Doritos Sour Cream & Onion

I saw these Doritos in a store a year or two ago and have regretted not picking them up ever since.  They've finally come back, and I nabbed them with an amount of greed that surprised even myself.

Unfortunately, the payoff wasn't huge.

These aren't a perfect translation of sour cream & onion potato chips because they can't be; the exact flavors used for potatoes don't exactly harmonize the same way with corn.  Unfortunately, I don't think Doritos' choice of flavors harmonize with corn either.

These amount to more like a Cool Ranch Lite than sour cream & onion.  There's plenty of onion in the seasoning, and also a good bit of supporting herbs and spices, many of which are found in the brand's Cool Ranch variety.  There's also the light cheese/sour milk powder on there to simulate the sour cream, but overall it tastes like something other than sour cream and onion.  While moderately tasty, A die hard SC&O fan would find these very disappointing.


Doritos Sour Cream & Onion:- Good
Original Doritos Nacho Cheese(for comparison):- Great

Pop-Tarts Frosted Pumpkin Pie

Pop-Tarts adds to their autumn/winter seasonals with Pumpkin Pie.  This variety has been issued for a year or two now and it's worth picking up when you see it.

When you open the plastic, there's an immediate aroma of canned pumpkin.  Very nice.  The frosting is speckled with familiar autumn colors.

After a bite or two, flavors that you fully expect begin to come through.  Pumpkin hits you first, then brown sugar, with perhaps a bit of vanilla, nutmeg and allspice following faintly behind.  The sweetness is barely there, just enough to cover any bitterness from the spices.  The maltiness from the pumpkin and the restrained sweetness make for an almost savory experience.

Toasting the pastries brings out more sweetness than before, but still lower than what you would expect from Pop-Tarts.  The spices also manage to be more pronounced when warmed.  It's a different experience when warmed versus cold, but it's hard for me to recommend one over the other.

I usually eat my Pop-Tarts with a cup of unsweetened tea or coffee nearby so that I can counter each saccharine bite with a bitter counterpoint.  This method has made me realize why sweet pastries are a must for a traditional British tea time, with a beverage's bitterness cutting through a snack's sweetness that can sometimes linger a bit too long.  No such strategy is requires with Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts.  The experience is in a refreshing balance that isn't over-sweetened and, as it often is, causes me to recommend this product heartily.


Pop-Tarts Pumpkin Pie: - Great

Original Pop-Tarts(Strawberry, for comparison): - Good

Ice Cream Oreo Cookies N' Cream

This time, instead of Oreos in ice cream we have ice cream in Oreos.  Specifically, we have Oreo ice cream inside of Oreos.

In some sort of silly meta food marketing idea, Oreo has decided to create another ice cream-inspired flavor, but this time the ice cream flavor would be cookies and cream-- simple vanilla ice cream containing crumbled chocolate wafer cookies-- thereby spending production and marketing money in such a foolhardy way that it leaves me surprised.

This is like making a variety of Doritos flavored like "Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos", or like Rice Krispies making a cereal meant to taste like Rice Krispies Treats.  Oh wait, they actually created the latter... and thank god you can still order it online, because it's incredible.

Reveling in the absurdity, I opened the package and sunk my teeth in, literally.  In a surprising fashion, they actually tasted exactly as I expected them to, which is to say not quite the same as the original Oreo.  The additional specks of cookie crumbs in the seemingly unchanged vanilla creme adds the slightest bit of extra chocolate cookie flavor, and perhaps a slightly dryer texture on the tongue and on the swallow.

Almost identical to the original, and I'm not sure I could have told you it was different with my eyes closed.


Ice Cream Oreo Cookies N' Cream: - Great
Original Oreo(for comparison): - Great