Monday, September 25, 2006

I'm Weird: Mexican Doritos.

As noted earlier, my wife and I got back from a Caribbean cruise for our 5th anniversay last week. The cruise was phenomenal and one of the ports my wife and I stopped at was Calica, Mexico.

While on an excursion, the tour bus stopped at a tiny marketplace where we could go to the bathroom and shop. It was a cool little area with lots of little crafts to look at. What do I get excited about? Not the hand carved stone chess sets or the intricately sewn Mexican blankets. I about lost my composure when I found a snack rack filled with Mexican chips and snack foods. As the title of this article told you, I'm weird. If you've read this blog before, you know that I love finding differently packaged sodas and snackfoods. Just check out the Halloween article right before this. It's a sickness, I know, but I love it. ;)

Anywho, on the aforementioned holy rack of snacky goodness, I found several flavors of Doritos and Fritos that are not found in the US. Check out the two Doritos packages below (queue heavenly music and chorus of angels).



The one on the left is pizza flavored Doritos, which did exist many years ago in the US when Pizza Hut and Doritos partnered on the flavor. It tastes like pepperoni and green pepper based pizza, but there is WAY too much flavor powder in this particular bag. It's overwhelming. It took a bottle of black cherry soda and two waters to get the taste out of my mouth. Yikes. Hope the other one is better. The package on the right is called Incognito, which means mystery, or puzzle. You have to guess the flavor. How awesome is that? They made it a game! There are pictures of limes and red/green chili peppers on the black packaging. The flavor powder is also black. It's kind of cool to look into this bag and see dozens of black death chips staring back at you. As for taste, they taste like limes and chili peppers, which also tastes like many salsas you'll have in the better Mexican restaurants. But there is also a small aftertaste of curry, which is usually found in Indian cuisine. Kudos to my wife for figuring that aftertaste out. Very odd to have that in a Mexican chip, but not unwelcome. It was weird at first, but the more I got into the bag the more I loved it. Much better than expected.

While sneaking around that marketplace I also found two cool sodas. In much of the world they don't label Diet sodas as such. They just call them Light. I found Coca Cola Light, and Pepsi Light.


I don't know about you, but this was so exciting to me. I had actually seen Coke Light many years ago on my first trip to Mexico back in 1999. I had traveled to the East Coast of Mexico to a small restaurant in Rosalita. This was the first time that I had found Pepsi Light, though. Words can't describe it, people.



I want to say that the Coke and Pepsi Light drinks tasted slightly different than regular Diet Coke and Pepsi, but that may be because I drank them in the land of enchiladas and not in the upper 48.

Oh well, I'll leave you with the last two bags I found, 2 flavors of Fritos that are so totally mexican I'm suprised they didn't come packaged with a Corona. Behold Chili & Lime Fritos (left) and Chipotle & Chorizo Fritos (right).


I haven't tasted those 2 Fritos yet, but I will. Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Bring on Halloween!!

I have been in a very Halloweeny mood lately (haha...I said weeny!). Part of it started by reading X-Entertainment's Halloween Countdown. Each weekday leading up to Halloween night Matt reviews fun Halloween items like scary masks, food items and movies. It's a ton of fun.

Like Matt, I also love when stores start preparing for the Halloween buying season and put out all their goulish wares. The decorations and varieties of Halloween themed candy always make stores look cool. I especially love it when regular food, candy or drinks change things up and start offering Halloween-specific offerings. Cool items from years past include Mountain Dew Pitch Black, the Jones Soda Halloween Collection and Halloween themed Kool-Aid called Ghoul-Aid. Actually, one of X-Entertainment's favorite things to review are the yearly Halloween offerings of Kid Cuisine microwave meals.

So, needless to say, all of this is putting me in the Halloween mood, and it's not even October yet. Despite that, I found a cool Halloween drink the other day at my local Winn-Dixie and thought I'd share it with you. Feast your eyes below to the terrifying visage of Tropicana Twisters' two scary flavors, Green Ghost and Midnight Storm!! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!



Tropicana Twisters are a very flavorful drink, but usually they are a mixture of two or more juice flavors, hence the moniker TWISTERS. For some reason the "suits" decided to eschew the "two juices twisted into one" idea and are presenting these twisters as solitary flavors; Sour Apple and Grape Thunder. If you are thinking of getting these, be prepared, it's like drinking a truckload of flavored sugar. Very, VERY sweet. The apple and grape flavors are good, but the overall results are like a sugar baseball bat to the tastebuds. The packaging is cool though. And what scary sidedish am I enjoying this afternoon with my creepy sugary juicy liquidy goodness? Why, it's M&Ms Pumpkin Mix!!!



These M&Ms come in orange and black and have cute little jack-o-lantern (or pumpkin) faces on them. They are also filled with peanut butter, not chocolate.

So now that I've made myself sick on apple flavored sugar syrup and peanut butter hard candies, I think I'll adjourn for the day.

Actually, tomorrow morning my wife and I will be leaving for Tampa to board a cruise ship headed to the Western Caribbean. All next week my ass will be drinking umbrella drinks and hanging out with butt-naked freaks. Don't worry, I'll be back, I know you'll miss me. ;)

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Monday, September 11, 2006

Friday, September 08, 2006

Slot Machines: The Next Generation Part 2

Thank the almighty blessed Lord it is Friday.
Friday morning, 8:40am EST, and I'm already dying a slow death of boredom. And this has only been a 4 day week. Ugh. Calgon take me away.

Since I don't have Calgon to take me away, I have to settle for a blog article. Continue on for part 2 of my slot machines reviews. If you missed part 1 just click here.

I've been to many different casinos in several different places over the years. Las Vegas, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Atlantic City. During my travels I’ve seen some pretty cool and pretty funny character based machines. I began taking pictures and collecting some of the best. In the second part of this slot machine article I'll show you some more of my favorite slot machines.

Star Wars - This is one of the coolest slot machines out there. Very nice graphics, cool game play, and I love the bonus games where you try to blow up the Death Star. Even the chairs you sit on have Star Wars written on them. Very, very cool. It's even fun to just sit and watch someone play.


Monster Mansion/The Munsters/Ghost Island - I love these Halloween/monster themed slots. There are usually several on the floor at all times. Monster Mansion is actually branded with the Universal Studios logo so it is using the fully licensed Universal Monsters. The gameplay is okay, but the visuals are really cool. The Munsters machine is obviously based on the tv show, which I loved. Unfortunately it is the old 3 reel type slot and not the graphics heavy video game like slot like Monster Mansion. Other scary themed slots include Ghost Island where you are trapped on an island, go figure, full of ghosts. You have to capture them all to win bonus games. Very neat.

Texas Tea - I've actually seen this slot in almost every casino I've been to. Apparently, for the last few years, this has been the most popular slot machine. More people play these slots than any other. Surprising to me that it's so popular. It's vaguely based on the tv show Dallas, showing big Cadillacs, oil wells, rich Texans, etc. Entertaining, yes, but still very middle of the road.

Dam Lumberjack Beavers - This is it. My piece de resistance. My coup de grace. If I were Orson Welles, this would be my Citizen Kane. Dam. Lumberjack. Beavers. Not much else needs to be said. It's like Snakes on a Plane or Sharks in a Honda Civic. Simple, to the point. Awesome.





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