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Supertaster
Oreo Cakesters and Yoplait Go-Gurt FizzixAmerica’s favorite cookie fails as a snack cakeWhat's new? What's great? What's weird? Our columnist samples offerings from supermarket aisles and fast-food menus. |
By: Nabisco
Suggested Retail Price: $2.99 for six packs of two
What is it that we dig about Oreos? The best-selling cookie of the 20th century is pleasantly crunchy, dunks well in milk, is hackable (as anyone who has crafted homemade Double Stuf Oreos can vouch for), and magically compels unholy levels of consumption.
What, by contrast, do Oreo Cakesters have going for them? These Oreo-branded chocolate snack cakes cannot be effectively dunked, cannot easily be torn asunder, and are pretty much as addictive as an off-brand Ho Ho, which is to say not very. A single Cakester, removed from its wrapper, also looks kind of like poop.
Though they retain some of the grainy texture and chocolate taste of their older, smaller kin, Cakesters can be defined by a single adjective: squishy. They coat the interior of your mouth not with little chocolate crumbs, but with a fuzzy slime of indeterminate flavor.
Perhaps the greatest sin of the Cakester is its soft exterior. It erases that delightful contrast between hard cookie and soft crème that defines the treat it’s modeled after.
If these things stick around for more than a year or two, don’t take it as an endorsement of the snack; take it as an indictment of the American consumer.
By: Yoplait
Suggested Retail Price: $2.79 for eight 2.25-ounce tubes
The acting theory over at General Mills is that this carbonation-infused yogurt will lure older children into patronizing Yoplait. General Mills isn’t crediting dugh—a carbonated yogurt beverage popular in Iran, Afghanistan, and other parts of Central Asia—as the inspiration for Fizzix, but it seems possible that the lassi-esque drink may have provided the original creative spark. It doesn’t, after all, follow naturally that once you have yogurt, you may as well carbonate it.
The flavors—Wild Cherry Zing, Strawberry Lemonade Jolt, Blue Raspberry Rage, Strawberry Watermelon Rush, Triple Berry Fusion, and Fruit Punch Charge—make no pretense to culinary excellence. That, said, they don’t taste so very different from the “fruit” souping up other sweetened yogurts, and they’re legitimately yummy if you like candy. Which I do. Fizzix is packaged in (relatively) healthy serving sizes (2.25-ounce tubes), and unlike Oreos, it doesn’t demand repeat consumption: One tube is both pleasurable and plenty.
Although Fizzix contains 40 percent more calories and double the cholesterol to a similarly sized container of nonfizzy strawberry banana Yoplait, it also has double the calcium and more riboflavin. If Fizzix is the sweetest, most dessertlike item in your kids’ lunchboxes, they are probably doing fine. If it’s the healthiest, they’re boned.
Fizzix was actually developed over by a professor at Brigham Young University.
See
http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/17/news/...
Good to know about the cakesters. I've been eyeing them in the stores. I'll stick to Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies for my snack cake indulgence.
Not sure about Fizzix but Oreos are made with hydrogenated fats... you are not going to catch me near that stuff...
I'd love to know what goes into coming up the the names for these products. There must be some hard-and-fast rules like, #1--No use of real words...
Don't believe any of it! Our troops have been passing out Cakesters to little Iraqi children, and not one of them has said they looked like poop.
the "word" "cakesters" bothers me to no end. i saw a commercial for these things a month ago and i almost broke my tv. nails on a chalkboard - for real.
I didn't even realize they were called "Cakesters", I just saw 'em on the shelf one day when I was looking for "junk food" and they caught my eye (I actually don't much like Oreos myself, though the short-lived chocolated-covered ones at least had over-the-top-ness going for them.
But anyway, they're great junk food! They're disgustingly sweet, oily/greasy/fatty and cocoa-y. They could have a little more "bite" to them, but we also love soft food so I'm sure their focus groups and test marketing got that part right. And what else/more/less does one expect from any sort of American "snack cake"? As food per se, they're all horrendous - for you and tasting. But as for addictiveness, I don't remotely count calories, but it disturbs me that I find myself halfway through a box of these before I know what's hit me. (rofl)
But then I guess if you think Oreos actually taste "good", all bets are off. (g,d&r)
I happen to like the cakesters. I love all things oreos. To me they are just like Devil Dogs, but greatly improved (better cream filling and not suffocatingly dry).
I'm going to be that guy and mention that he probably meant to say that the Cakesters were like Suzy Q's. Ho Ho's have a chocolate covering. Heck, he even included a link that shows that they are nothing alike.
I totally love Cakesters...I had to force myself to stop buying them after the second box. And I haven't tried the chocolate cream variety.
And I agree about Fizzix being patterned after existing Asian drinks, I'm pretty sure I've seen that stuff at the Korean market near my apartment. Of course they can't say "they drink this stuff in OTHER parts of the world so we thought we'd try it on Americans" or whatever. If only the food market was like the fan art community, if they were everything would be Japanese-inspired...