"pop food" news and stories

It's hard to get excited about gum. I mean, really, what can be done with it? You can try a different shape or a different flavor or a new ad campaign ("the flavor never stops!"), but in the end it's something you chew for a while, it starts to not taste that great anymore, and then you throw it away. But once in a great while you find some gum that's a little bit different.

Take Orbit's Lemon-Lime. I can't remember if I've ever had this flavor of gum before (maybe Fruit Stripes had this flavor?), but this is quite good. It's actually refreshing, in a lemon-lime drink sort of way, and you can even squeeze out some intense flavor even late in the chewing game. That's all I really look for in my gum-chewing experience, and Orbit succeeds in a big way.

(Hmmm....Nicole reviewed this a couple of years ago and didn't like it. Oh well.)

People fall into two categories: those who think that food that looks like people is cute and those who are creeped out by it. If you fall into the latter category, this site is not for you.

It's Ice Cream People, a site devoted to pictures of ice cream that have faces and sometimes bodies. You'd be amazed at how many different pictures there are of this, from ice cream truck signs to carnivals to food packages. I like the freaky ice cream monster above, and you can get it as a t-shirt!

[via Pop Candy]

I've never been a fan of frozen bagels. I don't care if you can toast them and they get all crunchy, I still like the bagels you get in the bread aisle, not frozen. They just taste better to me for some reason, and you can even eat them without toasting them.

So when I saw Kraft's new Bagel-fuls in the frozen food section, I was already thinking they might not be that great. But I bought them to see how they'd taste (for science and you readers, of course). First of all, if you store these bagel tubes filled with cream cheese in the freezer, you have to microwave them. You can't put them in the toaster unless they've already been thawed a bit, so if they're frozen you have to nuke them for 20 seconds.

How do they taste? They sorta taste like fried dough, not exactly bagel-ish. They're not bad, they'll do in a pinch I guess, but give me a regular bagel and I'll toast it and spread the cream cheese on myself.

After many years of reading fortune cookie messages that are not so much predictions as truisms, such as "Ideas are like children; there are none so wonderful as your own," many dismiss them entirely. To counteract this boredom with fortune cookies edgy, depressing messages have begun cropping up.

But there are still fortune cookie romantics who save their favorite little scrolls. I count myself among them. When I stand in front of the fridge at 2 a.m. eating roast beef with my bare hands I close the door and take comfort in reading, "Believe in your abilities, confidence will lead you on."

And then there's Bob Bjarke. Not content to post his favorite fortune cookie message on his fridge or elsewhere, he created The Best Fortune Cookie Ever. What could motivate someone to throw up a one-page tribute to a fortune cookie? Perhaps Bjarke is a frustrated would-be astronaut with plans on living into the 2100's and takes solace in the fact that there's a chance he might still be able to snag that Earth-view villa. The only thing I know for certain is that he found his favorite fortune at Chicago's Papajin. I'd love to know what the Jennifer 8.Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles makes of this.
[via SFoodie]

Source

I think Jack in the Box is trying to out-creep that creepy Burger King guy.

They've put up a web site called MakeAJackSandwich.com, where you can upload photos to make a "Jack sandwich," which isn't a real sandwich but a viewer-generated threesome you can place in a hot tub. I guess they're going for that "fast food/swinger" demographic you read so much about (don't worry, the site is fun and G rated - OK, maybe PG).

You can watch the ad for their Sirloin Steak Melt, which is sirloin steak, grilled onions, and three different kinds of cheese on sourdough bread.