Junk Food of the Gods, Part 4!

The Junk Food of the Gods series was last seen in July, before taking an extended break for the holidays. Now it’s back and it’s tanned and it can handle anything you want to throw at it.

Below: Five of the most interesting junk foods currently on the market. Most of them will only be around for a limited time, so if you know you’re gonna wanna binge on super-green Lucky Charms or pasta shaped like Darth Vader, delaying is dumb.

Hostess Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes!

Mixed feelings on these special Valentine’s Day cupcakes. They taste exactly as I assume they were intended to, uncannily reminiscent of those raspberry-filled chocolates you’d find dotted across a heart-shaped box.

Problem is, those are my absolute least favorite chocolates from those boxes. They’re like fucking landmines. I understand that millions of people love those particular chocolates, but to me they’re only to be eaten on double dares when there’s money involved.

That Hostess so perfectly mimicked a classic Valentine’s Day candy isn’t something I feel right in classifying as a “con.” Instead I’ll just say that these aren’t for me. If Hostess did anything objectively wrong, it was the false promise of cupcake creme that resembled psychomagnotheric slime.

Extra Lucky Charms!

I’m guessing these are out on account of Saint Patrick’s Day? A two month lead for a holiday edition cereal seems pretty standard, nowadays. We didn’t complain when Froot Loops added skull head marshmallows in August, so we shouldn’t complain about this.

The box is the prettiest thing I’ve seen all day, all retro and jade and looking like it’d camouflage splendidly over salad greens. Were I to name my favorite-ever Lucky Charms packaging, it’d be Holiday Lucky Charms from 1994, because that one’s “box” was shaped like a giant, hollow crayon. But this would be #2.

What separates this Lucky Charms from all other Lucky Charms is its narrowly focused marshmallow assortment. Here, you only get three types: Light green clovers, dark green clovers, and gold coins that look more like power-ups from Ikari Warriors.

Thing is, though you only get three types, you still get just as many marshmallows. If regular Lucky Charms cereal looks like the beginning of a game of Risk, this version looks like the end of one, when you’re six hours in and you still don’t know how to play.

I dig it.

Cinnamon Bun Oreo Cookies!

My friends seem divided on Cinnamon Bun Oreo cookies, each falling into one of three camps:

Oreo Camp #1: Love them.

Oreo Camp #2: Indifferent.

Oreo Camp #3: Loathe them.

I think I’m in Camp #1, but I’ve only got one foot in the tent. If something better rolls along, I’ll defect to Camp #2, possibly with an nWo shirt to act as some punctuating visual aid.

They’re good, but here’s what I think the issue is: You liking these is almost wholly dependent on finding the cookie creme similar to cinnamon bun frosting. If you don’t, they’re just Oreos with cinnamon cookies, which sounds okay at best and like a circus at worst.

Fortunately, I found the creme to be very much like cinnamon bun frosting. I can’t say that I had any illusions about them being hot pastries — they’re still dry, crunchy cookies, after all — but once I started imagining them as Titan-scaled Dunkaroos, my lips curled in a way they never had before, forming into the rough shape of an A+.

Star Wars Chicken Soup!

I can’t get over how much Star Wars junk food is out there, now. Hell, it isn’t even just junk food — I’ve seen BB-8 bless everything from fruit to bottled water.

This soup is hardly the most impressive of the Star Wars offerings, but I couldn’t get over how much it looked like a can from the late ‘70s — one that’d somehow survived 40000 stock checks to remain on sale in 2016.

The flavor profile is no different from regular Campbell’s chicken soup, with the sole upgrade being pasta in the shapes of robots and evil heads. Sole upgrade, but still a major one. Best part is, now I can use the can to hold all of those half-sucked candies I thought I wanted, but ended up not.

TMNT Cinnamon Oat Crisps!

There seems to have been a concerted effort to connect Nick’s Ninja Turtles with healthier food options. I know this not just because “cinnamon oat crisps” are only cookies on a stretch, but also because I have a box of microwavable TMNT spinach cupcakes in my freezer. Seriously.

The cookies, which look like what might happen if someone made a parade dragon out of Donatello, taste inoffensive but are very hard. Like, hard enough to pick giant locks with. They’re coffee dippers, that’s what they are. Fancy Pepperidge Farm cookies, masquerading as lunch box Ninja Turtles. Plus or minus? You decide.

Thank you for spending part of your weekend reading about limited edition clover-shaped marshmallows. You can’t take it back, now.