Bites at the movie theater? Think of the cookie dough inside. Now age that 7 years and give it a considerably worse flavor. That’s what these taste like. The inner peanut butter tastes like a hardened block of sand. Horrible. They shouldn’t exist.

(Nutrition Facts – Pretzel – 15 pieces – 160 calories, 90 calories from fat, 10 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 300 milligrams of sodium, 13 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 6 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein. Double Peanut Butter – 10 pieces – 160 calories, 90 calories from fat, 10 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 milligrams of sodium, 14 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 8 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.)

Item: Skippy P.B. Bites (Pretzel and Double Peanut Butter)
Purchased Price: $2.98 each
Size: 6 oz. tub
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Pretzel)
Rating: 3 out of 10 (Double Peanut Butter)
Pros: Creamy peanut butter coating. Shape and size. Tasty pretzels. “Poppability.” Any reason to reminisce about PB Crisps. You can reuse the container should you choose.
Cons: Melts very easily. Double Peanut Butter is awful. “Jif” vs. “Gif” battles rages on. RIP PB Crisps.

REVIEW: Skippy Limited Edition Creamy Peanut Butter Spread with Salted Caramel

Marvo 11 Comments

Skippy Limited Edition Creamy Peanut Butter Spread with Salted Caramel

I guess Skippy has to keep up with the Joneses…I mean, keep up with the Jifeses.

While Skippy has flavored peanut butter spreads, dark chocolate and honey, Jif’s Whips line has seen so many flavors that it makes me wonder if it’s called Whips not only because it’s an airy peanut butter, but also because whips are what Jif uses to “encourage” their flavor scientists to pump out so many flavors.

For the sake of those who don’t follow airy peanut butter spreads as closely as I do and to inflate the word count of this review, Jif Whips have come in the following flavors: Original, Chocolate, Pumpkin Pie Spice, S’mores, Chocolate Mint, Maple Brown Sugar, and Salty Caramel.

But Skippy is trying to play catch up with their Limited Edition Creamy Peanut Butter Spread with Salted Caramel.

From what I can tell, salted caramel, sea salt caramel, salty caramel, and its ilk have been popping up as a new flavor with many products. I’d list them to further extend the word count of this review, but I shall spare you the monotony of reading dozens of commas. Salted caramel has reached the point where we could call it the non-holiday pumpkin spice.

Skippy’s salted caramel-flavored spread smells burnt with a hint of chemicaliness. Granted, I’ve never smelled the combination of peanut butter and caramel before or walked into someone with an open jar of peanut butter while I was unwrapping Werther’s Originals and then yelled “Hey! You got your peanut butter on my Werther’s Originals,” so maybe burnt with a hint of chemicaliness is what those two are supposed to smell like.

Oh, “chemicaliness” is an abomination of a word? Well then, it’s appropriate because I feel Limited Edition Creamy Peanut Butter Spread with Salted Caramel is an abomination of a peanut butter spread.

Skippy Limited Edition Creamy Peanut Butter Spread with Salted Caramel 2

Okay, maybe not an abomination because I don’t gag while eating it on bread (it spreads just like regular Skippy), on a spoon, or on my finger, but it makes my tongue surf waves of flavors that encourages it to paddle to shore and go home. First, there’s the peanut butteriness, which has a slight caramel-ish flavor. It isn’t offensive, but the caramel flavoring does a great job at muting the peanut butter flavor. Next, there’s a burst of saltiness, which makes sense since it’s salted caramel. But, at times, it can be a bit too much.

However, that saltiness prepares my mouth for the final rough wave of flavor. Remember how I said it smells burnt? Well, it also tastes burnt. To be more exact, this last wave of flavor reminds me of burnt popcorn.

But I’m not really surprised I don’t care for it. The “artificial flavoring” printed on the front of the bottle was a red flag.

I don’t see myself ever coming close to finishing this bottle of Limited Edition Creamy Peanut Butter Spread with Salted Caramel. Right now, it sits four-fifths full in the back of the cupboard, hidden behind some bottles of the Jifeses.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 Tbsp – 190 calories, 140 calories from fat, 16 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 6 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, and 7 grams of protein.)

Item: Skippy Limited Edition Creamy Peanut Butter Spread with Salted Caramel
Purchased Price: $3.22
Size: 15 oz.
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 3 out of 10
Pros: It spreads like regular Skippy. Looks like regular Skippy. Doesn’t make me gag.
Cons: Tastes like burnt popcorn. Smells burnt with a hint of chemicaliness. Using long words that my computer’s spell check doesn’t like.

REVIEW: Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread with Dark Chocolate

Matt 16 Comments

Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread with Dark Chocolate

Are you allergic to peanuts? Are you also allergic to chocolate? If so, I regret to inform you that Skippy has just released a new product that you won’t be able to eat. It’s the new Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread with Dark Chocolate! (Aren’t you excited, Mr. Allergies?)

Actually, I wish I was a bit more excited myself. In all honesty, the peanut butter and chocolate combination has been done countless times in the past, and I just don’t see a reason to go nuts (get it?) over a new peanut butter chocolate combination spread.

Skippy better blow my mind with this one. Truthfully, I’m expecting this to taste like a spreadable Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. (My PB & Choc standards are set high, I know.)

Opening up the jar, we find a dark, creamy substance reminiscent in color of Ferrero’s Nutella, though not quite as dark. In fact, the label even informs me that this peanut butter contains sixty percent less sugar than Nutella. (Could it be anywhere as addictive as Nutella, though? Does it contain sixty percent less crystal meth?)

Before I even had the chance to slather my upper lip in peanut butter like some peanut-crazed version of Clarice Starling during the autopsy scene of The Silence of the Lambs, I noticed the strong scent of this Skippy peanut butter. Wow, it smells exactly like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Surprising, right?

First, I tasted the peanut butter straight, digging out of the jar using only a spoon. When eaten alone, the peanut butter tastes remarkably similar to Reese’s Pieces and less like a Reese’s Cup. The chocolate and peanut butter flavors mix together into a thick, creamy, and tasty spread.

Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread with Dark Chocolate Topless

Next, I decided to dip anything I could find into the peanut butter. Cookies. Cakes. Fruits. Small animals. Homeless people. You name it, I dipped it. (I must say, dipping a homeless person into the peanut butter was a bit difficult. I only managed to fit Stinky Greg’s hand inside of the jar before he shanked me.)

Most of what I dipped (aside from Stinky Greg) tasted great along with the peanut butter. At first, the chocolate taste shines through and really complements the peanut butter. Because it’s a bit less thick compared to Nutella, it also spreads pretty well.

Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread with Dark Chocolate on Waffles

Unfortunately, as I ate more and more of this peanut butter, it seemed to lose its chocolatey taste, and the peanut flavor of the spread became most prevalent in each bite. For this reason, I found the prolonged taste to be disappointing. Furthermore, I failed to notice that this peanut butter is mixed with dark chocolate and not regular milk chocolate. Dark chocolate has a distinct sort of cocoa sweetness, which was definitely unidentifiable in this peanut butter spread. I can’t really say that Skippy has impressed me with this one.

Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread with Dark Chocolate provides a pleasant chocolate and peanut butter taste, but its chocolate flavor slowly becomes masked the more it is eaten. Although the spread is enjoyable, I find it largely unmemorable. I recommend Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread with Dark Chocolate to hardcore fans of the peanut and chocolate combination who might be able to overlook its flaws.

Just don’t try dipping any homeless people into it.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 Tbsp – 200 calories, 130 calories from fat, 14 grams of total fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 120 milligrams of sodium, 12 grams of total carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 8 grams of sugars, and 6 grams of protein.)

Item: Skippy Natural Peanut Butter Spread with Dark Chocolate
Purchased Price: $3.04
Size: 15 oz.
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Pleasant mixture of peanut and chocolate flavors. Tastes similar to Reese’s Pieces. Impersonating characters from The Silence of the Lambs.
Cons:Seems to lose chocolate flavor as more is eaten. Chocolate doesn’t taste like dark chocolate. Being shanked by Stinky Greg.