Cinnamon Bun Oreo

Product circa: early 2016

This is one of the few Oreo products where the cookie is flavored along with the creme.  The otherwise-vanilla cookie has flecks of cinnamon in it that are so big that they add a chewiness to the bite.  The vanilla creme, when tasted alone, has the slightest bit of cinnamon flavoring as well.  This double hit of vanilla-cinnamon makes for a complex taste, not to mention delicious.


Cinnamon Bun Oreo:- Outstanding

Original Golden Oreo(for comparison):- Great

Mountain Dew DEWshine

Note: This is a Presumptive Ephemeral Nom.

Product circa: mid-2015

Pepsico's Mountain Dew has long had an "edgy" image, as soft drinks go.  The product itself is fairly polarizing, with many people declaring that it's disgusting.  Marketing executives have taken advantage of this image in the last 25 years by placing the brand as a central presence in motorsports and extreme sports.

Just look at some of the names of recent Mountain Dew varieties, which almost universally invoke electricity and power overall: Game Fuel, Distortion, Fusion, Livewire, Voltage, Supernova, Ultraviolet, Typhoon, Solar Flare, and Baja Blast.

Dew is keeping up this trend with a release from 2015 which seemed to pop up out of nowhere: DEWshine.  As a portmanteau hearkening back to the days of Prohibition and moonshine, where outlaws distilled and distributed their own liquor to an underground populace, all the while being chased by police... it doesn't get edgier than that, right?  Hell, NASCAR, some of the fastest motorsport racing in the world, partly originated from the need of outrunning the police in the Prohibition era.

DEWshine's marketing material would have you believe that the product returns to its roots as a moonshine product.  While that history isn't accurate, Mountain Dew does have liquorious roots: its creators formulated it originally to be mixed with liquor.  At one point recently, one could buy a moonshine-style jug's worth of DEWshine.

The worst part of all this is that, as a product which claims to be a "clear" Mountain Dew, it's really just a taunt by PepsiCo to all those who dream of the return of Crystal Pepsi.

It's hard to review the product's taste, since it's impossible to know the thing for which the company was aiming.  Even without that target, it's easy for me to say that I'm disappointed.

Even though original Dew is known for its exceeding sweetness, DEWshine manages to capture the same but without any sort acidic balance that is at least present in traces within its forebears.  Further, its flavor seems simpler; lemon is the only thing discernible here, whereas lime and orange tend to be hallmarks of normal Dew.  This stuff is remarkably similar to modern 7-Up.  Is that a compliment?  You decide.


Mountain Dew DEWshine:- Good
Original Mountain Dew(for comparison):- Great

Pop-Tarts Frosted Blue Raspberry

Note: This is a Presumptive Ephemeral Nom.

Product circa: September 2015

I love almost anything flavored like blue raspberry.  It's that simple.

What is blue raspberry, exactly?  It's a flavor based on a plant that is a cousin to the raspberry called Rubus leucodermis.  The problem is that the plant's fruit is not blue, and whatever blue raspberry flavor that you're used to is probably very distant to what the fruit of this plant might actually taste like.

But no matter.  Blue raspberry is a firm institution when it comes to artificially flavored foods.  The problem with blue raspberry Pop-Tarts is that it's a fairly vacuous product.  Despite the cool Solo Jazz frosting pattern, the flavor of this falls flat.  They took the average Pop-Tarts "fruit" filling, added a ton of blue coloring, and maybe the slightest bit of blue raspberry flavor.  In the end, I'm not sure I'd be able to distinguish this from strawberry if I did a blind taste test.


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