Gimmicks Good, Bland Bad

Every time I go grocery shopping, there seems to be endless distractions that prevent me from sticking strictly to my shopping list:  the candy aisle (because everyone knows that chocolate is a necessary part of life), the beer aisle (fits in the same category as chocolate), and the almighty important chip aisle. 

For a while now, I have found the never-ending variety of new chip flavors too tempting for me to pass up.  I proudly brag about how we've tried every flavor of Dorito to ever grace the shelves of our beloved Walmart.  I also fall prey to the gimmick- packaging scam.  When Dorito had the "name this chip" gimmick a  couple summers ago, we just HAD to try them.  They came in an all-black bag with white letters.  There was a contest where if you guessed the chip flavor, you could win a lifetime's supply of Doritos (which boy, would they have been sorry if we'd won that!).  We thought they were cheeseburger with pickle flavored, but I'm really not sure what flavor they ended up being.

Sadly, whenever we find a chip that's supposed to be "spicy", it always disappoints.  Maybe because their idea of "spicy" is dumbed down for us lame-o Americans?  Maybe because after years of subjecting our tastebuds to REALLY spicy things we no longer have tastebuds (because we've burned them all away)?  I dunno-- but they never seem to do the trick of satisfying our needs for spicy hot.

Today while at the store, I found two chips of interest:  Cheetos has a new "large"- sized cheeto puff out.  That looked (and felt, as I squeezed the bag and found that the cheeto puffs did indeed seem large) intriguing.  Also, I came across buffalo wing-flavored pretzle crisps, which were surprisingly very good. 

This weekend, while celebrating an early Easter with the in-laws, one of the items that "the Easter Bunny" left in the baskets for the kids were Bean Boozled jellybeans.  There are several colors, which is nothing new obviously.  What is new is that there can be two separate flavors for each color.  For the green ones, you can either get sour apple flavored or booger flavored.  The peachish ones were either peach fizz flavored or pencil shaving flavored.  From the looks on my kids' and their cousins' faces as they ate the "gross" flavored ones, I opted out of that flavor adventure.  The thought of the gross flavors is enough alone to make my stomach a little queasy; I can only imagine what biting into an ear wax-flavored jelly bean would do to me...

If anyone has tried any interestingly flavored foods (especially chips), let me know; we're always up for the challenge (except for booger or pencil shaving- flavored things.  I think I can pass on those).