Review: New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts & Pulling Back the Curtain a Little More On Junkfoodguy.com: Foreseeing a Taste
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Junk Food Nation, I often get asked how I decide what to review, and whether I am running out of things yet. If the asker ever saw my kitchen, she’d know that I have a serious overflow problem – there is no chance I’ll ever run out of things to review. That said, I can’t review EVERYTHING I want to.
One thing I am try to do is to avoid tasting/reviewing things that I can sort of foresee how they’ll taste, because then it’s not new to me. I’ve reviewed Popcorn Indiana Chip’ins a bunch of this blog, so there’s no need for me to review the Chip’ins copycats that are appearing all over the stores. Similarly, when I see this:
NEW!
…I see the word NEW! and my attention is immediately drawn to it. But then I think, I’ve already reviewed the Crunchy Almond and the Sweet Toffee Milano Slices before. How different are the Salted Pretzel slices? I can foresee how they taste: great Milano cookie, rich dark chocolate, and an added salty crunch on top. I could probably describe how it tasted without even eating it.
Foreseeability is a big thing for me. When you as the reader visit this blog, usually you want to be entertained but you also want to really know about a product before you buy it. How much insight can I ACTUALLY provide if I feel like it’s something you can probably figure out on your own? The Candy Corn Oreos are a great example of a must-review – not only is there a limited access problem, but people want to know what they taste like. But these Salted Pretzel Milano Slices? Not so much.
So that’s a little what goes into my thought process. It’s also what lead me to today’s product: New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts!
New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts: The Money Shot
For me, this is the sort of junk food that fits into my scope. When you see these in the store, you think, “Well, those could either be amazing, or they could be really really bad. But they look so enticing! With the flowing vanilla, etc. But $3.69 for a bag? Do I really want to pay that much to try a novelty cookie?”
That’s where I come in. *I* will try it for you. And having reviewed Milano Melts before, I can give an opinion backed by even just a LITTLE experience.
New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts: Chocolate cookie outside, vanilla flowing creme inside. Like a gourmet Oreo? We’ll see.
New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts: One bite and I’ll melt, apparently. Melt with desire? With anguish? Need specificity.
New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts: 70 calories per cookie – yikes. Get me on a treadmill.
New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts: I like how BAKED IN THE USA is stamped nice and big. Distracts from all the preservatives.
New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts: Four cookies to a doily.
New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts: The cookie snapped apart cleanly, and there was SOME pull int he creme, but it didn’t ooze out like in the photo.
New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts: Luscious vanilla creme….sort of.
I crunched one of these New Pepperidge Farm Vanilla Creme Milano Melts, and my reaction was very similar to when I reviewed the Chocolate Dark Classic Creme Milano Melt: drryyyyyyyyyy.
The chocolate cookie on the outside was dry, and had a dull cocoa flavor. If I hadn’t just purchased these, i might’ve thought the cookie to be stale. Crunched uneasily.
The creme was a plus – soft, and sweet, full of distinct vanilla flavor. Despite the fact that it didn’t ooooooze out nicely like the package showed, the creme was well composed.
The combo, eaten together? Meh…it’s alright, I suppose. It evokes a flavor profile similar to Oreos, and is plenty sweet due to the vanilla creme. But (1) it didn’t remind me of a Milano cookie at all, and (2) the chocolate flavor was not bold enough to make me want to eat these over Oreos. I’d say this was a C-grade cookie. Good enough to serve at a PTA meeting, that sort of thing. Not good enough to make me want to buy it again.
Sorry PF! LOVED you recent Strawberry Banana bread, but this was a “miss” for me.
PURCHASED AT: Safeway
COST: $3.69 (oof.)
Thoughts? Please comment below (I always reply) or hit me up on Twitter @junkfoodguy or LIKE my Facebook Page and message me there. Also, you can always email me at junkfoodguy@junkfoodguy.com. Let’s hang out.
Sincerely,
Junk Food Guy
Discuss - 10 Comments
These cookies remind me of that suburban lady who wants to have everything slightly nicer than her neighbors. And even though these cookies aren’t very good everyone stands around and goes… “Oh Rachel these are just spectacular” because they know it’ll be too big of a blow to her ego if they tell her the cookies suck.
Nice review.
@Eric: Great analogy. Too true. Thanks, man
Aren’t these just elongated Magic Middles?
@Teresapalooza: YUP. and not as good.
what does your pantry look like? When you get something like this that wasn’t exactly a hit do you just stuff it to the back? kill the whole bag? toss it? My pantry is out of control and I dont review nearly as much stuff as you do!
@Mitch: IT IS OUT OF CONTROL. And I give most of it away at work.
@jfg, have you got my tweets at all, I can’t tell. Still new to this.
@Will: I can get tweets if you make sure you write @username…e.g. @junkfoodguy and @nickrovo
Also on Twiiter under the @CONNECT heading you can see what people wrote you.
I’ll save you a few bucks and tell you that the salted pretzel is heavy on the salty taste and light on the chocolate flavoring. I just cracked the bag open yesterday and was fairly disappointed.
As far as these goes, the filling is too sweet/sugary and the outside does have that stale feeling, so weird.
@Dubba: THANK YOU! yeah, I figured these weren’t worth it. Sigh.