Halloween Garlic Doritos?! They’re real!
Many countries have their own exclusive Halloween snacks, and if they’re especially good, the rest of the world can only seethe and stew over their geographical plights.
Or if you’re like me, you just spend a fortune on international shipping for weird Doritos.
Below are three of Japan’s Halloween snacks for 2016, ironically from companies that we in the States consider utterly American. You’re so going to want these. You’re not going to rest until you’ve eaten these.
Garlic Pepper Halloween Doritos!
This is it, baby! This is the one! Even though I can only procure bags of Garlic Pepper Doritos from iffy mail-order companies, I’m 100% ready to call them the top junk food promo of the 2016 Halloween season. These are unstoppable, untoppable and some other almost-rhyming, half-fake word.
In fact, Jay made a pitch for Garlic Doritos just like these on the very first episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast. The execution is even better than we could’ve hoped for. I know he’s hard to notice in the photo, but there really is a vampire on the packaging. (You can see part of him on the center-left. He’s shying away from the Doritos, as if to say, “AH GARLIC I will NOT be sucking the blood from these particular chips, no sir.” Because that’s how vamps talk. He also reappears on the back of the package.)
Upon opening the bag, the stench was pleasantly akin to cheap ramen, with maybe the softest hint of dehydrated shrimp. The jet black chips taste like garlicky soy sauce, salty and tangy and completely motherfucking delicious. These are so legitimately good that I know it’s only a matter of time before they dupe the flavor and try for a broader release.
10 out of 10, A+++.
Cheetos YOGURT Bag of Bones!
Japan has its own exclusive spin on our own beloved Bag of Bones, and okay, yeah, it definitely wouldn’t fly so well here in the States. These yogurt (yes YOGURT) Cheetos only resemble bones in color, and otherwise just look like albino caveman clubs.
I had low expectations for them, but they weren’t bad at all. When Frito-Lay said “yogurt,” I figured they meant that thick icing stuff, which would’ve effectively turned the Cheetos into straight-up shitty candy. Instead, the yogurt here isn’t that much different from any other “special” Cheetos flavoring, at least in terms of texture and execution.
Actually, the Cheetos tasted less like yogurt and more like orange Creamsicles, and I’ll be damned, it somehow works. I wouldn’t seek them out regularly because salty > sweet and any sane person knows that, but if I was stuck in a two star hotel and this was the only food in its vending machine, I’d console myself with the knowledge that there were far worse fates.
8 out of 10, which is as low as I can reasonably go considering that the bag depicts a glowing skeleton who uses telekinesis to feed yogurt bones to a cheetah. I mean, goddamn.
Frito-Lay Rich Giza Halloween Pack!
The writing on the package is Greek (well no, Japanese) to me, so I’ll have to trust what it said on my order form: Frito-Lay Rich Giza Halloween Pack Red Cheddar Cheese Flavor.
You could argue that this one isn’t as fetching since it doesn’t quite look like something that would be sold in the States. There’s no comparable snack, nor any familiar title for us to latch onto. Course, those aren’t “flaws” so much as “asterisks,” and if you take whatever these things are called at face value, you’ll want to bed them before you eat them.
This “Halloween Pack” mixes bats with what appear to be portions of metal roofs. In terms of crunch and mouthfeel, I’d compare them to Doritos Jacked 3Ds. The flavor is similar to any of those no-frills bags of “Asian snack mixes” — the kinds that are only available in pharmacies and airport convenience stores. Like picture those shiny hollow sticks or those little white wheel things, but make them cheesier.
8 out of 10.
I’m super happy with all three, but those Garlic Pepper Doritos were literally BORN a legend.
You can purchase these snacks easily enough after a little Googling, and even with shipping, they shouldn’t cost you too much. More than normal people would ever pay for snack-sized bags of Doritos, sure, but if you were normal, you wouldn’t have made it this far down. Now let’s trade stories about what goes on when our blinds are closed.
