Tom's Holly Original

I sure hope the nougat won't be too hard

The Attraction

It was from Denmark and I wasn't planning on going there anytime soon.

The Review:
One of the many amazing things about summer besides outdoor fun and shedding our jackets all together is free snacks from co-workers that go on vacation! In this case, I had a coworker that went to Denmark and brought back a snack pack of these Holly Original candy bars.

I have never heard of this chocolate bar previously, but upon looking at the picture on the wrapper, it looks like this "Holly Original" resembles something between a Milky Way and a Snickers. Both candy bars that I respect. When I say respect, I mean candy bars that I have consumed many times over in my life. One deviation I can already see is that in lieu of the peanuts that are found in a Snickers, Holly Original uses hazelnuts. What is it with Europe and hazelnuts?

Suddenly, I feel hungry.

I peel back the wrapper to reveal a smooth, milk chocolate coating. In my hand, it felt light, so I had a feeling that the nougat would be on the airy side versus a denser filling. I take a bite and as I suspected, the nougat yielded without much effort, however to my surprise, I taste hazelnut, but my bites have yet to encounter the crunch of any. As I look closer at the bar after my initial bite, I can see a layer of hazelnut between the nougat filling and the top layer of milk chocolate. Aside from the hazelnut flavor, it is very similiar to a Milky Way. Perhaps a shade lighter nougat is used in this bar.

"OK, I get this is a snack-size, the hazelnut could be at the end of the bar", I think to myself. I take my final bite and brace for a hazelnut crunch that never comes. What I do get is the slightest chip of hazelnut that might be the equivalent of what small piece of nut that gets lost in your mouth after eating an actual hazelnut. You know, that piece that hides between your teeth and gums? Or better yet, that piece that makes an appearance when you are brushing your teeth at night. Yes, people, that wimpy piece.

There is a hazelnut top layer,

but where are the actual hazelnuts?

The Sweet:
If you like a Milky Way, you are in luck.

The Bitter:
Where are the hazelnuts?

Conclusion:
The big hook for me with these "Holly Originals" were supposed to be the hazelnut variation, however, there were very little actual hazelnuts to be found in this bar. The picture on the wrapper was outright deceptive! However, I did enjoy the hazelnut flavor with the nougat filling.

Here's the thing; it's all about managing expectations. I really had no idea what to expect with this snack, but by simply looking at the picture on the wrapper, it set my expectations for something this snack could not deliver, ergo it essentially shot itself in the foot.

Don't promise a woman you will bring her roses and show up with flowers that only SMELL like roses. Those are two very different things. You should try it sometime and see the reaction you get. It'll probably look a lot like my reaction to this candy bar.

Video of the Week

This is only the beginning

Jenna Marbles, of Youtube fame, decided to film a video of her putting on 100 layers of makeup. At first it was passable, then it turns slightly club kid-ish, then eventually downright scary. I don't know why, but I watched every minute of this video. Then I went to go watch the paint dry.

Goldfish Grahams Vanilla Cupcake

These aren't your daddy's Goldfish

The Attraction

With a brand that has as much recognition as it does here in the States, it was difficult to pass up the chance to sample a "Goldfish" branded item that touted the flavor, "Vanilla Cupcake". Internal fat kids of the world rejoice!

The Review:
I remember first sampling Goldfish waaay back when in 1997 when I was working in a bar in Atlanta called MJQ. In lieu of standard peanuts, George elected to put some Cheddar flavored Goldfish for the bar patrons to enjoy. I can't tell you how many Goldfish I ate when I was there on beer delivery day waiting for the truck to arrive, but my love for Goldfish still continues to this day.

Sure, I've occasionally dabbled with some of the other flavor offerings since then. Maybe a bag of Pizza here and a snack pack of Nacho Cheese there, but the good ol' original Cheddar was always my "center"....and I always return to center. Up to now, even with some of the sweet flavor options Goldfish has, I've never felt compelled to try it...until now. It also didn't hurt that it was a non-obligation snack size pack either.

I see some specks of red in there

I crack open the bag and see the familiar Goldfish "smile", but instead of the orange puffy body I've gotten used to seeing that smirk on, this time it was on a cookie-like biscuit. The sweet smell emanating from the cookie felt foreign too in that context, but after a few seconds, I was able to identify the smell of vanilla. Will this thing taste like a Nilla? Maybe it's a rip off of an Animal Cracker? Is it really so far fetched that the way Goldfish taste like a not-as-salty version of a Cheez-It, that these Vanilla Cupcake Goldfish could taste like a Animal Cracker? I peer in to take a closer look and I swear some of the Goldfish has red specks. Could this be something totally different?

I pop a fish into my mouth and as I took a few steps I thought to myself, "Yep, just an Animal Cracker knock off.", but then there was a moment I thought it tasted like a Nilla wafer. What was that? I take a couple of more fishes and it's clear that it's more than just a Animal Cracker. Sure the vanilla flavor was clear, but there were more complex flavors thrown in the mix...dare I say a little strawberry even? Let's "sample" a few more..

I'd recognize that smirk anywhere

The Sweet:
Take your animal cracker and evolve it about 20 years.

The Bitter:
With so many years as a savory snack, can these Goldfish also make a dent in the sweet snack world?

Conclusion:
I was pretty much prepared to write these Goldfish off as a knockoff of something that you can readily get now, but I must hand it to the folks over at Pepperidge Farm, they put in the time and research to develop a recipe for these Goldfish that offer something different. Now, it's not every week I go to the market to pick up a box of Animal Crackers, but these give me some pause. If I had to give a kid a "sweet" snack, I might pick these up for them, but secretly it would be just so I can "shotgun" a bag of these when no one was looking.

Thanks George for hooking me up with Goldfish all those years ago. Actually, thank you for everything.

Video of the Week

"Oooh, me next, me next!"

With Comic-Con San Diego just wrapping up this weekend, there were a bunch of new trailers that were released. One for Suicide Squad, Justice League and Doctor Strange. Another one that continued with the "dark" vibe for DCs Superhero movies was this one for Wonder Woman. I'm still not totally sold on all of DCs movies just yet, however, I would be OK staring at Gal Gadot for 90 minutes. 

Bonchi French Dressing Fried Rice Crackers (Tsuna Age Arare)

 
Yeah, try to figure out what this is
if you don't read Japanese

The Attraction

This package had little to no English on it. I just hope it doesn't taste like shrimp crackers.

The Review:
I'm usually not in the habit of buying random snacks with no understanding of what's inside, but somehow I just felt this might be worth a shot. Even though the "twists" look very much like shrimp crackers, there was no indication of shrimps or anything seafood-ish about it. So what flavor must this be?

A quick turn of the bag reveals an import label in English that reads, "Cracker (Tsuna Age Dressing)" If you are like me, then I know what you are thinking, "I love tsuna age dressing!". OK, maybe more like what the frig is Tsuna Age Dressing. After spending some time on "The Google" I discovered that Tsuna Age Dressing, at least in context to this snack, means French dressing. That helped, but I still couldn't quite put my finger on what french dressing chips would taste like. Easily solved.

Looks like a shrimp cracker

I open the bag and detect a smell. A smell that was hard to describe. French dressing? Not good, nor bad, just something I'm not able to determine the smell of. A slightly salty smell is about as much as I can offer. I pick up a "twist" and indulge. As if it wasn't hard enough to describe the smell, it was even harder to describe the flavor. It was savory, lightly salted, yet not as harsh or persistent as just plain salt. At first it seemed very underwhelming, but as I had more, I became intrigued as to the flavor that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Although labeled "French Dressing", I'm quite certain this was something I have never tasted the flavor of before.

Hmm..doesn't taste like a shrimp cracker

The Sweet:
A nice shrimp-cracker-like-crunch with a deceptively tasty flavor

The Bitter:
What exactly is french dressing flavor?

Conclusion:
Bonchi's French Dressing Fried Rice Crackers doesn't come at you with a bunch of flair or fanfare (at least not based on the packaging I couldn't read), but oddly enough, the relatively nondescript packaging mirrors the flavors that await for you inside. It's not super...anything, but somehow it stealthily delivers it's flavor and leaves you wanting for more.With a nice find like this, maybe I should try more mysterious snacks from now on.

Video of the Week

The audio sounds different from what you might expect

I've fallen off the hip-hop game for awhile, but occasionally I come across a track that catches my attention. Enter Rich Chigga. He throws in some lighthearted visuals in his video, but the music doesn't sound so different from anything else you might come across the radio these days.....but it's the contrast between what your eyes see and what your ears hear that makes this the video the of the week.

Strauss Crembo Vanilla / Mocha

More exciting than a carton of eggs

The Attraction

An ice cream substitute for people that can't eat ice cream? This sounds too interesting to not review. 

The Review:
My pal Grace comes through again. She somehow comes across these "Crembos" by Strauss. Upon some more research, these aren't just your run of the mill chocolate snacks. These are known and marketed to people who specifically follow a kosher diet. More info here.

In a nutshell, that means you cannot mix meat and dairy within several hours of each other. Enter Crembo. In lieu of having ice cream or another dairy-based sweet treat that would not align with kosher eating habits, the good people at Strauss came up with Crembo, but how does it do that? Let's find out.

I crack open the carton that the Crembos come in. Grace was kind enough to split a pack of the Vanilla and Mocha cartons with me so I can sample each flavor. Already the packaging is intriguing. Why a carton? We'll get back to that shortly.
 

It's as light as a foiled wrapped cloud

I pull out a vanilla Crembo first and I notice how light the snack is. Hmm, the mystery deepens. I carefully unwrap it and find a chocolate coated..something before me. It looks like a chocolate covered marshmallow on a cookie, but lighter feeling. I'm dying of anticipation in terms of what on earth this thing must taste like and what awaits me inside this chocolate fortress.

I finally indulge and take a bite from the top. Chocolate splinters and cracks identical to when you have a chocolate coated ice cream bar. Crembo has certainly mastered that part of the ice cream eating experience.

Not sure what to make of this just yet

As I break through, there is a sticky cream on the other side of the shell. It's of a marshmallow-like texture and flavor, but lighter and fluffier. Not as dense as a regular marshmallow....but boy is it sweet. My taste buds go into overload from the sweetness, but I eventually make way to the wafer base the Crembo sits upon. Thankfully the wafer helps ground some of that sweetness from the creme filling. Talk about a sugar rush!

This looks good, but is it?

The Sweet:
Physically light and great crispy chocolate shell.

The Bitter:
It's a little sweet. When I say a little, I mean a lot. Particularly the vanilla-flavored Crembo.

Conclusion:
I get it. There is no easy substitute for ice cream that doesn't involve dairy, so you try your best to find a proxy. Strauss comes close with Crembo, but where it falters is not in the texture of the marshmallow filling, but rather the sweetness of it. It does a great job in almost every other way; the light fluffy filling, the crispy chocolate shell, the reserved cookie base the snack rests upon, but all that goes out the window when your sweetness-o-meter goes off the charts.

Crembo's Mocha offering is far more tempered in it's sweetness and gives a mild interpretation of "mocha", which is the way I prefer it, but still doesn't resonate enough to make me dream of Crembos dancing in my head on a hot summer's day.

Video of the Week

I hate to see what she looks like when she's really mad

If you are like me and are bored when the band takes the field during halftime, well be bored no more. This band chick rocks out in her own way as much as one can rock out to mid evil sounding music. I think at the end she throws in a weird impersonation of The Rock to boot. 

Bissli Pizza

Anything pizza-flavored must be good, right?

The Attraction

On the heels of my Bissli exploration, I came across this pizza flavored variation.I needed a third review for a tie breaker.

The Review:
Recently I've reviewed Bissli's Falafel and BBQ snacks. One I loved, the other not so much. I wondered if the hit was a fluke or the dud out of the norm, so when I saw a pizza flavored snack they made, I thought this would be a good chance to tip the scale one way or the other.

When I saw this package, I immediately thought of the one of the few other pizza-flavored snacks I loved growing up; Combos Pepperoni-Pizza flavored! I can't tell you much I loved Combos as a kid growing up. I could devour a bag of either those or the Cheddar Cheese flavor without much effort. I was thinking this could be a similiar product. That's setting the bar pretty high.

I look like some dice from 2 centuries ago.

I pull open the bag and see if I can discern a smell of any sort...nope...maybe a fried scent, but nothing that seemed to indicate the flavor within the bag. I pour out a few "cubes" into my hand. Like the falafel and bbq snacks before it, these deviated from the conventional "chip" shape. In this iteration, the folks at Bissli opted to go with a quartered cube look. If the past was any indication of what to expect, these cubes should be darn crunchy.

I look like cereal in this light

I pop two square into my mouth and bite down. As I expect, they delivered with high marks on the crunch factor. No matter the shape, all of Bissli's snacks have a great textural crunch to them. However, that's not where their shortcomings lie. Flavor-wise, there's very little there that is reminiscent of pizza at all. They taste like salted crunch cubes. I don't recall at any point getting a hint of cheese, tomato sauce or anything that remotely reminded me of pizza...well, maybe the crunchy crust that doesn't have any sauce on it. If that's the pizza flavor they were going for, they hit that right on the nose.

The Sweet:
Great crunch.

The Bitter:
What pizza taste?

Conclusion:
I tend to believe that Bissli's Falafel was their one hit wonder. Their "pizza" flavored offering just doesn't delivery any of the wonderful flavors you come to expect when you associate the word "pizza" to something.

I think pizza is so universally beloved that when you decide to put that flavor on a product, you better be sure you can delivery because anything less than is a huge disappointment. My advice? Stick to the Combos.

Video of the Week 

"I"m Kevin Hart in high school?"

If you've seen the recent video of Kevin Hart and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson doing a role reversal interview while on tour promoting their movie "Central Intelligence" you can see how much fun these guys can be. I think they are much more fun being themselves then in their movie, unfortunately. As further proof in this video where they do some further role reversal. (The fun begins at about the 2 minute mark)