REVIEW: Lay’s Wavy Magic Masala Potato Chips

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I’ve been enjoying the influx of internationally inspired, inventive, or trendy chip flavors that have been coming out lately. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good sour cream and cheddar Ruffle, but “New!” holds a special kind of allure for me, and creative AND new? Well, sign me up yesterday!

Lay’s Wavy Magic Masala isn’t the brand’s first foray into the world of internationally-inspired flavors. Heck, it’s not even the only one available on shelves right now… but it’s definitely a unique addition to the lineup and the lineup of other seasonally available or otherwise limited edition chip flavors at my local grocery store, and that counts for something!

These chips smell amazing as soon as you open the bag. There is a distinct waft of spices in the most delicious way. Strong, but not overpowering, much like the flavor. They have a great balance between the bold spices and the rest of the ingredients, with a surprisingly perfect kick that leaves that gentle warmth on your lips and tongue for a few minutes after eating them. Perfect if you like that sort of thing, anyway.

My favorite Indian restaurant starts every meal with a little bowl of a complimentary snack called Aloo Bhujia: thin, crispy, spiced potato noodles. These chips remind me almost exactly of that. The spice blend is strikingly similar (thus, I feel it’s probably fairly authentic to the chips’ Indian inspiration), and it complements the potato base equally as well. It’s a perfect pairing of crispy texture and a flavorful, spicy seasoning that doesn’t hold back (probably a six on a 1-10 scale of relative snack food spiciness). They would go great with a cooling, creamy dip, too. The color is also nice and bright without that artificial Cheeto-y orangeness some chips have. And while we are on the topic of color, I absolutely love the bag design! The colors are bright, the accents are fun, and it definitely lets me know that something special and delicious waits inside.

I’m most definitely picking up several more bags of these, along with the ingredients for a nice homemade raita to dip them in.

Purchased Price: $2.50
Size: 7.5 oz bag
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 oz) 150 calories, 10 grams of total fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 gram of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 190 milligrams of sodium, 15 grams of total carbs, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 1 gram of total sugar, and 2 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Mtn Dew Baja Cabo Citrus

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There’s a new Dew in town, and that town is Cabo. Or is it Baja? Both of those are towns in Mexico, right? I wasn’t sure, so I looked it up. It turns out Baja is a state in Mexico, on the California peninsula, while Cabo is a city in Baja, so I guess the name kind of works? Anyway.

In the bottle, this soda is shockingly orange. The deep teal label provides a nice counterbalance, heightening the depth of the drink’s color. I know this might be a bit much for a color, but I find it really appealing. It’s very summery and bright. Looking at it just feels refreshing and summery. Like, I want the bottle to be wearing sunglasses with a pool floaty around it.

Opening the bottle, the scent is very orange-forward citrus. It’s not overpowering, but definitely noticeable. There are faint hints of lime as well, but kind of a syrupy sweet lime, unlike Baja Blast itself. It’s really nice and fresh, and I wouldn’t mind an air freshener or candle that smelled like it.

Then I took a sip. Have you ever had those very generic gummy orange slice candies? The ones dusted with sugar and seemingly only available at gas stations? Yeah, Mountain Dew Baja Cabo Citrus could have been called Mountain Dew Gas Station Orange Slice based on flavor alone. The lime and supposed “Citrus Punch” vanishes into the background, all but invisible against the looming presence of sweet, yet very artificial tasting, orange. If you’re a fan of orange sodas in general, I feel like you’ll probably like this. There’s a brief flash of Dew-flavored aftertaste, but that candy flavor is far more dominant.

I think this would make excellent floats with some vanilla ice cream or freezes with some lime or orange sherbet. It’s not bad, and I actually like it. It’s just very, very orange-forward, and I’m a lime girlie who really appreciates the more tart notes in my soda. (RIP Pitch Black II, the sourest of them all!)

In conclusion, this isn’t a super original flavor, but it is a nice orangey addition to the Dew lineup if you aren’t into that spicy mango flavor that recently dropped at Little Caesars.

Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: 20 fl oz bottle
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: Per Serving: 280 calories, 0 grams of total fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 gram of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 95 milligrams of sodium, 74 grams of total carbs, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 74 grams of total sugar, and 0 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Sonic Unicorn Dreams Slush

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Have you ever wondered what it might be like to get brain freeze from a mythical creature? No, that’s just me? Well then, you’re going to find out anyway because Sonic’s magical new slush is definitely worth getting an ice cream headache for!

Sonic describes their newest slushtastic creation as: “A vibrant pink slush filled with magical flavor bubbles, crowned with a fluffy cloud of whipped topping, and finished with a sprinkle of shimmering sugar crystals.” While that is true, it doesn’t do enough to describe the truly ???: *???:* ??magical *:???*:? nature of this pink and blue drink.

If you like cotton candy-flavored things, you’ll love this. The flavor is very solidly cotton candy in all its sticky-sweet glory. The blue raspberry “flavor bubbles” (aka popping boba) are a nice change of pace, serving to highlight the cotton candy while adding a nuanced blueness all their own. The whipped topping is a lovely creamy addition, especially if you swirl it all together a la the Taco Bell Baja Blast Dream Freeze I reviewed recently (I wonder if that nomenclature is solely because “dream” and “cream” rhyme…”

If I have some constructive criticism, it’s that I wish the shimmering sugar crystals on this drink were more like the chunkier, more textured versions from the same chain’s LTO Strawberry Shortcake Snowball Slush Float. Hah, try saying that three times fast! In all seriousness, though, the crunchier sugar crystals that drink used would have made the Unicorn Dreams slush a 10 out of 10! So if anyone from Sonic happens to be reading this review, consider switching up the sugar crystals! As much as I enjoyed the aesthetics of the sprinkle of pink and blue fairy dust on top of the whipped topping, they brought nothing else to the party and pretty much just dissolved on contact.

As an UNEXPECTED BONUS, this drink also comes with A UNICORN HORN SHAPED STRAW!!! OMG WHAT!? I literally giggled when it was handed to me. It’s a great little perk of ordering the drink and definitely made the drinking experience a bit more fantastical. Unfortunately, the smaller side of the straw is too narrow to accommodate the blue raspberry flavor beads. So, unless you want to use the straw like a peashooter and spit the blue things across the car, you’ll need to ask for a separate boba-sized straw.

Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: Medium (only size available)
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 430 calories, 5 grams of total fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 gram of trans fat, less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 180 milligrams of sodium, 102 grams of total carbs, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 101 grams of total sugar, and 0 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Totino’s Pizza Ramen Noodles

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I am no stranger to a good food mashup. After all, who doesn’t love a taco pizza or a pizza burger or any number of other things crossed with, topped with, or covering a pizza? But I’m just going to come right out and say it: Totino’s Buffalo Style Chicken Pizza Ramen Noodles is not a good food mashup, and I kind of wish I was a stranger to it.

I eat a good bit of instant ramen. I also eat a decent amount of frozen pizza, often of the buffalo chicken variety. So when I saw that Totino’s was coming out with a buffalo chicken pizza ramen, it’s fair to say my little heart skipped a beat. I wish I had better news to report.

Unfortunately, I don’t really think this counts as “ramen” per se. The noodles are shorter, thinner, and wider than any other instant ramen I’ve tasted. They were more reminiscent of one of the instant pasta varieties that come in a similar cup, like the ones made by Knorr or Pasta Roni. I might even go as far as to compare them to Kraft Easy Mac before I jump to calling this ramen.

The noodles aren’t the only thing keeping me from pinning a Ramen ribbon to this orangey-red concoction. The sauce (and yes, it’s sauce. This is NOT broth by any stretch) is thick and a little oily, with a vinegary aftertaste courtesy of the hot sauce flavoring. If you decide to try this for yourself, learn from my mistakes and stir it really, really well before microwaving. I stirred it initially as the instructions told me, but I wasn’t as thorough as I perhaps should have been. As a result, I had a thick, sticky paste-like substance at the bottom of my cup that required a lot of extra stirring to dissolve fully into the not-broth mixture. To be fair, I had been expecting a more “traditional” ramen-style outcome and not a thicker, saucier, sludge-type thing.

Upon peeling back the lid, the hot sauce scent is overpowering. It’s not quite nostril-stinging, but it’s closer than I’d like. It smells spicy but doesn’t taste that spicy, making it doubly disappointing. It’s not as fiery as Totino’s Faze Clan Pizza Rolls (or the older Totino’s proper variety) of the same flavor, which I do happen to enjoy. I think maybe the hot sauce mixed directly in with the cheese cancels out the heat, leaving behind a vinegary tang and a kinda vaguely spicy-adjacent hot sauce flavor, but without a trace of chicken. The ingredients say there’s chicken stock in there, but if you were to tell me you’d dumped a few shakes of hot sauce into some off-brand instant mac and cheese, I’d believe you. The pasta is also much softer than I like my ramen, despite only letting it sit for about 15 seconds rather than the recommended 2-3 minutes post-microwave. (What? I was hungry!)

All in all, stick to the pizza rolls, Totino’s, and leave the ramen to the pros.

Purchased Price: $1.88
Size: 2.19 oz container
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 3 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 240 calories, 6 grams of total fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 gram of trans fat, less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 1430 milligrams of sodium, 40 grams of total carbs, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 2 grams of total sugar, and 7 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Reese’s PB&J Big Cups

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I’m a big fan of the current Renaissance Reese’s is having these days. It feels like we’ve had more peanut butter cup innovation over the last 12 months than the previous 12 YEARS, and I, for one, am there for it. I have to admit, I’ve had mixed feelings about some of the newer creations, but on the whole, I am just happy for all the new treats.

In addition to some heavy hitters that dropped recently, like the Caramel Big Cup and Red Velvet, we now have PB&J with strawberry and grape flavors! Honestly, the only real surprise is how long it took Reese’s to come out with such a classic peanut butter pairing, especially as we’ve had things like cereal, sugar cookies, and pretzels featured in peanut butter cups. But the wait is over! It’s peanut butter jelly time sans baseball bat.

Let’s start with the grape, if only because it comes first alphabetically.

After opening the package, there is a whiff of chemically grape and then the familiar peanut butter and chocolate combo. That fruity scent almost brings to mind the grape flavor of Big League Chew. I cut the first cup in half to get a view of the inside and was disappointed at the ratio of peanut butter to jelly inside. If this were a sandwich, it would absolutely not pass muster. This is disappointing for two reasons: 1) It throws off the flavor balance in the candy. 2) I KNOW Reese’s can and has done better! The ratio in the recent Chocolate Lava Cup and the aforementioned Caramel Cup was much better.

The chocolate and peanut butter you know and love are the same as you’d expect, with the artificial grape flavor playing a distant third. It tastes very fake when my tongue could pick it up. I even pulled apart the cup to get a better taste, and it was hard to get much flavor, even with a finger swipe of just the sticky purple goop itself. What is there is very reminiscent of grape Kool-aid with a bit too much water mixed with it.

Now, onto the strawberry.

The initial scent upon opening these is oddly both stronger *and* weaker. Stronger in that there’s definitely more there, more present than the grape, weaker in the sense that it smells less like the intended flavor. It’s less of a specifically strawberry fragrance and more of a generically sweet, fruity candy scent. That didn’t bode well.

As with the grape, the strawberry layer is pitifully thin and utterly lacking. Interestingly, it had a stickier consistency though. It reminded me of the squeeze tube-type candy like Ooze Tubes.

Just like with the grape, the flavor was faint and very artificial. It reminded me of mixing green gummy bears into Sprite and letting them sit long enough to start dissolving. It was like someone turned down the flavor without turning down the sweetness.

All in all, both flavors are good for peanut butter cups but really weak if you’re specifically looking for peanut butter AND JELLY cups.

Purchased Price: $3.19 each
Size: 2.8 oz
Purchased at: CVS (Grape), Cumberland Farms (Strawberry)
Rating: 5 out of 10 (both)
Nutrition Facts: (1 cup) 190 calories, 10 grams of total fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 24 grams of total carbs, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 22 grams of total sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

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