Favorite Day Freeze-Dried Strawberries in Dark Chocolate

A couple months ago, the beautiful wifey came home with a product called TruFru, or trüfrü. We were both pleasantly surprised at how delicious and simple they were. They're just freeze-dried fruits with a chocolate coating.

We tried milk chocolate covered strawberries in that instance, though I know the company makes other combinations of fruit and candy coatings including bananas, blueberries, or pineapple covered in ruby cacao, white, milk, or dark chocolate.

I loved the perfect strawberries and the quality milk chocolate, although I wished they were a little smaller. Most of the strawberries were way too big to be bite sized. Sonia wanted to try a dark chocolate version, but they didn't have any in stock at the time. Well, this Target brand iteration is both bite-sized and covered in dark chocolate. Yay.

I do think I'd like a milk chocolate or white chocolate version better, but these snacks are quite tasty. The beautiful wifey loves this version with dark chocolate. Again, the strawberries are dry and crunchy and covered in a quality confection. The bag is resealable and there's plenty in the bag to curb the munchies for a couple people easily.

About four bucks. Not bad. Would buy again or try other flavors of the same style product, either from TruFru or Favorite Day.

I give Favorite Day Freeze-Dried Strawberries in Dark Chocolate 8 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Holiday White Chocolate Mini Pretzels

Well, I've reverted back to this blog's original blogspot domain in case you hadn't noticed, partly due to a lack of traffic and partly due to the fact that GoDaddy sucks. I probably won't be posting on this blog quite as often, but if I come across something interesting from Target, I'll be sure to throw up a quick line or two to let you all know. In the mean time, What's Good at Trader Joe's? will be entering its 15th year of reviews soon and is still going strong.

My wife apparently bought these off of target.com recently and they just appeared in our office. Not sure why she chose these. She's not the biggest white chocolate gal. Maybe it's because I like white chocolate. Aww, how selfless of her. I like chocolate/candy coated pretzels, too, in general.

However, I've never been a big fan of Christmas snacks that are only "Christmas" because the packaging tells me so or they just added green and red food coloring. Know what I mean? At least throw in some cranberries or figs or peppermint or something tangibly Christmassy.

Sorry, I meant holiday-ish. I don't mean to exclude non-Christians here. But whatevs. These coated pretzels are exactly what you'd expect. They're small, salty, sweet, and crunchy.

When there are sweets and salty snacks and cookies and candies every-freaking-where for over a month from late November into the early new year, I feel like you really have to choose which treats to indulge in. These pretzels barely make the cut, but at the same time, it's hard to punish a product for simply being exactly what you knew it would be. Sometimes I feel the same way about people.

But now we're waxing a bit too philosophical for a food blog, aren't we? Let's keep it simple, folks. It is what it is.

Three bucks for the 6 oz resealable bag. Probably wouldn't go out of my way to buy this product again, but I never know when I'll get a white chocolate covered pretzel craving, so I can't rule it out completely.

I give this holiday snack 7 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day 25 Days of Chocolate Joy

I don't think I've ever mentioned it on this blog before, but I built my very own time machine out of an old recliner and some spare refrigerator parts. It's called the magical DeLorean TARDIS time sled hot tub—you know, as an homage to some of the greatest time machines throughout classic literature and cinema. I use it whenever I need to travel back in time to check out products that are no longer available in stores OR whenever I need to jump forward a few days in time to see what treats I'll be getting in my advent calendar. I'll be traveling to December 5, 2023 this time—a full five days beyond the date of this blog post's original publishing. In the future, I'll sample each flavor of candy present in this Favorite Day 25 Days of Chocolate Joy advent calendar and report back. Here we go...

Whoosh! I'm back. Holy cow. I'm still shaking. Here are the findings from my research.

Friday, December 1 — It was a chocolate star wrapped in gold foil. It was just your basic solid chocolate with some peppermint flavoring. Actually, I don't see anything about peppermint flavoring on the ingredients. Come to think of it, all of these chocolates tasted a little like peppermint. I think since they all sat in the same package for so long, a bit of the mint flavor rubbed off on everything.

Saturday, December 2 — I got a dark chocolate raspberry truffle. Initially, the flavor of this one tasted great. The raspberry flavor could have been stronger, but it was a nice combo of rich dark chocolate and fruitiness. There was a bit of an aftertaste, though—not unlike purple cough syrup.

Sunday, December 3 — Chocolate with sea salt on top and caramel in the middle. The whole sea salt caramel thing isn't really my favorite flavor, but it was done well in this instance. It tasted fairly high quality to me.

Monday, December 4 — I had a case of the Mondays this coming Monday. White chocolate is usually my favorite, but the nice subtle sweetness of it was completely overpowered by the intense peppermint flavor. Way too much peppermint oil! I wish they would have left it out completely.

Tuesday, December 5 — It was like a mini Oreo covered in chocolate and sprinkles...with some mint flavor. Again, I don't even think they added mint to this one, it just absorbed it via osmosis or whatever that weird process is called. It's like when you have something pungent like onions in the fridge and it makes everything else smell and taste a little bit like onions. That happened here except with peppermint. Meh. I'm over cookies already and there are still weeks and weeks before Christmas.

The presentation is interesting and there are two magnetic doors on the sides of the calendar. You could save the box and use it next year, putting your own little goodies in the compartments. The candy is definitely not my favorite, but it's not awful, either. Fifteen bucks at Target. Probably would not buy again next year.

I give this advent calendar 6 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Milk Chocolate Bars with Popping Candy

When I was in high school, my friends and I "outgrew" trick or treating for a few years. But we still liked to wear costumes and take part in the festivities in one way or another, so one year, at the suggestion of my neighbor's mom, we decided to dress up with some old clothes and monster masks and hand out candy on his porch.

My neighbor friend was a bit of a prankster, so with a gleam in his eye, he climbed up onto his kitchen counter and reached into a cupboard all the way at the top. He shuffled a few things around, cleared away some cobwebs and produced a mixed bag of miniature chocolate bars. He gleefully announced that the candy he'd produced was at least five or six years old and that he'd been hiding it for such an occasion. We opened one of the bars to inspect it. It was nearly stark white. It tasted funny, too. Apparently, when left to sit long enough, chocolate starts turning back to pure sugar...or something like that.

Anyway, we filled an old plastic jack-o-lantern with the candy bars and wrote a note that said "Take candy at your own risk." We set up a graveyard scene and we pretended to be dead until kids would come along and reach into the candy bowl.

It was raining that Halloween, so we didn't get a ton of trick-or-treaters, but the ones that did come were about our age, and we knew most of them at least in passing from high school. About an hour after the first bunch of kids had grabbed our outdated chocolate, they returned shouting obscenities and began throwing the candy bars at us. "WHAT IS THIS $#!t!?" they screamed, pelting us with the unused portions of their fun-sized treats. My friend and I were too busy laughing our butts off to care that we were being bombarded with candy bars. Eventually we ran inside and they ran out of ammo.

Ah, good times.

But it would seem I have some bad karma to deal with when it comes to old mini chocolate bars. Looks like Target played a similar joke on me. These little pop rocks candy bars are all melted and discolored. They taste sorta okay, I guess.

The pop rocks things are the best part about this product. They do indeed crackle and snap in your mouth. I've had snapping chocolate bars before, and most of them were better than this offering. This product has a witch on the cover, and there's a caption that reads: "popping potion." But apparently the official name of the product is just "milk chocolate bars with popping candy." Lame.

For four bucks, it's a good amount of chocolate, and it's optimized for handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, assuming that's still a thing. Each bar is individually wrapped so it's harder to slip razor blades, rat poison, and AIDS into the candy without it being super obvious.

Anyway, it's not terrible for a Halloween treat bag, either for you and your family or for the neighborhood kids. I still wouldn't buy again. I'd try to find something a little tastier and more unique for next year.

I give this candy 6 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Monster Drizzle Caramel Corn

At least part of food blogging is aesthetics. To some degree, we have to worry about nice colors, layouts, and pretty pictures. So when target.com ships a chocolate-covered caramel corn mix in 90°F+ heat and it melts all over the see-through window on the packaging, it's kind of a bummer. It looks ugly.

But I just think of it as a healthy dose of veritas baked into the art form. It's not like I'm going to clean the chocolate off the little window and I'm certainly not going to drive to Target to get a refund or anything like that. It is what it is. This product came with grungy packaging and you get to see it in all its glory.

How's the food within the packaging, you ask? Meh. It's edible. The best part of Monster Trail Mix is all the various ingredients. It's supposed to have peanuts, M&M's, raisins, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, pretzel balls, and/or peanut butter cups, depending upon which version you've got. 

We tried the Monster Granola Bars a while back, and they had peanuts, raisins, M&M's, chocolate chips, and peanut butter chips, all in a convenient bar format. This stuff is just caramel corn with chocolate and pretzels...and there are barely any pretzels! So it's essentially just run-of-the-mill caramel corn with a bit of chocolate, most of which melted in our bag and stuck to the sides of the packaging.

It's part of Target's "Supernatural Sweets" line which, I guess, is seasonal...and imbued with the same demonic powers that inhabit the souls of Target's executives. Figures.

$4.00 for the resealable 7 oz bag. I wouldn't buy again. Maybe I can pawn this stuff off on the wifey...

I give this snack 5 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Mini White Fudge Dipped Sandwich Cookies

The wifey ordered this little snack bag from target.com and it arrived with all the cookies fused together from the summer heat. What? Don't FedEx trucks have air conditioning?

They still taste pretty good. They remind us of those old circus animal cookies with frosting and sprinkles. Mother's brand. Remember those? Except these have a creamy filling, too.

They're very vanilla-y. They're crispy, creamy, crunchy, and crumbly. I'd say they're a lot like birthday cake, flavor-wise. Obviously, they aren't soft like cake, but it's still a very birthday-ish vibe IMO.

I'm thinking most folks would find these pretty tasty, especially kids with a sweet tooth. I rarely find myself wanting anything this sweet these days, but if I get the munchies, I'll easily down a couple of these puppies. Hopefully the wife will beat me to it, though. This isn't exactly diet food and I don't need to get any further out of shape than I already am.

I'll score these as if I actually wanted super sugary sandwich cookies and not as a grumpy old man resenting the fact that I only have unhealthy snacks in the house right now.

I give these cookies 8 out of 10 stars.

Good & Gather Probiotic Fruit & Yogurt Trail Mix

This furthers my suspicions that GAG is now representing what Simply Balanced once did: Target's kinda healthy-ish foodstuffs. And Favorite Day is taking the place of Archer Farms: normal, not-so-healthy treats and indulgent trail mixes. Good & Gather Probiotic Fruit & Yogurt Trail Mix is a healthy-esque trail mix that not only features two kinds of fruit, but probiotic yogurt-covered cranberries. Woohoo. Let's dive in.

First up: dried sweetened cranberries and blueberries. If we're trying to be nutritious here, GAG, we should avoid added sugars. I would have been fine with dried berries without added sweeteners. But whatevs. They taste good and there's plenty of 'em in the bag.

Next: yogurt-flavored cranberries with probiotic. Yogurt flavored cranberries? Wouldn't yogurt covered cranberries be more accurate? And they're "with probiotic"? Probiotic what? Why'd your team of marketing geniuses decide on this diction instead of "Probiotic yogurt-covered cranberries"? Or why not "Cranberries with probiotic yogurt"? Again, whatever. They taste like normal yogurt-covered cranberries. Nice and plump. I like these.

Thirdly: almonds. Self-explanatory. Honestly, there weren't that many almonds in my trail mix. I wouldn't have minded more in this instance.

Last up: Greek-style yogurt confectionery chips. They're not just globs of vanilla-flavored sugar. They're made of Greek yogurt and therefore are good for you. Slick. They're okay.

The overall flavor is quite sweet, fruity, and there's plenty of vanilla creaminess. But now that I'm near the bottom of the bag, the whole thing seems overly salty. Would I purchase again? Probably not. $6.49 for the resealable 9 oz bag.

I give this healthy-ish trail mix 6 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Piña Colada Trail Mix

Things are already sticky enough in the summer. We don't need sticky foods to make things stickier. I can already tell the ingredients of this trail mix have fused together from the summer heat before I even open the bag. It looks like some genius has mixed together five of the stickiest foods known to man in a little plastic bag and released it as a seasonal summertime-only offering at Target...because, you know, in any other season the stickiness wouldn't be an issue.

This stuff better taste great, because I have a feeling I'm going to go through a lot of Wet Ones and be very grumpy after consuming a few handfuls...

First impressions: yes, my suspicions about the sticky-factor were absolutely correct. The ingredients all stick together in giant wads that you have to pry apart with your fingers, which then get covered in all manner of sugary glazes and syrups, which you then have to spend absurd amounts of time licking clean and/or using entire packs of wet wipes and/or running your hands under the faucet and/or showering to cleanse yourself from the tacky substance that now coats your entire body, and if you've eaten a handful or two somehow amidst the chaos, your pores are now secreting a sticky sweet jelly that fuses you to your car seat or office chair and prevents you from moving and making further attempts to clean the viscid goo from your body, face, and clothes and soon you succumb to the mucilaginous substance completely, cease moving, and become prey for whatever insects or wild animals smell the cloying glaze and begin to feed first on the confectionery coating and rum-flavored syrups and continue on to your lifeless body now too weak to resist the ravenous creatures as they feast and frenzy unto your demise.

But if you can make it past the stickiness, yes this is a tasty mix. It's possible I'm exaggerating just a tad, but this product is a little on the sweet side, I'd say. It vaguely tastes like piña colada, and I LOVE piña coladas.

They even have an element that tastes like rum. Those pecans go great with that gooey, syrupy, rummy glaze. The dried fruits are nothing to write home about, but they don't really detract from the mix, either.

I like the coconut pineapple balls. They're the best part. Not as sticky as some of the other ingredients.

TL;DR - The mix is a tad too sweet and way too sticky, but it tastes pretty good overall.

I give this trail mix 7 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Cotton Candy Trail Mix

At the rate we're covering Favorite Day and Good & Gather products on this blog, I don't think we're ever going to make a meaningful dent in Target's product lines just looking at a couple things per month. They're releasing tons of new foods and seasonal items each year, and at this point, it's kind of futile to even try and keep up.

So...maybe we'll just make this a blog about Target brand trail mixes and snack mixes? That's a worthy endeavor, no? I don't even know if I can get around to reviewing all of those. But at least there will be one place out in the interzones dedicated to most of those newfangled and mysterious and sometimes pricey trail mixes there at the local Target.

This one's cotton candy. Interesting. Another summer flavor. Let's see if it's as good as the lemonade one we looked at last week.

In a word, yes, it is. But let's break things down, shall we?

Popping candy clusters. They're light blue and pink like popular cotton candy colors. Don't think they're two different flavors, though. They're just sweet and pop-a-licious, just like Pop Rocks candy.

Vanilla crème flavored almonds. We've seen these a couple times before. They're awesome. This mix could use more of them.

Peanuts. We all know what peanuts are. Why are they with a cotton candy mix? I guess they're both state fair type snacks. Circus snacks? I dunno. They work just fine.

Shortbread chips. Crunchy. Vaguely sweet. Not super memorable. The mix could use fewer of these. Not a deal-breaker, though.

Yogurt-flavored covered raisins. Kind of a weird way to say it. "Yogurt covered raisins" or "yogurt flavored raisins" makes more sense to me. Large, creamy, white chocolate-esque candies with a bit of raisin inside. I'm down.

Strawberry-flavored confection drops, AKA strawberry chips. Creamy and fruity and sweet. They work nicely.

The overall effect is definitely cotton candy-esque, though I don't think this one nailed real cotton candy quite like the last mix did with sparkling strawberry lemonade. Still, it's another really interesting seasonal offering from Target. Nine ounces for $5.49. I'd buy it again. Snackalicious. 

I give this trail mix 8 out of 10 stars. 

Favorite Day Cookies & Crème Trail Mix

There's cookies and cream ice cream, cookies and cream cake, cookies and cream candy bars, cookies and cream cereal, and of course, cookies and cream cookies. But I've never in all my days heard of any version of cookies and cream with nuts. Seems weird. Seems like it should be called Favorite Day Cookies & Crème & Nuts, dontcha think?

At any rate, the almonds and peanuts here aren't unwelcome, exactly. It is a trail mix after all. They add some extra crunch to the already crunchy cookie-based mix. Not exactly traditional cookies and cream, but it works.

Then we have dark chocolate chips. I'd prefer milk chocolate chips. Never had cookies and cream with dark chocolate before. Oh well.

Next up, white chocolate chips. They're good. They add to the "crème" effect.

Cookies & crème-flavored bites. I guess these are like crunchy spherical chocolate cookies covered in a speckled confectionery coating. Cookies and crème-ish enough. No complaints.

Fudge flavored cookie pieces. They're okay i guess. These and the dark chocolate chips are my least favorite elements.

All in all, not very cookies and crème-esque, but not terrible either. Moderately indulgent. I think we paid about four and a half bucks for the 10.5 oz bag. Not something I'd choose for a hike on a warm day.

I give this trail mix 7 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Valentine Crunchy Clusters

Dental warning! If you have dental work or any kind of fixtures in your mouth that you want to keep in place, you might want to sit this one out. The caramel in between these pretzels feels like semi-dried super glue. To say it's hard to chew or that it's "sticky" are both understatements. I'd recommend just sucking on them, but that doesn't really work with the pretzels here.

That said, Favorite Day Valentine Crunchy Clusters are quite tasty. The saltiness from the pretzels balances out the sweetness from the white chocolate and caramel, otherwise it might be too far in the direction of SUGAR OVERLOAD​​. But pretzels are the number one ingredient, and there's a fair amount of sodium—maybe even a bit too much sodium if you're watching out for high blood pressure or anything like that.

Some of the pieces are way too big to be bite-sized, and if you try to bite them in half, the pretzel and white drizzle crumble everywhere while the thick, stiff caramel fights against your teeth and tries desperately to hold everything together. It gets messy and uncomfortable.

The clusters are slightly more agreeable texture-wise when warmed. It has been very cold here in the upper midwest and that might account for some of the firmness of the caramel. I don't mean put them in the microwave, although, you never know, that might work. I put my bag of Valentine Crunchy Clusters in front of a space heater for 5 or 10 minutes and that seems to help. The candy is still absurdly hard to chew, but at least I was able to keep my dental crowns intact.

The wifey agrees with my assessment. We definitely won't purchase this product again because of the unyielding caramel mass at the center of each cluster, but if something similar came along that was easier to chew, I'd certainly check it out.

I give these crunchy clusters 5 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Strawberries & Crème Indulgent Trail Mix

Isn't it weird how foods qualify as "Valentine's treats" just because they're pink or red? Strawberries are red, therefore they're fair game during Valentine season. Furthermore, anything strawberry-flavored becomes appropriate during this time of year. Throw in some heart-shaped stuff and a spiel about being "made with love" on the packaging and pretty soon you're buying your significant other bags and bags of the trail mix and you don't even know why.

There really aren't even any strawberries in this product at all. The only fruits are cranberries. I guess there's some "strawberry-flavored" elements, but do they even use real strawberry in the flavoring? Try wading through that novel of an ingredients list to find out...

Despite my rant about the lack of strawberry and gimmicky V.D. nonsense, this is a relatively yummy mix. Let's break it down piece by piece:

First up, sweet creme almonds. We've seen these before...or at least something extremely similar. They're downright tasty. Nutty sweet and actually kind of creamy, they're everything I've ever wanted in a candied almond. There's a fair amount of 'em, too, unlike the previous mix we saw them in.

Next, there's heart-shaped coated pretzels. Pretty good. Pretzels covered in a white chocolate glaze with red nonpareils. They're crunchy, salty, and candy-esque. I approve.

Also there are different pastel colors of M&M's candies. Not generic M&M's. Real M&M's. You all know what M&M's are like, so we'll just move on to the next part of the mix.

Confectionary coated sweetened cranberries. These might be my favorite part of the mix. Why oh why is my favorite element always the one they give us the least amount of? These little guys look like wads of white chocolate, but there's sweet, tangy cranberry underneath. I want more of them.

Strawberry-flavored pink shimmer coated pretzel balls. That's a mouthful. Candied pretzel balls are always nice, but there are already white chocolate coated pretzels in this mix, so I found these to be redundant and unnecessary.

Finally, there are cookies with pink and red sprinkles. These are my least favorite element in this bag. Wouldn't you know it, they're also the most overrepresented. They're like bland, stale miniature shortbread cookies. Can I exchange mine for more cranberries?

My wife liked this mix more than I did, mainly because she didn't mind those cookie bits. For her sake, I'll give this product a decent score. $4.49 for the 8 oz resealable bag.

I give this indulgent trail mix 8 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Santa's Sweet Tooth Indulgent Snack Mix

We've got the first snow of the season here in the upper midwest today. It's a nice start to the Christmas season, but the sky is very gloomy and overcast and it's difficult to get a decent picture of the jar since I rely on natural lighting for most of these product pics.

It also doesn't help that the sticker putter onner guy was slacking and left a bunch of creases and bubbles when he slapped on the label. Oh well. Quiet quitting is a thing now.

Note: this is a snack mix rather than a trail mix. It is not expressly intended for consumption while hiking or biking on trails or doing anything active. This product is for shoveling down your gullet while your fat butt is glued to the couch as you watch Christmas movies and guzzle egg nog.

At first glance, there appear to be four or five elements in this trail mix, er...excuse me, snack mix. However, there are only three. The "white chocolatey-covered cookie balls" are colored both red and green...you know, for Christmas. The green ones look very similar to wasabi peas. And they're okay. They taste cookies n' cream-ish enough. They're smooth on the outside and crunchy on the inside. They're good for a handful or two every so often.

The "chocolate cookies" are my least favorite part of the mix. They're like generic mini Oreos without the filling. Who wants Oreos without the filling? Nobody, that's who. They're super dry. They make me want to cough. These cookies would be like "gifts" you stick in a bad kid's stocking.

And finally, there are "cookies and cream flavored white chocolaty covered almonds." Holy crap. Favorite Day finally brought out the big guns. These things are delicious. And as far as I can tell, they constitute about 2% of the whole jar. Seriously? You give us just enough of these things to know what we're missing out on? Sad. Target, you're stingy.

Make a pack of the cookies and cream almonds ONLY, Target, and we'll talk.

Eleven bucks for this slightly disappointing jar of Favorite Day Santa's Sweet Tooth Indulgent Snack Mix.

I give this mix 6 out of 10 stars. It would have been 7 or 8 if there had been more of the almonds.

Favorite Day White Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Popcorn

It's still fall, so it's still pumpkin spice season. It's ubiquitous. It's inescapable. I do get sick of it each and every year, but I have to eat my fill of pumpkin spice first in order to get a big enough fix so that I don't crave it at all until next September. It's like intermittent fasting...except with pumpkin spice, and it plays out over months instead of hours. Okay, that's probably a bad analogy.

Anyway, I'm pretty close to my 2022 PS tipping point right now. Will the score of this product suffer as a result? Quite possibly.

The popcorn is pretty typical caramel corn in terms of texture, although it's a little on the stiff side. I think it's a result of the coating, but the product winds up feeling a little stale unfortunately.

The white chocolate is totally unevenly distributed. There are many pieces with no white chocolate at all. But other parts of the bag are nothing but enormous globs of white chocolate with a few popcorn pieces stuck to them. You can even see one of those globs in the photo, right in the middle of the see-through window on the bag.

Leaf shaped sprinkles? There really aren't many sprinkles to be found here. I guess it's possible most of them were shaken off the popcorn and wound up at the bottom of the bag. Even out of the few sprinkles I do see only one or two actually look like leaves. The others are just nondescript random shapes. Oh well. I mean...the idea was cute.

Flavor-wise, it's just too sweet. I like white chocolate in general, but it has to be in the right context. Neither the white chocolate sweetness nor the pumpkin spice elements shine the way I'd want them to. I'd also want the popcorn to be a little more salty in this instance to balance out the sweetness.

I like the idea of this product in theory, but the execution is just a tad sloppy in my professional opinion. $4.49 for the 7 oz bag. It's too expensive, as well. Although...what isn't these days?

I give this popcorn 6 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Pumpkin Spice White Chocolate Espresso Beans

Not long ago, I looked at Trader Joe's Pumpkin Spice Espresso Beans. All things considered, the wifey and I liked them quite a bit. We were thinking about picking up another pack or two but before we could get back to TJ's, the wifey spotted these little morsels at the local Target.

It's the same deal pretty much: crunchy espresso beans covered in a candy-esque shell, flavored with typical pumpkin or pumpkin pie spices. But there was definitely something working in the Trader Joe's version that isn't working here for some reason.

I think maybe the candy coating in this case is a tad too sweet and the pumpkin spice elements are out of balance. There's a bit of that scented candle effect. Somehow the natural flavor of the coffee bean isn't as rich in this case. Part of that could be that these beans are significantly smaller than their Joesian counterparts.

I can't eat more than one or two of these beans before my mouth tires of the flavor. Definitely don't think this will be a repeat purchase. I might have been a little more lenient on these if I hadn't tried a superior product from a different store brand so recently. Plus, at $4.49 this product is four and a half times the price of the other version. Granted, it's a bigger bag, but I think small and cheap is the way to go with a product like this. Not like you're going to be eating these by the handful in either case. My wife agrees this product isn't nearly as good as Trader Joe's bag of pumpkin-flavored espresso beans, but she'll probably not have too tough a time finishing our package.

I give these espresso beans 6 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Scarecrow Crunch

No squash. No pumpkin. No apple. No maple. Not even nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and clove. Nothing fall-ish about this product but the name. I mean, I guess the colors are there. Orange, yellow, and brown are vaguely autumnal.

Nevertheless, it's a tasty indulgent mix. Quite a few of the ingredients are the usual suspects as far as Target trail mixes are concerned, although there's a surprise or two as well. Let's break things down.

Peanuts. Good-quality whole peanuts and in some cases, halves. Can't go wrong. The quantity of them in the mix is just about right by my estimation.

Peanut butter candies. AKA generic Reese's Pieces. I've always liked Reese's and these store-brand gems are a pretty tasty knock-off. No complaints here.

Milk chocolate-covered cereal squares. You know, like from "puppy chow"? Except there are so many PB ingredients in the bag that these might as well be covered in peanut butter too. They taste like chocolate peanut butter puppy chow. Pretty good.

White chocolate oat cereal. So basically...generic Cheerios with orange-colored white chocolate on them. I'm a fan of white chocolate, and I'm a fan of Cheerios, but these don't really do much for me. Meh.

Milk chocolate marshmallow bits. Alongside all the peanut butter, these little do-dads bring something fluffernutteresque to the equation. Despite my fondness for fluffernutter sandwiches, I don't think these were necessary in this Scarecrow Crunch bag.

All things considered, I'm glad I tried it, but I doubt I'd purchase it regularly. If you want sugar shock after taking a hike, then this is the trail mix to reach for. At least there's peanuts and peanut butter in there, so you'll get a bit of protein. The ingredients list reads like a novel...a very long, very boring novel. Also there should be at least one real fall/autumn ingredient.

I give this trail mix 7 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Peanut Butter Chocolate Trail Mix

So this is basically like Reese's trail mix, right? Sounds delicious. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's pretty hard to screw up peanut butter and chocolate. Let's hope Favorite Day didn't do anything silly here. We'll break it down piece by piece.

First: mini peanut butter cups. That's logical. The base for a peanut butter and chocolate trail mix should obviously be something that contains both peanut butter and chocolate. It's a bit hot out and these little guys want to melt fast so we've been keeping the bag in the fridge while not in use. Good quality. Sweet, nutty, and scrumptious, plus there are plenty of 'em. Thumbs up.

Second: chocolate covered cereal squares. So they're like Chex, but they're the Chex squares in "Puppy Chow" or "Muddy Buddies" rather than the Chex squares straight out of a cereal box. These squares are plenty sweet, very chocolatey, and plentiful as well. They always leave a residue on your hands, though, but that can be remedied with some Wet Ones or Moist Naps.

Next: peanuts. If not for this ingredient, I don't think they could legally call this "trail mix." They're just plain peanuts, and they help to offset the ridiculous amount of sweetness from the other elements. Nutty. Peanutty. Salty. Heck, you all know what peanuts taste like.

Moving along: chocolate chips. Totally unnecessary here. Plenty of chocolate without these. Fortunately, there aren't many of them.

Finally: peanut butter chips. Also somewhat unnecessary, but without them this mix might too heavily favor chocolate over peanut butter.

The verdict: this is a ridiculously indulgent blend—more of a dessert than a snack you'd eat on a hike. I wouldn't take this mix outdoors in the summer heat. All the chips and cups would melt and it would be super messy.

That said, the flavor is extremely tasty and is pretty much everything I'd want in a peanut butter cup type mixture. I like washing it down with a glass of milk. Would buy again.

I give this trail mix 9 out of 10 stars.

Favorite Day Blueberry Shortbread Cookies

I've always liked blueberries and blueberry flavored things. It might seem weird, but if I ruled the world, the default fruit flavor would be blueberry. Like when you go to get ice cream or milkshakes, instead of vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate as your only three choices, there would be vanilla, blueberry, and chocolate as the only three flavors. Actually, it might be more like cookies n' cream, blueberry, and peanut butter in my magical utopia. But I digress.

The shortbread here is good. Nothing special. It's relatively fresh, buttery, and crumbly. I like it. But I really love those blueberries. They add a lot. There's a fair amount of them, too. A few little tiny dried blueberries in each bite. I only wish they were bigger.

I'd still prefer blueberry muffins or blueberry breakfast bread, although I'm sure both of those would have a shorter shelf-life than these cookies. On that note, there's a bag inside the outer box, and it's not resealable. You can re-close the outer box by slipping a tab from the one panel into a slot on the other, but it's not airtight of course. Not sure how long these will last after opened.

Robert Frost liked blueberries so much, he wrote a poem about them. Here's one stanza from it:

You ought to have seen what I saw on my way 
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture today: 
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, 
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum 
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!         
And all ripe together, not some of them green 

And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!

I'd probably buy these again. I need to find some blueberry ice cream, and I'd eat these with it. $2.99 for about 20 cookies.

I give these shortbread cookies 8 out of 10 stars.