junk food junkie is BACK! and what have pop-tarts wrought!

Well, it didn't take long to get back to my crap eating habits! And I don't mean bacon (or do I?). As you've probably noticed, I have this thing for pop-tarts. Maybe it is a childhood memory blip or just a quick way to solve a sugar fix need when donuts cannot be found. More like a combo of both. Whenever I'm in the grocery store I scan the selection of tarts to see what's there and if anything new has come out.

These days it seems Kellogg's has adopted the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach for testing which new ones will and which won't take off. Usually, if they do well, you'll see the "limited edition" moniker on the boxes disappear and they will go into regular rotation on the shelves. That happened with the red velvet version which didn't suck.

Recently, there was an influx of new flavors that all came down the pike at the same time. I won't say I was overwhelmed, but I wasn't that excited to try a couple as they just seemed mishmashes of current flavors like blue raspberry or tropical fruit splash or whatever. I narrowed my vision down this time 3 specifics with what I'll call mixed reactions.

I'm gonna start on the plus side with these chocolatey caramel ones. I really enjoyed these, probably more than I should have. Which means enough to actually get a second box of them. Kellogg's seems to have the chocolate flavor worked out since they use it a lot so I was dubious about the caramel. But they've managed to recreate it enough here that it isn't too sweet tasting yet present enough you get the undertones of caramel. Really, it's just cooked sugar and cream mixed together and most of their flavors are already doing it, so I'd have been surprised if they couldn't pull off some version of this .

I had this (and the others) in my 4 ways: plain out of bag, out of bag with butter, heated but plain and then heated with butter. While all versions I found a treat, the best was the heated plain. The warmth brought the chocolate and caramel flavors together nicely making this a great quick alternative (for me) to a donut or pastry. A flavor winner it seems they have now put added to their regular line up. As a side note, I also tried these with a little bit of peanut butter on them and it won't half bad. White trash eatin' sure, but at least I was getting some protein!

Here we have frosted watermelon. Me and the SO tried these and found them just so-so. While they were not terrible, they were just a little off. While the chocolate ones at least had some actual chocolate in them, everything in here was fake. Watermelon of any kind is not even a listed ingredient. It is artificially created watermelon "flavor" and it tasted just like it. Kind of reminded me of a watermelon Jolly Rancher candy with its chemically aftertaste. Not bad, just not great. I will say it did smell like watermelon and that was enhanced when you heated it up so that was pleasant. As for the 4 ways, plain heated brought the most flavor, even though it wasn't a necessarily something I'd lean toward getting again. Okay, but I'd pass next time.

We all knew this had to come sooner or later. I was surprised they hadn't done this before now, but you know I was all over it. How could I pass up anything with bacon! Maple I can take or leave, but bacon, no. I guess the idea here is some sort of take on bacon and pancakes with maple syrup. What we have here though is probably the most god-awful, terrible, yuckiest, crap-nasty pop-tart I have ever had. (except maybe that hairy fish tasting thing but that was China, so...)

This was just, ugh, even thinking about it makes me throw-up a little in my mouth. There was nothing real maple or bacon or otherwise here. Both flavors were artificial! Okay, maybe bacon I can see recreating, but maple? It's a refined tree sugar, they couldn't have gotten with at least some real? And the bacon, blech! It was almost as if they just added some kind of fake, chemical hickory flavor and thought "oh, well just pretend that's bacon flavor, they'll never notice!" Well, I noticed and so did the SO. This was not good any way we had it. There isn't enough butter in the world to make up for how bad this really tasted. Not on that, when heated, it sort of smelled like maple mixed with smoke from a fire at a tire plant.

At this point I'm not sure how this even made it out of their R&D department. Either someone's taste buds were out of whack that day or they were drunk. In the world or real maple and bacon, those flavors do go together and compliment each other. Here, it is worse enough to make you wish you had never gotten up for breakfast and this was all just a bad, bad, bad dream.

It wasn't a total loss and I did get some chocolatey caramel junk food out of it. The watermelon, while blah, we did at least finish the box--they weren't terrible enough to just toss. The other ones that shall not be named, I personally took down to the compost bin even though I felt guilty for the poor plant or lawn that would end up getting it.

I feel I have to say shame, shame, shame on you Kellogg's for making ME! hate the taste of bacon in any form. I'm from the South and it's a complete sacrilege. Next time you decide to try something like this again, please call me and I'll come down to your headquarters personally with a side of real bacon and slap you silly with it till you change your mind. I whole hog swear on it!