2016 - Domestic News (pt. 2 of 2)

Welcome back to the 2016 wrap up...

Oh, you thought that I was just hopping around the food globe at the end of 2016? Nay... I took down my share of domestic treats as well.  The breadth of the journey may not be as substantial, but there were a couple of items that need to be noted.

Pumpkin Pie Pop Tarts (or PPPT for short):

You gotta love the fall. Pumpkin lattes, pumpkin candy corns, pumpkin booze, and on and on and on. Rumor has it, this is even embraced overseas where Japan once offered The BK Pumpkin

Laughing Squid found these seasonal monstrosities from Burger King Japan, which include the “Pumpkin Bomb”: a burger topped with lettuce, bacon, creamy nut sauce, and ten slices of fried kabocha.

NO! I didn't eat that!! Fat Mike's never been to JAPAN except in Street Fighter (where he kicked some major ass).
I'm just trying to make a point that there's pumpkin all around us in the fall and it's easy to get caught up in the noise and miss something once in a while.




Send in the PUMPKIN PIE POP TART!!

What a fantastic way to wake up in the morning.  Yes, Pop Tarts are meant to be a morning pastry so that's how Kellog's intends for you to START your day.  After all, breakfast is (supposedly) the most important meal of the day, so why not ingest a 200cal toaster pastry. Wait... there are 2 of them?? Oh, ok then, a 400cal toaster pastry.  Excellent.

Nevertheless, this tasty treat goes PERFECTLY with morning coffee and isn't pretentious enough to claim to have "real pumpkin" hidden anywhere inside.  There's no claim of being "made from real pumpkin" or having "farm raised organic pumpkin ingredients".  This is simply an artificially flavored pumpkin bomb that explodes in your face with the sugary goodness of vanilla frosting and colored sprinkles as the perfect compliment to round out the meal. DELICIOUS.  Seasonally appropriate, easy to prepare, and enough to get anyone steered toward a successful day of... whatever.  This was an LTO folks, so I'm sorry that you can't run out and grab it now, but definitely keep it in mind when you're deciding to embrace the fall of 2017.  I don't endorse Pop Tarts as a regular go-to, but this is a GREAT way to "treat yo self".  However, as with ALL things you can find them on the iNterNet if you don't want to wait.

Stuffed Reese's PB Cups:












Spoiler alert: These are disappointing.  Since this is a 2016 wrap-up, I'm not gonna worry about build up, lead-in, or teasing.  When I started seeing commercials for the stuffed Reese's cups, I thought to myself, "It's about time! Wait, this was MY idea. Sh#t, it's about time!"  I ran out and grabbed me a pack of these obvious chocolate saucers of success. Unfortunately, my hopes were shattered by shock and disappointment. This rocked my world to the core in a sad way.

Look at the picture on the package:

Now, look at the thing:

C'mon.

I'm not going to get any deeper into this.  The pieces were non-existent.  There wasn't even a candy shell crunch to enjoy during the eat. The entire point of the pieces was to enhance the experience of the cup, but if the pieces aren't discernable from the rest of the cup, how can the experience of the cup be enhanced??? This made NO sense.  A complete failure in EVERY sense of the word. Demoralizing, depressing, and frustrating. I almost didn't eat my second cup out of disgust... almost. But I'd still purchase this over the Butterfinger cups.

Whole Grain Cheddar Cheese Goldfish:

Even looking at the words "whole grain" in the title above is making me a little uncomfortable. The fact remains that I stumbled across these appetizing treats by accident when shopping for "kid food" in the grocery store.  I'm a Pepperidge Farm enthusiast for sure.  You put a sack of ChessMen in front of me and I'm going to devour those things in a moment's notice.  The same goes for their bread, for their Milano cookies, and it should be noted that I had to ween myself off of those chocolate chunk varietals years ago.  They may have killed me.  I never would have thought that when they decided to tackle a whole grain version of the classic Goldfish that they could create a whole new perspective for me on "healthier" snacking.  But here's the great news... they're NOT healthier, they just taste better. WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT?!?!?!?

If given the choice, you should ABSOLUTELY get the whole grain Goldfish. Somehow, Pepperidge Farm stumbled on a deeper cheddar flavor and grainier cracker that makes the overall eating experience deeper and more pleasurable overall.  Trust me, the moment that I had a handful of these whole grains I immediately ran to grab a traditional version for a side-by-side comparisson (classic Fat Mike). I needed to make sure I wasn't taking crazy pills. After eating the two, I compared labels and found that although the calorie count was different, the overall snacking balance of ingredients are exactly the same. That is to say, salt, dietary fiber, sat fats, etc. balance out to equal each other.  The whole grains just, STRAIGHT UP, taste better. That's why it was worth Fat Mike sharing. This is not a "healthy alternative". It's just a better option. Eat it.


That does it for 2016.  What's coming for 2017? Well, did someone say JERKY????

I heard that Faturated Sats has a new West Coast correspondent that we're gonna hear from soon, and Taco Bell is making some more moves that you can read about here soon.

McDonald's has recently broadened their horizons..

and there's an ice cream out there that I'm gonna buy this weekend.

Keep checking back.  Remember to share Fat Sats with those who don't know, and ALWAYS keep eating stuff.