12.23.06
Cheese Pretz
And now…another Pretz! Last we left off, our intrepid Pocky had pulled a pineapple out of wherever it is that Pocky and Pretz pull flavors out of, and increased its lead ever more slightly over Pretz in the Great Flavor Struggle. I bet you didn’t know there was such a battle going on did you? Not to be outdone, Pretz returns to its savory roots today with a more traditional Cheese Pretz.
All right, there’s no good way to pussy foot around this, so I’ll just come out and be done with it: I really, really don’t like these Pretz. I’m also, apparently, really, really in the minority on this. I originally used the Wednesday game as my Guinea Pigs, which has shown to be an adequate pig pool before. This time out, we were split rather dynamically down the middle: Girls against, guys for. I suppose I could have gone with a 3 pea rating and just said “Us three girls thought they tasted like rancid (but crunchy!) ASS while the three guys were ALL about the Cheese Pretz, but I didn’t. I decided to expand my tasting audience to see if this was a guys/girls thing or if it was just us three.
Next stop: Alessar’s office. He rather liked them and the four women in his office were pleased with the sticks as well. The Alessar Office consensus was that Cheese Pretz were the best fake cheese flavored snacks that they had tasted, and also that they could see themselves munching on Cheese Pretz again in the future. The Web assistant rather liked them as did my lovely assistant and a couple of random coworkers from different departments. Overall, I might take a guess that I polled a taste audience of sixteen. This may be the most widely taste tested JSF in the history of JSF (which I am not wading through to find out if it is or not) and so far, us three Wednesday night girls are the only people who would give Cheese Pretz a rating well below 3 peas.
To me, they smell like three week old Parmesan gym socks and taste like stinky Parmesan feet cheese snack sticks but I will agree that they do have a strong Parmesan going for them. My other three Cheese Pretz haters also agree on this fact. The Wednesday boys do not agree about the stinky but do agree about the strong Parmesan taste. Everyone is in agreement that there is some kind of Parmesaning going on here. Huzzah! Quite a few other pigs commented that the Cheese Pretz tasted like Pepperidge Farm cheddar goldfish (yup. Rancid cheddar goldfish if you asked me) so put a mark down for the Cheddar. Also, maybe you might think of these as (bad) cheesier Gardetto sticks and you wouldn’t be too far off. All agree: Cheese Pretz has the Cheese.
They also have a good crunch. I’m going to have to give them extra peas points for going above and beyond the call of crunch because I’m taste testing a stick out of an open packet from almost a week and a half ago and it’s still crunchy!! I didn’t seal it up, Ziplock it, freeze it or do anything but stuff it in a corner and forget it and the stick is still delightfully crunchy. It still tastes like ASS mind you, but impressively crunchy ass. I have to grudgingly give at least half a pea point for that feat, perhaps more. Wow. Crunch.
Sadly, I’m going to have to go with the majority on the rating and give Cheese Pretz at least a 3 pea rating. It hurts me deeply to do so because ASS taste shouldn’t ever get above a 3 pea. Buuut, only the three of us had issues so…yeah. Lets go with a 3 pea rating since at least a few pigs are adamantly against the Cheese Pretz but most are rather delighted with them and add a half pea point for the amazing crunch for a grudgingly given total
Rating of 3.5 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
