Podcast Episode 3: The Worst Trader Joe's Products We've Ever Tried

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Trader Joe's Mango & Cream Bars

Here's a question I found myself pondering the other night while chomping through a Trader Joe's Mango & Cream Bar: What, exactly, is the divining criteria used to determine whether or not a frozen summer treat will be served on a stick? Is it potential mess factor? Structural integrity? Ease and comfort? I'm not really sure. I get why ice cream sandwiches (whether cookie or wafer ones) are stickless - there's a built-in easy way to hold them that unless you're a toddler (or me) it won't create a mess. Also, Klondike bars with no wooden pole make sense - although the potential mess is through the roof, I think a stick would only exacerbate since it's a big ol' quickly melting rhombus. But, other than that, and excluding ice cream cones (duh) and the cheapie colored sugar water freezy pops, pretty much any ice cream bar or popsicle or anything is a perfect candidate to be plunked on a stick, right?

Except....these TJ mango cream bars don't have a stick. They're prop-less and pole-less. Instead, it's just the bar itself, lonely, in a little wrapper just waiting to get all sticky and melty in your little grubs, unless you actually take the care to try to eat it from the wrapper, which seems silly to me. Really, these should be plopped on a little post.

Thankfully, though, I won't let that skewer my perception too much. In all, these do make a tidy little treat. Each bar is about 75-80% typical frozen mango-esque popsicle, with the a little side section of smooth chilly cream that complements the rest of the bar pretty well. I'd personally like if the cream and fruit part were a little more intermingled so each could be present in each bite. Regardless, the mango tastes all summer-y and sugary and all that enough by itself to work, but the cream really adds a nice touch to tie it all together.

A small side note: Not liking the ingredient list, which I neglected to doublecheck before purchase, mostly because so many TJ's products don't have it that I take it for granted: glucose syrup, with corn in the parentheses. There's a lot of noise online clamoring about glucose vs high fructose corn syrup (here's one link I found - can't vouch for its truthiness) but...I don't know. It sounds too much the same to me, in that tt's added sugar, and in some sort of form that's different from the sugar already mentioned in the list. Seems like a lot of extra sugar, when I think God made mangoes taste the best, personally - nothing extra needed.

Anyways, both Sandy and I, and our almost three year old (time flies!) enjoy them enough as is. They're smallish enough to perfectly sized for the kiddo and to not feel like too guilty an indulgence for us big kids. There are other varieties of these bars out there, like raspberry or coffee ones, that I'm sure we'll try before the summer's up. The box of six desserts cost no more than a couple bucks, making it a relatively painless pick up. It'd just be nice if there were a little something that made them a little more special or unique, but alas, these bars are a pretty solid choice as is. Not bad at all.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Mango & Cream Bars: 7 out of 10 Golden Spoons  

Trader Joe's Coconut Water

When I was a kid, my dad would occasionally bring home whole coconuts from the grocery store. I used to love the water that came straight out of the coconut, and I'd chug it down just as quickly as it flowed from the fruit. Back then, we erroneously called that liquid coconut milk. It was actually coconut water, same as this product. But I swear, in my memories, the liquid was much milkier and much whiter than the beverage now known as "coconut water." I also remember it being much sweeter than this coconut water. 

I'm not sure what I can attribute those discrepancies to. Perhaps it just tasted much fresher since it was literally only seconds out of the coconut. Or maybe it's one of those dimensional shift conundrums I've been reading about. In my home universe, we read Berenstein Bears books, Nelson Mandela died in the 1980's, and coconut milk came out of tapped coconuts instead of coconut water—not to mention Joe Cocker's "With A Little Help From My Friends" intro to The Wonder Years was pretty good, unlike the one that plays during the opening credits now. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's a syndication/copyright issue rather than a dimensional shift, but it's still pretty terrifying nonetheless. Seriously, if you have Netflix streaming, go play the beginning of an episode of The Wonder Years now. I'll wait for you here.

Weird, huh?

Know what else is weird? Sonia LOVES this coconut water stuff. She says it tastes much better than the Maple Water and it does at least as good a job at hydrating her. She often uses the term "sock water" when describing a beverage she doesn't like—as in water that's been used to clean dirty socks. I might be tempted to describe this coconut juice as just a small step up from sock water.

It's not that Trader Joe's offering is any worse than other pre-packaged coconut water. I'm just not really a fan of any coconut water since I transitioned into this peculiar universe—and likewise, Sonia generally likes any coconut water. Somewhere in one of our podcast episodes, I said something along the lines of, "If I were forced at gunpoint to choose between the Maple Water and the Coconut Water, I'd take the Maple Water." It's true.

Anyway, Sonia gives this product 4.5 stars, and I'm gonna give it 2.5. That still yields a respectable score of 7 out of 10, but be advised, if you're not a huge fan of other pre-packaged coconut waters, you probably won't be a fan of this, and vice versa. 

Now bring on the onslaught of "You're an idiot but your wife isn't" style comments that I've become so accustomed to these past 5 1/2 years ;)

Bottom line: 7 out of 10.