I have long harbored suspicions about Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Specifically, about the relationship between size and deliciousocity. Because, to my mind, the “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Miniatures”–you know, the eat-em-by-the-handful variety found in Trick-or-Treat bags and the bowl on your reception desk–have a better ratio of chocolate to PB than the full-sized thing.

Well, when I find myself with a scientific question in need of answering, I know what to do: outsource it to someone smart. In this case, I tossed it to Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed. You can read his findings here: How Much is Inside Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups?.

Rating: Regardless of size, these things are pretty damned good. That said, my enjoyment was marred by just too things. One, (a), the full-sized cups are just a lil’ too sweet for my liking. And that’s coming from someone who has not only a sweet tooth but a sweet uvula and a sweet esophagus and pretty much a sweet alimentary tract as a whole. I suspect the real, secret creation of these things involved the guy with the chocolate bar bumping into the guy with the open jar of peanut butter and then the two being struck by a lorry full of sugar.

Also, two, (b), Reese has apparently trademarked their background.

This probably jeopardizes publication of my epistolary novel, which tells of growing up white and middle-class in the suburbs, and is entitled “The Color Orange”. Lame. 85¢/$1.

Sorry for the unexpected hiatus, but the project hit a snag less than 10 items in. And here it is:

Unfortunately this is gum. I just don’t know what to say about gum, even after a week of deliberation. You put it in your mouth, chew until the flavor is gone, and then, from the third minute on, it just hangs around like an unwelcome houseguest, perched on your sofa long after dessert has been eaten, the wine has run out, and the conversation has dwindled to observations about the lateness of the hour. You could eat a mint and then spend an hour gnawing on an eraser for the same effect.

I know some people really like gum. When I was in the Peace Corps, the fellow volunteer I shared a house with an enthusiast. She was also terribly polite, which meant that we had the following exchange more often than any other by an order of magnitude:

Her: Do you want some gum?

Me: No thank you, I’m not a gum chewer.

Her: Suit yourself

Two years of this convinced me that gum-philia and -indifferentia were hardwired at the genetic level, like a widow’s peak or the ability to enjoy Project Runway. I should note that my roommate was also red-haired and left-handed, Devil’s traits all. Why our government allowed this woman to share her masticating ways with the developing world is beyond me. If a small boy in South America attempts to sell you chicle, blame Rose.

Me, I was never a fan, even as a kid. The only fun thing to do with gum, in my opinion, was to carefully refold an empty wrapper, put it halfway back in the pack, and then offer it to a friend as a joke. This was pretty much our only form of entertainment before the Atari 2600. Now gum doesn’t even offer this fleeting pleasure. Offering fake-gum to your boss and bellowing “oh BURRRRRRN!!” when he opens the wrapper gets noted on your performance review, I’ve uh heard.

Rating: Yeah so anyway: it’s gum. 35¢/$1.

With my factually-correct denunciation of cashews continuing to raise hackles, this is a poor time for me to opine on the merits of almonds. Alas, the vagaries of “random selection”give me no choice. Lady Luck seems determined to get her nuts into my hands.

Only three natural items in the machine and I get two of them in the first week. It’s going to be a long, heavily-processed slog from here.

Fortunately the extraordinary health benefits of Blue Diamond Wasabi & Soy Sauce Almonds, as itemized on the back of the package, should see me through to the end:

Scientific evidence suggests, but does not prove, that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts, such as almonds, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease.

Jeezum crow, that’s like a national convention of weasel words right there (“AmbivilaCon XXII!”). You’d reckon some Blue Diamond lawyer got $800/hr to cough out that convoluted string of meaningless boilerplate but, no, it actually comes straight from the FDA’s list of Qualified Health Claims.

(It’s hard to pick a favorite off that FDA page, but “One study suggests that consuming tomatoes does not reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer, but one weaker, more limited study suggests that consuming tomatoes may reduce this risk” is in the top 3 for sure. I bet the members of the American Association of Tomato Growers were popping champagne corks when that was unveiled.)

Rating: The “Wasabi & Soy Sauce” seasoning is fairly muted, but overpowers the blandness of almonds anyway. Protip: if you want the original flavor of your snack to stand out, do not coat it with something specifically engineered to mask the taste of raw fish.

Not that I’m necessarily complaining–I like Wasabi, so this is right up my alley. True, much of my fondness for Wasabi comes from watching my wife consume it, as she is habitually puts too much on her nigiri and follows every bite with a hilarious bout of face-flushing and hand-flapping and just-below-the-eyes-sweating. And that aspect is lamentably absent here. But at least these don’t end with me getting stabbed in the neck with a chopstick for laughing. 80¢/$1.

Welcome visitors from Boing Boing and Reddit. I am thrilled to have you along on this extraordinary adventure.

It will be an arduous odyssey, to be sure. But in return for your support I give you this pledge: I will persevere to the end, and not throw my hands up in surrender. That’s the Vending Spree Guarantee.
 
 
Guarantee extends only to hands; other items may be thrown up over the course of the project.

Goldfish Mix-Up Adventures consists of regular- and pretzel-flavored goldfish crackers. That’s pretty much it. But if you were to base your analysis on the bag design, you might conclude that you had purchased a Knott’s Berry Farm ride or super-rad virtual reality video game as seen in an 80’s-era Corey Haim film.

That’s right, the regular goldfish is named “Xtreme”. Also, it is apparently both “Flavor Blasted” and “Xtra Cheddar”. (“Pepperidge Farms: We Skimp On E’s and Pass the Saving On To U!”) The marketing guys kind of ran wild on this one. Seriously, this is like “Poochie: The Snack”.

And it’s not at all clear who or what is having the titular adventures. Hell, I’m not even sure what would constitute an “adventure” in this instance. Like, a text adventure?

GOLDFISH MIX-UP ADVENTURES
Copyright (c) 2010, Pepperidge Farms. All rights reserved.
Revision 88 / Serial number 840726

Vending Machine
You are a delicious snack cracker sealed inside a 2.25 oz (64g) bag.

It is dark here. You are likely to be eaten by a dude.

Rating: I enjoy pretzels, don’t get me wrong. But I love goldfish. So this like when you go to hang out with your best friend, but he brings along his new SO, and then you have to divide your attention between Real Friend and Friend-By-Proxy. Kind of a drag.

Plus, I’m not at all sure that this relationship is going to work, long-term. I mean, look at the combined accumulation of possessions that resulted when they moved in together–these guys have nothing in common!

Man, that’s going to be a bitter separation when things go south. Weeks and weeks of squabbling over who gets to keep the torula yeast.

Anyway, I’m just going to average my rating for goldfish (90¢) and pretzels (70¢), and then take back a nickle because this made me think of Corey Haim. 75¢/$1.

My grandfather was an unapologetic smoker. He had a closet full of Lucky Strikes and a sign above his desk that read “THANK YOU FOR HOLDING YOUR BREATH WHILE I SMOKE”. His doctors continually told him to knock it off, and he said no, and that was the end of that.

Consequentially, while I’ve never smoked myself, I’ve also never begrudged anyone else for doing so. Except for one category of people: those who smoke and apologize for it, or who alternate between drags and promises that they are going to quit soon. I inherited my position on this matter from Grandpa: if you’re going to have a vice, either do it and enjoy it or don’t do it at all.

I kind of feel the same way about the savory snacks in this machine, all of which seem utterly chagrined to be delicious. I’ve already mentioned how the Chex Mix features a trumped-up claim of low-fatitude but, really, there nary a bag of anything in there that doesn’t promise low this or 0 mg. of that or a full serving of whole grains.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s a big selling point for candy. It’s crap, and it’s proud.

See that? “caramel * milk chocolate”. And “Calories 250″. That’s more like it. Tell me what ya got, not what you got 1/3 less of.

The back is even more explicit:

Jeezum crow. If this candy bar was any more revealing it would have a leaked sex tape on the Internet.

Rating: Twix bills itself as a “cookie”, and I’m not 100% sure I like caramel in a cookie. If I was a gourmand I would probably attribute this unease to “mouthfeel” but, given that I’ve pledged to devote eight weeks to vending machine food, I think we can safely rule “gourmand” out.

Twix is also, while tasty, rather generic. I mean, putting milk chocolate and caramel in your candy bar is like putting explosions and Megan Fox in your film: enjoyable on a basic level, but not really worth a trip to the cinema. If Twix were a movie I’d probably just eat a pirated torrent of it. 70¢/$1.

Few things in this world are as sublime as Breakfast for Dinner. French toast. Omelettes. Waffles. There ain’t nothing I like better than sitting down with a plate of syrup-drenched pancakes, two fried eyes, a side of bacon, a side of sausage, and a pint glass of whole milk to watch The Biggest Loser.

But of course half of BfD’s appeal comes from the flagrant disregard of societal norms inherent in such an enterprise. And that’s also what made the original Chex Party Mix–you know, the kind you assembled yourself from assorted breakfast cereals–the “Sweetest Taboo”, as Sade liked to call it.

So I’m not sure what to make of this:

I dunno. Having the official sanction to eat breakfast after 10:00 AM takes some of the thrill out of it. Like, remember how drinking lye just wasn’t as fun after they passed the twenty-first amendment?

And what’s up with that claim that it has “60% less fat than regular potato chips”? Nowhere in its two dozen+ ingredients are potatoes even listed, so this is a literal case of “apples to oranges”, botanically speaking. They could have compared it to anything and been roughly as accurate. “1500 lbs. less fat than a bison!”?

Rating: On the one hand, this stuff ain’t bad. On the other, there’s not a lot of mix in this mix: in addition to the Chex themselves you got what appears to be bark and some yellowish stickie things, all of which taste exactly the same (i.e., like the seasoning, which is essentially salt, garlic powder, and “spices”). So I’m not sure I buy the back-of-the-package claim of “a variety of tastes and textures”, but maybe “moderate variation in shapes and shades of brown” got a thumbs down from the focus group. 65¢/$1.

Update: Commenter Luv2Spin just brought this to my attention:

Where by “this” I mean “my lunch” and by “attention” I mean “mouth”.

I’ve never understood the breaststroke. This is not a comment on my sexual prowess. But I simply cannot comprehend why there is more than one swimming event in the Olympics.

I mean you’ve got the “freestyle”, in which competitors can hypothetically use any technique they prefer. But only a fool would choose anything other than the crawl, as the other strokes are woefully deficient in comparison. “I guess we’ll just have one swimming event then” you’d expect the Olympics guys to say, but instead they caved to the demands of the power Breaststroke lobby and gave it it’s own category, along with the Butterfly and the 100 Meter Swim While Reading a Patricia Cornwell Novel (which, okay, isn’t an actual event, but may as well be given that “inefficient forms of travel” are apparently legitimate sports).

Which brings me to Kar’s Salted Cashews. Explain to me again why we need cashews in a world that contains the miracle of peanuts? Sure you might have one of them allergies, the kind where you drop dead if any of your Facebook friends so much as thinks about Phad Thai, and then I can see why you might resort to cashews. But why would you put what is essentially a Fallback Plan in a vending machine? You don’t see them selling carob or Hydrox or methadone fercrissakes.

Also, A, this is not 90¢-worth of anything:

“The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.” — Woody Allen

And B:

If you’re a nut and you have to be roasted in the oil of another nut just to get eaten, do us all a favor and go extinct. You ain’t foolin’ nobody.

Rating: 35¢/$1. I was ready to go as high as 60¢ based on the peanut oil and salt, but this picture of how cashews are grown caused me to spit the half-masticated remnants into my hand and knock two bits off the rating.

My office moved into a new building over the weekend, and I spent much of this morning dealing with the attendant hassles: plotting a new bus route, unpacking boxes, performing emergency services on a manhandled plant (“Goddamn it Lucky Bamboo, you never backed away from anything in your life! Fight, goddamn it! FIGHT!”).

The good news is that my new digs has a window that overlooks a courtyard. The bad is that the courtyard is narrow and the window of my boss’ boss is directly across the way, which means he can see my computer screen at any given moment. Currently the only computer game I can play on the company dime is SimSpreadsheet.

To make matters worse, the entrances to the restrooms are identical in this building as they were in the last, except Mens is on the left and Womens is on the right–the exact opposite of what I am accustomed to. Thus, every trip to the can this morning has been accompanied by a 30-second game of “Where’s the urinal?” (followed, 40 minutes later, by “Hello, I’m Your HR Rep!”).

But every cloud has a silver lining. In this case it’s a brand new vending machine, chock full of snacks the likes of which I’ve only hithertofore heard tell of in rumors and legends. Behold!

KitKat Crisp? Famous Amos Cookies? Beef Jerky?! HAVE I DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN OR AT LEAST PURGATORY WHICH AS I UNDERSTAND IT IS ESSENTIALLY HEAVEN’S RECEPTION AREA AND WOULD THEREFORE BE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE SUN CHIPS FOR SALE?! My reaction to the machine was not unlike that of the apes to the monolith in 2001: fear, followed by awe, followed by tentative touching, followed by the the braining of a boar via femur.

So ensorcelled was I that I made a solemn vow, right there on the spot: I will consume and review each and every item in this machine.

And to make things interesting, I shall do so in random order. After all, I’d hate to wind up in one of those dinnertime dilemmas where you eat all the good stuff and are left with the peas. Not that I need worry in this instance: the caliber of products in this particular machine is so high that there is unlike to be a single bad item in the –

Wait wait wait. Something about this photo makes me uneasy. Let’s get some CSI analysis.

Lower-right quadrant. Enhance.

Now zero in on item 156. Enhance.

Still can’t make it out. Can you clean up this image a little bit?

My god. What have I done?