Junk Food Nation, it’s President’s Day! Or is it Presidents’ Day? And do any of you really care? #Nope

I know what you’re here for – after last Friday’s gushing of the return of my white whale, Wild White Nacho Doritos, the questions are: did I get them? And how were they? Well, let’s get to it…

Today’s junk food: Wild White Nacho Doritos!!

As I mentioned last Friday, my first inkling that these Wild White Nacho Doritos had returned was via Twitter. One user tweeted to me that he spotted them in 30 oz bags at Costco. A quick Twitter search revealed another user confirming that sighting. I was overjoyed! Thank you Costco! Thank you thank you thank yo* ……Wait. I don’t have a Costco membership. F&@(*&@*!!!!!!

Now, the Junk Food Gal has a Costco membership, but that’s besides the point – she was unavailable, and my local Costco has been hyper vigilant, cracking down on people using other friends’ memberships like a bar that has already had one ABC violation trying to catch underage boozers. JUST SELL ME THE DAMN MILLER LITE ALREADY. But no – nothing more embarrassing than pulling up to the register with your handcart stacked high with crates of Fresca and having the vested checkout clerk deny you while looking at you with the hairy eyeball, comparing the pixelated black-and-white photo on the back of the Costco card with your face. “You’re not Samantha Adams, sir.” HOW DO YOU KNOW??? JUST SELL ME THE DAMN FRESCA ALREADY.

Doctor Sis and my friend Emily, separately, informed me they’d be hitting Costco on their own and would look for these Wild White Nacho Doritos for me. And, on Saturday at 2:19pm, I received a text from Emily: “DORITOS OBTAINED.”

EUREEEEEKA.

As I headed over to Emily’s to grab what-I-knew-to-be a MONSTROUS bag of Doritos, I also received this picture from my Doctor Sis who was at a different Costco:

Holy eff, that’s a lot of Wild White Nacho Doritos. I like a few things about this picture: 1) that the lower cardboard platforms appear to be slightly buckled under the weight of the Doritos, 2) that there were so many Doritos for sale that they needed to stack additional bags on top like they were trying to stop the rising flood of the river, and 3) that the only phrase Frito-Lay could come up with was GOOD FUN! Good fun? I’m about to go home, strip down to my underwear, and roll around in these chips. How is that Good Fun? That’s GREAT FUN.

I nabbed the chips from Emily, and couldn’t contain my excitement:

I needed, apparently, to add more cheese to those Doritos. Anyways, as I mentioned Friday, I was concerned – would these Doritos live up to the hype in my mind? To be honest, I wasn’t even REALLY sure why I liked them so much back when they were originally out. I just know that my obsession was clearly fueled by the fact that I had eaten them once, liked them, and had them yanked away from me.

I couldn’t help myself – I went digging for reviews from back in the day. Chip Review gave them a 2.75 rating out of 5, or “tolerable” (UGH).  Taquitos.net was down on them as well, saying that they tasted just like their normal Nacho Cheese counterparts (CRAP). Oh, Wild White Nacho Doritos…did I overhype you? Was I a victim of my own hyperbole?

It was time to find out for myself. These Wild White Nacho Doritos came in 30 oz bags, which meant, according to the bag and nutritional value, that this bag contained close to 360 chips! Or, looked at another way, consumption of this entire bag would mean consumption of more than 4000 calories. Yowza.

What is nacho cheese anyways? Bloomberg recently published a good article that revealed that nacho cheese doesn’t really exist or have a standard definition. In that article, a spokesperson for Doritos said:

“The flavor Nacho cheese is made with cheddar and Romano cheeses,” said spokeswoman Aurora Gonzalez. Just look at the ingredients list on a bag of nacho cheese Doritos. But “I’ve never heard of a specific definition,” she said.

These are the ingredients of Wild White Nacho Doritos. Doritos says this bag does not contain gluten ingredients, but doesn’t classify them as specifically “gluten-free.” Hoooo-kay – not sure what the difference is.

The one thing I noticed comparing this to the ingredients in a standard Nacho Cheese Doritos bag – less additional stuff. The WWN version didn’t have things like *gasp* artificial flavor, artificial color, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, or corn flour. Huh. So these WWN Doritos looked sort of like stripped-down versions of regular Doritos. Less chemicals?

I opened up this bag of Wild White Nacho Doritos and sniffed. They smelled like…well, Doritos. My heart began to sink – these smelled EXACTLY like Doritos. Nothing more, nothing less.

Pouring some out, these WWN Doritos clearly looked less orange than their normal Nacho counterparts. In a lot of ways, they looked like Cool Ranch Doritos – there was still the light yellow/orange chip, but the powdering on the chip itself wasn’t red or deep orange; it was light yellow and you could see the flecks of red/green more clearly.

I crunched into these Wild White Nacho Doritos and…well, they were delicious. But I need to be honest to you, JFNation, and I have to admit: They do seem to taste JUST LIKE REGULAR NACHO CHEESE DORITOS.

The reviews were right, although I didn’t give them a MEH – these didn’t taste bad. They tasted good. They tasted like Nacho Cheese Doritos. And with less food coloring, chemicals, and preservatives, I will choose these 10-times-out-of-10 over Nacho Cheese Doritos, even if the relative health benefit is negligible.

I’m not quite sure what I thought these tasted like in my mind. Did they lean more white cheddar, like White Cheddar Cheezits, one of my favorites? Nope. Since they sort of looked like Cool Ranch Doritos, did they have a bit more spicy blend? Nope. These just tasted like your good ol standard Nacho Cheese Doritos – with less orange color.

But, am I ready to admit defeat? Am I going to sit here and say, “Man…these weren’t as good as I remembered.” NO, and I’ll explain why:

I grew up eating Doritos. I wasn’t allowed to have a TON of junk food growing up, but I remember loving Doritos. Heck, that’s why it was the first snack reviewed on this blog, and why it is part of my JFG logo. I loved the balance of corn chip and cheese and salt and fat. I remember the Jay Leno commercials, back before I even saw Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. And I remember the switch from Nacho Cheese to Nacho Cheesier, and from Cool Ranch to Cooler Ranch.

I remember seeing it because it was while I was in high school in the 90’s, when I finally able to go to the local ACME and buy myself a grab bag of Doritos for 99 cents. I was old enough to actually pay attention to what I was buying, so this change in the Doritos blend came at a perfect time – Frito-Lay wanted to be more EXXXTREMMMMMME so they were adding more seasoning to both their Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch lines – hence the new name. Nacho Cheesier Doritos, for example, were BLASTED with powder – very orange red, and made your fingers colorful more quickly. They were super super cheesy.

I did a lot of Google research, and while I wasn’t able to pin down the exact dates (and I won’t bore you with links), it appears that Nacho Cheesier and Cooler Ranch existed in various distribution circles from 1992-2005. In 2005, they began to phase out Nacho Cheesier/Cooler Ranch, although reports came as late as late 2009/early 2010 that people, only THEN, began to notice the switch back to the original mix. The Wild White Nacho contest was in 2007.

So here’s what I believed happened, aka, how I will be rationalizing my fixation on these WWN Doritos. It’s simple – I had been eating bags of bags of the bolder Nacho Cheesier line of Doritos around that time, and when I tried these Wild White Nacho Doritos, they reminded me more of the more-balanced Nacho Cheese Doritos I grew up with. Not as much powder, hitting a better savoriness with the corn tortilla chip. I liken it to people tasting Coca Cola Classic after New Coke tried to succeed. The taste of the original was always going to win. In the context of the times, Wild White Nacho Doritos was Classic Coke.

Of course, since then, Nacho Cheesier Doritos have been fully phased out and the flavor of Nacho Cheese Doritos, today, is awesome. Wild White Nacho Doritos tastes just like them, with less additives. They are tasty, delicious, and in the end, I have 29 more ounces of them in my kitchen, so what am I complaining about?

I loved these, because I love Doritos. I am glad to finally have been able to catch my white whale. Now, I can finally sink with the Pequod and retire from writing this blog…WAIT, OREO IS COMING OUT WITH S’MORES OREOS IN APRIL/MAY????

Uh…I’ll see you guys Wednesday.

PURCHASED AT: COSTCO

COST: $5.50 ($8.69 retail)

Thoughts? Please comment below or hit me up on Twitter @junkfoodguy or LIKE my Facebook Page and message me there. I also have Google+!! Let’s hang out.

Sincerely,

Junk Food Guy