milk Archives - Sludge Central

Pumpkin Spice Milk and The F.M.A.O.A

Posted on October 28, 2011 by sexyarmpit

As the blogosphere’s resident flavored milk reviewer, I felt it was necessary to issue a statement regarding my opinion on Upstate Farm’s Fall treat, Pumpkin Spice milk.

Bloggers usually go through their experimental phase early on. They get it out of their system and go back to what has brought them success. As a note to rookie bloggers out there: writing about flavored milk WILL NOT GET YOU HITS. This is just what I do. It’s not a one-shot. By understanding that, it will help you gain insight into my burning passion for flavored milk. There are at least 12 – 13 people around the country that actually are interested in trying one of the flavored milks that I’ve reviewed, but they are a little on the apprehensive side. Now they now have a frame of reference.

I know what the few flavored milk maniacs want. I’m tuned in to the flavored milk community. We have a bi-annual board meeting in California and the FMAOA have asked me to be the keynote speaker again. If you are unsure what that acronym stands for, it’s the Flavored Milk Aficionados of America. I’ll be leaking some info here, but I’ll bend the rules abit. I wasn’t supposed to reveal my thoughts on this Pumpkin Spice milk yet, but since you’re reading, I’ll get a little crazy. At first, I’ll admit I was disappointed with the taste because I failed to read the label properly and was under the impression it was merely just Pumpkin flavored. Boy did I screw that one up! Failing to read the full description fouled up my entire tasting experience.

Once I realized that I was drinking PUMPKIN PIE flavored milk, it was an entirely different beast. Plain old artificial pumpkin flavoring would be amateur stuff. Once the pumpkin spice kicked in my mouth it immediately felt like I was drinking liquid pumpkin pie. The flavor is very accurate and the texture is smooth and velvety without being too thick. There’s nothing worse than trying to drink pancake batter although it may not be a bad idea for a flavored milk. My only complaint is that there was a bit of a vanilla note that distracted a bit from the pumpkin. As I’ve written in previous posts, I prefer drinking my desserts, it’s just less work. Not sure if Pumpkin Spice milk will appeal to any of you, but it came just in time for my month long Halloween celebration and I recommend it to those of you who occasionally like to pass on the brew and enjoy a cold flavored milk now and then.

Read my reviews of other flavored milks:

Intense Mint Chip and Orange Scream

Red Velvet Cake Milk

Red Velvet Milk Is Liquefied Lusciousness

Posted on February 23, 2011 by sexyarmpit

No, you aren’t imagining things, Red Velvet Cake Milk by Upstate Farms is indeed a real product. Ever since the Red Velvet trend in cupcakes and birthday cakes started to take the dessert world by storm, companies have tried to weasel the red velvet flavor into everything edible.

To the shock of many, Red Velvet cake doesn’t entice me in any way. What is the appeal of this trendy flavor? Perhaps it’s the visual attraction to its deep red color. One thing is for sure, it’s usually women who have red velvet obsessions. Whatever it is about red velvet, I never thought it would be liquefied and made into a dessert dairy product.

As a skim milk guy, I feel like I’m being super indulgent whenever I drink whole milk. Since this is definitely not a low fat milk, I drank only half the bottle and then saved the other half for the next morning. But it wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it, quite the opposite actually. The milk was full of flavor, sweet but not sickeningly sweet, and I’d opt for this rather than consuming an actual slice of red velvet cake or a cupcake. I prefer all of my food in liquid form because I’m sort of lazy it makes the whole eating process easier and with less preparation.

The milk’s consistency is mucilaginous, almost like a thick paint for the walls of your newborn girl’s bedroom. It would be weird if red velvet milk tasted like red water, so the thickness made it more of a dessert, especially ice cold. Don’t get freaked out, it will make your spit turn red so you’ll think your mouth is bleeding afterward.

The label on the bottle boasts that it’s ORIGINAL which I found odd because it’s not the like the dairy section is besieged by red velvet cake flavored milk. I must hand it to Upstate Farms and their knack for converting desserts into milk. If you’re not into drinking cake from a bottle but you’re more of a Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream person, you may want to check out The Sexy Armpit’s review of Upstate Farms Mint Chip and Orange Scream Milk.

Happy Milk Day!

Posted on January 12, 2010 by sexyarmpit

Milk is definitely not the beverage it used to be. As a kid, I would cringe watching my friends drink milk with dinner while eating over their houses. How could you possibly enjoy a fine feast of spaghetti and meatballs with a tall glass of…milk? No way, that was against the law in my house. It was iced tea or drink your own f’n saliva. This doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy a cold glass of milk with dessert or drenching my cereal in the morning. But things were a little different back on January 11th, in 1878, when the first bottles of milk were delivered to people’s homes. To celebrate that momentous occasion, The Sexy Armpit has dunked itself into a carton of milky trivia.

In 1991’s Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead, Sue Ellen (Christina Applegate) has to look after her brothers and sister. Sue Ellen is no Bobby Flay, so for breakfast it was Cap’n Crunch in a gigantic family style bowl doused with Jerseymaid milk.

If you’re the type of person who compulsively reads the container of the food that you’re eating, then you may have wondered why so many milk cartons say “Jersey” on them. Not to bring down this celebratory mood or anything, but it has nothing to do with the Garden State. Jersey cows are actually a well known breed of cow from the British Channel Isle of Jersey. This breed is small, well mannered, and economical for dairy companies. But if you delve further into milk lore, you will find, like mostly everything else in this world, that it somehow ties back to New Jersey. Man, am I a one trick pony or what?

It turns out that New Jersey is home to our fair share of popular dairy companies. Tuscan Dairy which began delivering in Union and Essex counties in 1918 and Cream-O-Land started distributing in the New Brunswick, NJ area in 1943.

Whymilk.com is the official Got Milk? website and you can also check out Facebook.com/milkmustache to keep updated on the milk mustache ad campaign. Here are links to other milk related posts from The Sexy Armpit:

Upstate Farms Intense Mint Chip and Orange Scream Milk Review

Blue Milk and the Technicolor Twilight Zone

Yoo-hoo vs. Nesquik (Vote for Your Favorite at the End of the Post)

Posted on July 14, 2009 by sexyarmpit

What comes to mind when you hear the word Yoo-hoo? All I hear is Janosz Poha interrupting poor Oscar’s sleepy time when he dropped by Dana Barret’s apartment unexpectedly. “YOO-HOO!” What a jerkoff. Only if he came bearing gifts, such as a six pack of cold delicious Yoo-hoo in glass bottles then he’d be forgiven.

Recently a few coworkers and I got into a heated debate as to which chocolate beverage is better, Nesquik or Yoo-hoo. If you’re one of the folks out there who thinks “milk was a bad choice,” then you may not enjoy chocolate milk to begin with. In that case you may take a pro-Yoo-hoo stance since it’s not technically full fledged chocolate milk, but “drink.” During my days of lunchboxes and brown paper bagged lunches, a Yoo-hoo drink box was always there to bring my mouth some chocolatey happiness. The one characteristic of Yoo-hoo that I’ve always enjoyed over typical chocolate milk is that it never felt like it weighed me down, it wasn’t thick and creamy like drinking a can of paint. Yoo-hoo’s lighter consistency helped broaden its drinkability to more situations than your average chocolate milk.

Yoo-hoo’s origin goes way back to the 1920’s when Natale Olivieri and his family sold his Tru-Fruit beverages out of their grocery store in New Jersey. Soon, Olivieri came up with a method of making chocolate flavored drinks that never went bad thanks to a special bottling process that eliminated spoilage. So if you have old Yoo-hoo in your pantry, if it’s sealed it will never go bad! Boosting it’s stock even more, Yoo-hoo sticks to its Jersey roots as it operates a plant in Carlstadt, NJ.

Here’s one of my favorite Yoo-hoo commercials from the ’80s. It was pretty cheesy then, but now it’s classic.

As far as nutrition goes, Yoo-hoo offers more vitamins and minerals than Nesquik. In that contest, Yoo-hoo wins 7-5. Nesquik contains saturated fat and cholesterol while Yoohoo has ZERO in those categories. For the health conscious, Yoo-hoo is the better choice. Like Nesquik, Yoo-hoo offers a variety of flavors in addition to chocolate, but they are more of a challenge to find considering the hunt you need to embark on to find plain, original Yoo-hoo.

Baseball fans may jump on the Yoo-hoo bandwagon since legends Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra have both hawked the drink. Simpsons loyalists know what Yoo-hoo is all about since Yoo-hoo promoted a sweepstakes in 2003 featuring The Simpsons, one of America’s longest running primetime shows.

For those who do consider artery clogging, mucilaginous milk to be refreshing, well there was always Nesquik or as I remember it…Quik. Can you even remember a time when Nestle wasn’t so egomaniacal that they didn’t feel the need to muscle their companies name into one of their products? It wasn’t until 1999 that Nestle Quik became Nesquik in the U.S and several other countries. Personally, I was fine with calling it Nestle’s Quik, I think it sounded better. Nesquik offers strawberry and vanilla varieties, and it’s still available in the classic powder mix.

Nowadays, Nesquik is widely associated with its yellow plastic bottles found in the refrigerated sections of 7-11’s and Quick Chek’s. Although, if you grew up in the ’70s or ’80s then you’re probably more familiar with mixing Quik powder into a glass of milk. Dane Cook’s bit about Nestle Quik’s “powdery magma” exploding in his face, and being all “hopped up on the Q” really sums up its appeal to children. My mom was always apprehensive to allow me to mix up some Quik, because something in her head told her it would be a disastrous event. She was usually right.

Points go to Nesquik for having a fairly cool bunny mascot. In a ridiculous move, the Quik bunny used to wear a “Q” on his shirt now wears an “N” to stand for Nesquik. The shit is still Quik!!! The f–king bunny needs a Q! The Nesquik Bunny also appears on the front of the Nesquik Cereal box which is something else Yoo-hoo doesn’t offer consumers. Nesquik cereal ain’t too shabby. Even if it’s similar to Cocoa Puffs, it’s got smaller balls, cocoa balls that is. Smaller balls aren’t the only indication that Nesquik cereal is basically a Cocoa Puffs knockoff, Sonny, the Cuckoo Bird is 50,000 times more insane that the non-threatening Quik Bunny. Talk about hopped up on the Q!

If you’re still undecided as to who should win this grudge match, take a further look at some Yoo-hoo and Nesquik related links:

OK so, I’ll admit that Yoo-hoo is lacking in the cool mascot department, especially one who happens to be really good at Atari and goes on adventures with Superman. Yoo-hoo has a lot of catching up to do in that category. May I suggest Dr. Janosz Poha?

Yoo-hoo’s official page

Creative Loafing’s blog The Daily Loaf has a fine post on how to make “The Hooville Martini,” a delicious sounding alcoholic concoction that incorporates Yoo-hoo.

Shawn Robare’s modern masterpiece at Branded in the ’80s: his discovery of what’s written on the underside of Yoo-hoo’s cardboard packing, its eventual conspiracy theory and the comic book it inspired.

Retro Planet’s Character of the week all about the Nestle Quik Bunny

5 Reasons Yoo-hoo Rocks My Socks, by Ken Tuccio

The Nesquik Bunny’s Bobblehead and plush doll

Nesquik’s official page

One of Quik’s best commercials, the bunny’s all strung out:

Blue Milk & The Technicolor Twilight Zone

Posted on July 2, 2009 by sexyarmpit

I’m a big supporter of writers and journalism in general but the article pictured above from the April 2009 issue of Family Fun Magazine is pretty damn awful. Absurd as a matter of fact. Linda Ann Daffron from Ramsey, NJ offers a “magical” prank for the kids in the family to try, most likely on one of their parents, (whichever one ISN’T reading the article and explaining to them how to pull it off). Here’s the short version of the directions 1) Get a cereal bowl and squeeze a few drops of food coloring into the bowl (blue food coloring pictured) 2) Pour dry cereal into the bowl and then once the unsuspecting schmuck pours milk into the cereal bowl they’ll have a bowl full of blue milk to surprise them. Is putting food coloring in a cereal bowl really that big of a trick, oh wait sorry, a “deliciously deceptive ruse?” Family Fun Magazine clearly thinks it is.

Here’s how the prank may unfold: “OH MY GOD! MY EFFING MILK IS BLUE!!! I feel totally PUNKED right now! I hope you didn’t videotape my reaction because I would’ve literally gone into massive seizures.” Will the family member really think they entered a “Technicolor Twilight Zone?” Wow, I want to enter that zone in a bad way. I thought I actually was there for a short period of time back in the mid ’90s when every stoner was trying their best to bring back tie-dye shirts. Just a hunch, but whoever wrote this one up must not be at all familiar with Boo Berry (it’s only existed for over 35 years), and it’s also safe to assume they missed the boat on Superman Crunch. These two offerings are examples of cereals that turn your milk blue without the assistance of food coloring. It’s a much easier world we live in, one where we don’t need no stinkin’ food coloring to turn our milk blue.

C’mon Linda, give me a break, you couldn’t do any better than that? Are you even a real person? Writers occasionally like to make up names and places in order to give the impression of realism. After you read the article it seems as if FAMILY FUN is getting a half ton of reader mail (or a kajillion as I’ve been referring to it as lately). People must be clamoring like maniacs to throw in their two cents on what wacky prank should be spotlighted next month. I actually feel bad ripping the mag, but can they really expect us to believe that parents and other fully grown human beings aren’t aware of the basic concept of food coloring? It’s not like 3 year old Tyler is going to be skimming microfiche machines for old periodicals that may help him cook up his next whimsical caper.

And as for our New Jersey friend Linda, stop trying to reinvent the wheel OK? Next thing you know you’ll be telling us we could use food coloring to dye Easter eggs, now that would just be a downright insult because we all know that’s utterly impossible. Are the folks in Ramsey, NJ not being kept busy enough in their lives that they have time to send in these radtacular ideas? I hope to Zod that Linda doesn’t go around to her weekly social gatherings spewing out little tricks for the kids to do. I got news for you Linda, you’re making people’s lives completely miserable. Oh, you know I’m just kidding with you Lind, you’re awesome…you just have too much damn time on your hands.

A Closer Look:

As you can see, the wacky multicolored font used in the word PRANKS, and the white “A” and exclamation mark, seem to signify that things are a little off kilter. There’s that little rambunctious kid in the circle (possibly a neighbor who we think has no family), not sure if its a boy or a girl, but does it really matter? Whatever their sex is, they are clearly rascally and live for getting into trouble and hijinks (one can assume this thanks to the obligatory head nod/eye wink combo…believe me, you don’t want to be on the receiving end of one of these or you may have flashbacks to films like Problem Child or Home Alone). Even “Gotcha!” is spelled out as if the wicked head nod/eye wink combo didn’t overly explain that one enough. On a completely unrelated note, why did they decide that the traditionally white speech balloon should now be orange? Is it just because they’re all about color coordination with silly Billy’s polo shirt he’s rocking? Maybe that was a prank too! Uh-oh, here comes Linda with her good ol’ Photoshop pranks! Prank #1: How to turn your speech bubble ORANGE!

To all the dairy companies out there: End this Magic Milk Bowl bullshit once and for all. Skip the middle man (food coloring) and finally market Blue Milk or Blue Skim Milk (for those of us in Jedi training). It seems like a no brainer to me. Hey George Lucas, could you pass up a mutually beneficial partnership with a dairy company to sell a nutritious drink for all us Star Wars nerds to gulp down? Tuscan Dairy, and Parmalat are you listening?

Peculiar Food Habits

Posted on November 28, 2008 by sexyarmpit

Most of us have our little food quirks. What better a day to discuss these eccentricities than on Thanksgiving? After you’re finished jamming the various courses into your stomach, please share with us some of your favorite weird, wacky food combos!

Some people I know can’t eat a meal if the food on their plate touches the other food. For instance if the broccoli hits the mashed potatoes in even the slightest way, or the potatoes got onto the steak they’ll freak the F out. Might as well throw the entire plate of food out! C’MON! I don’t mind if the food on my plate gets intermingled because of that old cliche “It all goes to the same place.”

There’s also the folks that are obsessed with certain combinations of food. It’s not like they are just throwing different food or drinks together for the hell of it either. These are the type of people who have been creating these specific concoctions for their entire lives. Look at how popular Iced Tea & Lemonade has become! Shit, my Dad even created his own drink in the ’80s called Pep-Tea. Of course it sounded like some sort of gastric medication but I laughed my ass off after he purposely poured the remaining liquid at the bottom of a Pepsi bottle into his half full glass of iced tea. “Hey Jay, It’s Pep-Tea!” It was a one of a kind moment because he was genuinely proud of his comical creation. If it wasn’t violating tons of copyrights and infringing on trademarks, he would’ve marketed that shit. When I was a kid, while eating lunch at his house, my friend Greg dipped pretzels into strawberry ice cream. He asked if I wanted to try it and I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, it just came completely out of left field to me. That reminds me of the outrageous practice of dipping french fries into a Wendy’s Frosty. That just seems like the work of Satan to me. Have you ever done that? As gross as I can get, I still won’t cross that line.

I have an abundant amount of food habits as well, but most of them consist of combining my food into a sort of witches brew. If I happen to be eating meatloaf and mashed potatoes I usually just mash the meat and some ketchup into the mashed potatoes into something similar to what KFC now sells as a “Famous Bowl.” In this instance, I feel like they’re pulling the old “let’s put water in bottles and sell it!” scheme. If someone ever told me that my cauldron of ketchup infused meaty mashed potatoes actually looked good, then I may have had a great idea on my hands. Of course, not one person ever said “Hey, that looks good!” or “I do that with meatloaf too!” I do the same thing if I’m eating Oreos which is super rare. I think it just seems more efficient rather than twisting the Oreo open and wasting time licking the creme. After that I’d have to dunk and wait until the cookie gets mushy, so I bypass all that and go for the gusto. I’ll get a glass or a bowl of milk and just let the Oreos chill in there for a bit and then just eat them all soggy with a spoon as if it’s Oreo soup. Uh-oh…Oreo soup, get on it Nabisco!

There are also people that eat stuff that I just think is totally weird. Recently at work, I overheard a guy talking about how he enjoys eating pigs feet. He claims they taste “just like a juicy piece of steak.” The same guy says pickled eggs are great also. To me, these are fairly disgusting things to be putting in or around my mouth. Today especially, you’ll notice some of your friends or relatives eating the actual bones of turkey or chicken, and eating the marrow. Total barbarians!

Another whacked out concoction I’ve dabbled in occasionally when I was younger is Milk and Pepsi. At the time I had no idea that it was a favorite of Laverne’s from Laverne & Shirley. I used to watch reruns of it when I was very young but I never made the connection. My mother pointed it out one day and she got a kick out of it. Years later this lead me to try making a creamsicle type drink by mixing orange soda with milk. It may sound disgusting to some, but it’s actually pretty good. I’m actually not a straight milk drinker unless there’s some sort of dessert involved. I’ll never understand the Milk with Dinner abomination. Forget about coffee with lunch or dinner, that’s out of the question. Coffee is for breakfast or after a meal only!

It’s possible that I’m just lazy when it comes to food or I actually like tasting all the leftovers together at the same time. Sometimes I’ll take 3 different leftovers and throw them into one bowl, mix it all up, microwave it, and then throw some sauce on it (BBQ, ketchup, honey mustard etc). The less work I have to do to eat the better. I’m not passed throwing everything into a blender and drinking my meal either. My friend Steve used to make fun of my odd blending obsession by asking me “What are you drinking…a Meat smoothie?” I would never take part in ingesting something that disgusting, but if we can get closer to becoming the Jetsons in this world I’d be happy. I’d like to pop a “lunch” pill with all the important nutrients, vitamins, and protein my body needs to be operating at an optimum level. Think of how easy food shopping would become! We could probably just have a few bottles of tablets shipped to us.

Happy Thanksgiving! Let us know some of your weird food habits:

Upstate Farms Intense Mint Chip and Orange Scream Milk

Posted on November 11, 2008 by sexyarmpit

I don’t scream for ice cream, I sort of give a half-assed whimper. Considering all the junk food and candy that I talk about here at the Armpit, I’m actually not a big fan dessert or candy. If I have to choose a dessert, I enjoy simple stuff like milk and cookies. Not surprisingly, chocolate chip cookies are one of my favorites, and if they’re homemade I like them even more. But when you’re dealing with a strange guy like me, it can never be that easy. Milk and cookies aren’t much work to whip up, but not in my case. I like my chocolate chip cookies homemade, and WITHOUT the chocolate chips! To me they just interfere with my favorite part of the cookie.

Amongst my profusion of hangups, quirks, and pet peeves, I also loathe the chips of chocolate in Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. The funny part is, I’m not a chocolate hater, it’s just that the chips ultimately get in the way of my enjoyment of the dessert. The chips in mint chocolate chip ice cream always get stuck in my teeth and it’s super annoying. I’d like to enjoy the chocolate but I can’t because it makes a pit stop in my molars and doesn’t come out until I brush my teeth. If I could just get the pastel green mint ice cream sans the chocolate chips, I’d be a pig in shit. The only way I could take it to the next level is if I had mint (remember: no chocolate chips) in “soft ice cream” form rather than “hard.”

When I was a kid I remember telling my sister that I liked letting my ice cream turn into “soup.” Once my ice cream liquefied I would just drink it right out of the bowl. Drinkable ice cream was my favorite, and still is. I even like to let my ICEE’s and Slurpee’s melt so I could get the prime flavor of the syrup without the minuscule ice pellets getting in the way and freezing my brain. To sum up what you’ve just read: I like my Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream melted and without chocolate chips in it.

On my weekly trip to Wegman’s, I was waiting in line to check out but got distracted by a plastic bottle of green liquid in a refrigerated section near the exit. Wegman’s has an extra dairy section at the front of the store for convenience, in case you don’t feel like running all the way to the back of the store just to grab a gallon of milk. I grabbed the “Intense” Mint Chip flavor by Upstate Farms immediately as if I was the only person who knew this treasure was on the shelf!

Aside from name dropping their own brand name about 62 times, (Intense!) the label on the back of the bottle describes the drink as “…a creamy and indulgent drink…” Then the label goes on to say “This is the drink of choice for the mint chip ice cream lover on the go.” It’s fairly awesome that they’re actually marketing a drink to a group of people known as “mint chip ice cream lovers.” I never realized I was part of that demographic, but I like it! The Intense Mint Chip contains the typical benefits of milk such as vitamins and protein, but unfortunately has 35 MG’s of cholesterol in case you’d rather not have a heart attack.

Intense Mint Chip is the type of drink you want to sip on a crisp moonlit night while you’re rolling down the highway as the street lights are streaking past you like your in light speed and the stereo is blasting Laura Branigan’s “Self Control.” It doesn’t matter that you’re sipping milk…you still feel really cool. Trust me.

Considering how exalted the Mint Chip flavor is, the Orange Scream can’t come close to its greatness. Think of the Intense Orange Scream as the sub par sequel, or the redheaded stepchild of the Intense milk family. Upstate Farms falls short with their Orange Scream, which is yet another failed attempt at creating the classic orange cream flavor. (Sunkist also failed recently with their miserable orange cream float.) One of the major strikes against Orange Scream is that it substitutes what’s supposed to be a nondescript “cream” flavor for a strong vanilla flavor. The cream shouldn’t necessarily be defined as “vanilla” because then it has the chance to overpower the orange flavor. The vanilla flavor may be forgiven if it isn’t a true “vanilla bean” flavor since a regular “no frills” vanilla would work better. There’s an exact balance of orange and cream flavor that needs to be perfected to achieve orange cream paradise. On a positive note, unlike the mint chip, the orange scream is creamy yet still low fat. Its label is pretty exciting or should I say…INTENSE! Even though I didn’t enjoy their Orange Scream formula, I have to hand it to Upstate Farms just for their sheer variety of offerings such as Chocolate, Strawberry, Vanilla, Cookies and Cream, and Mocha Java. Now all us Star Wars fans need is an “Intense Blue: A New Hope Special Edition Milk.” I hear it’s going to be high in midichlorians. Come on, where’s the freakin marketing people now? Can I get some kickbacks for that?

Gettin’ Whoppy with NEW Whoppers

Posted on January 6, 2008 by sexyarmpit

Nod if you’ve ever experienced Malt-Mouth which is the burning sensation you get inside your mouth after sucking on balls…not just any balls though…Malted Milk Balls. It’s a rare occasion that I actually partake in any malted milk balls, but when I do it’s usually the most popular brand, Whoppers.

If you’re going for it you may as well enjoy the best in it’s class. Think about it, what other malted milk ball comes in a carton? Anything that isn’t milk that comes in a milk carton must be awesome. A candy needs to have a very positive self image and cannot be self conscious in any way in order to display itself on store shelves in a carton. People won’t know what the hell it is. Is it a liquid candy? No silly it’s a carton full of brown balls that you can suck on!

The candy world has been on a rampage lately with debuting new varieties of classic candies. I always think this is a mistake because the new varieties are never as good. Let’s face it peanut butter M&M’s are pretty bad and why do we need them when we can have the original Reese’s pieces? They were good enough for E.T, right?

Whopper Strawberry Milkshake balls came out a few months back. Unfortunately these are light pink and sickeningly sweet. The flavor is pretty accurate but not only did I find that they had an aftertaste, but there were also too many “dud” balls. I’m not talking milk duds here…I’m talking about those bastard balls that weren’t fully processed and taste like burnt corn syrup. If you attempt to bite into these hard, lame balls you’ll see how gross they look. The original Whoppers beat this strawberry variety any day.

Coming up a close second are these new Reese’s Peanut Butter Whoppers. The package enticed me while I was at the checkout counter. I’m so easily sold. The peanut butter variety has the same type of gimmick as the strawberry, only with a flavor more conducive to a malt ball. To make a candy that has been notoriously paired with chocolate forever into strawberry milkshake was a mistake. I was more impressed with the peanut butter but the original remains the best of the bunch. The peanut butter version has a creamy and accurate peanut butter flavor, but like the strawberry version, it’s hard to eat a lot of them because they can easily make you want to vomit.