Sometimes Foodie: Oops, I did have something after all!

Limited Edition Lucky Charms Pillsbury Cookies - Aldi

I lied, and I'm a food hoarder (but we already knew that). I DO have something for St. Patrick's Day so you're getting a bonus review this week!
I was going through my fridge when I found this green St. Patrick's Day themed package of Lucky Charms cookies...and another non-holiday themed package of the exact same thing from almost a year ago.(Almost!) I completely forgot about them, but the red package is probably still good...right? I figure I'll bake both up and we'll find out!
I very rarely buy bake-able cookies, but I am a sucker for anything marshmallow themed. Especially when it's crispy, crunchy, foam-y, cereal marshmallows.

The package says they're safe to eat raw, which is both tempting and a little off putting. Tempting because, who doesn't love eating raw cookie dough? And off putting because, as someone who has made several edible cookie dough recipes, it never tastes as legit as real, salmonella-y, cookie dough. So while it is awesome that I can eat these raw if I so choose, does it actually taste good that way?
I loaded up a cookie tray with MOST of the cookies, but not ALL. Part of this will me comparing the raw version to the baked one to see which is superior, and the other part is seeing if this red package that has been sitting in my fridge for...a while...is still any good.

When opened, shockingly, both packs of cookie dough pucks look exactly the same. (Despite of one package being almost a year old.) They're fairly small, pale, pucks of dough spotted with multicolored pastel marshmallows. But are they? These pastel specks look like the same pastel colors as actual Lucky Charms marshmallows, but they don't seem to be the iconic shapes we all recognize, or even broken versions of those shapes. These are kind of pellet shaped, and when I seek them out in the unbaked dough and eat them on their own.. I still can't tell if they're marshmallow, or some imposter confection. The pastel "marshmallow" bit quickly dissolves in my mouth, almost like Oreo creme filling, and it has a sweet vanilla creme-like flavor, but is it the same as a freeze dried marshmallow from breakfast cereal? I just don't know.
While I was digging though cookie dough I decided to take a bite, raw, to see how each one tastes.
Raw Red pack: Textually it's stiffer, but still very cookie-dough-like. It's sweet, sugary, a little processed but tastes...perfectly fine? I wouldn't call it delicious, it's a little baking soda-y or power...something about it tastes a little chemical-like, but it's not bad.
Raw Green pack: Crazy soft. Just picking it up off the tray caused it to get misshapen, and I found this one stuck to the tray a lot more leaving cookie-dough-reside behind like when you remove a Reese's from it's wrapper. Oddly enough, the fresh batch tastes more chemically than the year old one! And when I say chemicals I mainly mean a Baking powder/soda like taste. But this will make more sense later.
So raw, they're good, but I still don't think these compare to legit, might kill you, cookie dough. It's sweet, sugary, and had a mildly vanilla cereal marshmallow flavoring, but it's decadent. I could never eat the whole tray as-is, and thanks to the baking soda flavoring, I don't want to.
Baked, this is where the differences really start to shine.

Baked Red Pack - These stayed flat and smooth after baking, which might be due to the age of the baking soda/powder in the recipe getting weaker over time, which made sense for why that raw dough tasted better. These are dense and chewy, with more of a burnt marshmallow flavoring to them than they had in raw dough-form. Even though they are a year old, they honestly taste like something I might have bought from the bakery department at the grocery store. Sweet, highly processed, and just a hint of baking soda. I would compare them to a standard store bought soft sugar cookie, with a touch of marshmallow. For something this old, I'm impressed, but they are very cloyingly sweet and I honestly don't know if I like them very much. Will the fresh ones be better?

Baked Green Pack: These rose significantly, and have some little air bubbles/pock marks on their surface. These cookies are light, almost fluffy, and looks like Pepperidge Farms and Lucky Charms had a rainbow cookie baby. They taste...like a pretty normal sugar cookie. It has a sweet, vanilla, buttery texture with crispy edges, a soft chewy center, and maybe just a bit more sweetness than standard take and bake sugar cookies...but it tastes less marshmallow-y cooked than it did raw. Every now and again I get a vanilla marshmallow-like after taste, but I think it's from the pastel colored marshmallow nuggets getting stuck in my teeth. (Maybe they are marshmallows after all!) Again, they're really cloyingly sweet, after eating the raw dough, and a cookie each, I feel a little sick from how sweet everything is. (And not from how old they are. Shocker!)
These are a fun novelty, and they are very pretty, especially on the bottom where you see all the colored bits, but I rather eat a batch of homemade cookies, and a bag of cereal marshmallows, separately. Combining something so crispy and foamy into a moist cookie batter ruins all the textural things I love about cereal marshmallows, plus I am a store bought cookie dough hater, so take all of this with a glass of haterade. (Does anyone else still say "haterade?" Or am I showing my age here?)
If you like store bought cookies, especially soft and chewy sugar cookies, you'll love these. They're a one-and-done for me. Happy Saint Patrick's Day! See you tomorrow for another review (if I don't get food poisoning!)