Monday, July 3, 2017

Limited Edition Trolls Cotton Candy Jello & Strawberry Cupcake Pudding - Walmart

Being a late 80's baby, I caught the tail-end of the Trolls phenomenon. I had a few treasure trolls and a musical VHS tape that taught me that, "Trollies come from acorns, and that's how Trollies are born." Seriously, I didn't even have to look that up. It's a repetitive song that has been stuck in the back of my mind over 2 decades later out-surviving the troll dolls themselves whose glued-on hair and jewels popped off over time dooming them to yard sales and flea markets. (If you want to suffer along, here's a link. It's even worse than I remember.) Looking back, Trolls were are pretty weird concept and I didn't think it could be modernized to appeal to children today, and yet, here we are. 
I haven't seen the new movie, even though it's already on Netflix! (That was fast.) From what I've gathered from Cinema Sins take on it, Trolls have ditched their bejeweled belly buttons in favor of magical hair and glitter, but they still sing. Other than their hair, the characters don't really look like their retro-ancestors at all. (I think that they look like the Fraggles and Trolls franchises were mashed together with a sprinkling of Eureka's Castle.) Even though they don't appeal to me as a near 30-year old, kids are eating them up! We just went to a family event and a seven year old reenacted the whole fist-bump-gear-shift scene for me line for line.

I may not be all that interested in the movie, but these two limited edition Trolls items at Walmart caught my eye. (Plus they were cheap.) So, are these more universally appealing than the movie? 
On the packaging we've got the two lead characters expertly color-coordinatied with the gender binary (i'm joking) flavors. The blue troll, Branch, voiced by Justin Timberlake, is on the blue jello box, while the pink Troll, Poppy, voiced by Anna Kendrick is on the pink pudding one. The designs are pretty nice for a commercial tie-in, and since the boxes are so tiny, I applaud them for making it look as decent as it does.
Each package has a little recipe suggestion on what to do with the contents. Maybe I am getting too old for this, but gummy bites sound pretty gross, so we're just going to follow the directions and try each of these products as-is. 
First, up, I thought I'd try the more intriguing of the two, Cotton Candy flavored Jello. 
To make it, all you do is boil water, mix the powder in until it dissolves, and then add more cold water before you refrigerate. That's it.  Easy peasy. When mixing everything together I was really impressed by the scent of the jello powder. It smells awesome!
Once Jello-ified, it still smells amazingly accurate. Just like bags of blue cotton candy sold on New Jersey's boardwalks. I have to resist the urge to rub this all over my body like a LUSH shower jelly. Instead, I scooped up a jiggly-spoonful for a taste-test. 
At first, this tastes like cold rubbery nothing. Well, not completely nothing. It's sweet, but not much else. It's a very odd sensation actually, kind of like I'm eating chilled hunks of sweetened Vaseline or something. It takes a bit of warming up for any of the cotton candy flavoring to peek though. 
Once it starts to melt you get this burnt-sugar-chemical flavoring that reminds me of the Cotton Candy scented Body Fantasy spray I was obsessed with in middle school but find sickeningly artificial now. It tastes like I am eating my middle school memories, so I wouldn't say it's all that great. 
It's cotton candy-like, but very artificial. More-so like the cotton candy you buy in sealed bags that somehow never looses it's fluffiness. I can eat a small container of it with no problem at all, but at a certain point the artificial-aspect overwhelms me and I start getting nauseous. So, yeah...not a great flavor. At least, not for me. I bet small kids would like it (then again most of them will eat anything if it's blue.)

I can't say I'd recommend this flavor to the general foodie-populace. Unless you have blue-loving troll-obsessed little ones at home, this is one limited edition product I recommend skipping.    
Maybe the pudding will be a bit more edible.

The pudding is just as easy to mix up, you mix the power with some cold milk, stir until everything is dissolved, and then chill it in the fridge. I was pretty excited for this one because I finally had an excuse the use these tiny ceramic cupcake cups I've had for YEARS.
Once mixed up, the pudding turns a soft pastel pink color with little flecks of red mix-ins. I guess those are tiny strawberry bits? Although it's not as appealing as the cotton candy jello, this also has a really pleasant smell. It reminds me of strawberry milk.

I'm not sure if something went wrong...but when I put the pudding into the fridge the rest of it turned white and only the surface stayed pink. This is not what the packaging promised. My milk wasn't expired or anything, so is this normal?

I scooped up a spoonful and it was pretty okay, it tastes like you added a spoonful of strawberry cake mix to a package of vanilla pudding. It's sweet and vanilla'd with a hint of artificial strawberry. Like a less healthy and realistic strawberry yogurt cup.

I could eat this without any of the nausea issues from before, but I wouldn't say it was all that different from the normal strawberry pudding mix. For a limited edition item or flavor, it's not very unique, but I did enjoy it quite a bit.
 Safe to say, I wouldn't be repurchasing either flavor for myself, but they do have their applications. The pudding's cupcake recipe sounds intriguing, and the cotton candy Jello might be interesting to make cotton candy Jello shots with (using cotton candy vodka, of course!).

IN the end I am glad these products exist, but they're not worth stocking up on, or going out of your way to check out. Have you guys seen the movie? Or tried either of these products? Let me know what you think! (Maybe you can convince me to watch it after all.)
Keep Up with My Daily Adventures on Social Media!
https://www.facebook.com/SometimesFoodie?ref=bookmarkshttps://www.instagram.com/sometimesfoodiehttp://pinterest.com/poisonantidote/https://www.youtube.com/user/ApatheticPoisonTV?feature=mhee
SaveSave

3 comments:

  1. Jell-O could had used cotton candy sugar & unflavored gelatin. Combine those two and you got better cotton candy Jell-O

    ReplyDelete
  2. I found it gross. I was excited to have jello that was cotton candy flavored to be disappointed at my daughters 5 th birthday. It was strange and to see everyone try it and spit it out was embarrassing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I found it gross. I was excited to have jello that was cotton candy flavored to be disappointed at my daughters 5 th birthday. It was strange and to see everyone try it and spit it out was embarrassing.

    Sexy Gaming
    เกมยิงปลา

    ReplyDelete