Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Mike and Ike Throwback Flavors from Dollar Tree

Mike and Ike Throwback Flavors - Dollar Tree
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend! Mine was great, but INTENSE. We're talking 4-days of non-stop family gatherings, cooking meals, and gift giving. It's fun, but I need a minimum of 2-days of no make-up and sweatpants to recover before the New Year festivities begin.

Since the flaming garbage heap that is 2016 is nearly over, I thought I should try and do a bit of stash busting to make room for new year goodies. First to the foodie chopping block? Some retro throwback flavors from Mike and Ike.
I grabbed these at Dollar Tree a while ago, and even though I was excited to try the flavors well, one of the flavors...the packaging left a lot to be desired. I get that these are throwback flavors, but this isn't what the original packaging looked like. According to Collecting Candy, the real box of Cherry Cola Mike and Ike's from 2003 had a much different layout. It wasn't super polished, or fancy, but the older box design has a lot more life in it than this phoned-in-retro-phonies. Here's a link to the original 2004 Butter Popcorn box too. Were the old designs obnoxious? YUP! But it was the early 2000's, pretty much everything was obnoxious back then. If they weren't going to use the original box art they could have used this opportunity to create a cute, faux-retro design, instead we get these meh-looking wannabes. OF the two I like the clip-art-looking cola bottle the most, but that's because Popcorn-guy gives me the creeps.
Since I'm dreading the popcorn flavored candy, I decided to try that one first. (To get it over with.) I love actual popcorn, and flavored popcorn, but when it comes to making other things taste like popcorn...I think it's an abomination. I hate popcorn flavored Tic-Tacs and Jelly Belly beans, and I honestly don't understand how people can find them appealing. Maybe my tastebuds are broken. 
I opened up the box and the candy inside smells like...nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's kind of surprising really, since these are such a bright highlighter yellow and all, but I'm not complaining. I picked up a fluorescent bottom-heavy cylinder and popped it into my mouth. The very first bite wasn't bad, it was sweet, a little savory, and buttery..but the more I chewed the more that fake butter flavor started to shine. These aren't completely awful, but I was definitely not a fan. Plus, these gave me fake-butter-breath. No thanks. I actually put these out at my yearly cookie swap for friends and family to nibble on...and no one ate them. It appears I"m not alone in my buttered popcorn candy hatred.
Next up, one of the best flavors ever, Cherry Cola! I love all things chika-cherry-cola flavored. (There will ALWAYS be a Savage Garden reference in every cherry cola review I ever write.) I was really hype for this one, and it didn't disappoint! Like the buttered popcorn candy, it didn't smell like much, but what it lacks in aroma it more than makes up for in flavor. These have a fruity, but bold, cola flavoring with the typical jellybean-like Mike and Ike chew. Like a lot of cola flavored candies it lacks carbonation, but the general flavoring is very similar to a glass of flat cherry cola. I love them! My only issue is when you eat too many of these in a row it starts to taste medicinal, like those cola flavored medicines they have for kids, but I don't mind it at all. This entire box was decimated. By me, and me alone. (Sorry friends and family, by now I'm pretty sure you all know that the candy I put out at holidays is the B-team candy from the blog.)

I LOVE the cherry cola variety and will definitely be buying another box or two, but the buttered Popcorn can stay in it's time-capsule forever as far as I'm concerned. I'd say it's a flavor worth skipping, unless you're one of the rare people that like buttered popcorn Jelly Belly. (You guys must be an endangered species or something. I've never seen a fan of these candies out there in the wild.) 
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net
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5 comments:

  1. Hate the buttered popcorn jelly bellies. Why they would do it in the 1st place. I wonder if it would be "tampered" down if it was coated in chocolate.

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    1. I actually have a buttered popcorn flavored hot cocoa mix from the UK I need to try. I'll let you know if the chocolate flavoring helps me out!

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  2. I actually really love the buttered popcorn jelly bellies (though I can't eat a bunch in a row...they are a nice variety in a mix). I also enjoy their caramel popcorn ones.

    I have enjoyed the Dum-Dum pop cherry cola lollipops (they were a limited edition a couple of years ago).

    Both flavors are wonderful in that salt water taffy that is in Wegmans' bulk section in the spring.

    ---
    That said, I very MUCH liked the Cherry Cola Mike and Ike's but I thought that the popcorn ones were revolting. There was too much butter and no "corn" flavor I think.

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    1. I agree, I do love the combination of sweet and salty snack foods, and maybe with a hint of saltiness to offset all the sweet sugary notes these would be more tolerable, but rather than attempt to salt my Mike and Ike's I think I'll stick to munching on the nearly perfect Cherry Cola ones.

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  3. As I think of it...I think the one thing missing from the mike and ike's (That may be present at least a teensy bit in the jelly bellies) is the hint of saltiness. That's PART of the enjoyment of popcorn, IMHO

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