Junk Food Nation, sorry for the delay in today’s post. I wanted to mention that of all the posts I’ve had on this blog before, the one I’ve gotten the most feedback for were the Rold Gold Peppermint Dipped Snowflakes Pretzels. People have just gone Lady GaGa for these. So many comments.  Are they spam, fake, or are these people really just crazy over these pretzel snowflakes?

Yesterday, on another favorite blog of mine, The Actor’s Diet, blogger extraordinaire Lynn noted that she was munching on some Chocolate and Peppermint Pretzel Crisps. Given the reaction over the Rold Gold’s snowflakes, I figured – why not give these a shot?  Let’s review these and another bag I found of chocolate-peppermint themed pretzels, and see how they stack up against the Rold Gold’s snowflakes.

We’ll call it the Great Peppermint Pretzel Challenge, because I like naming events for no reason.  This brought to you by the same person who coined “The Great Get Out Of Bed And To Work In 20 Minutes Challenge” and “The Great Write a Blog Post Every Day About Junk Food Challenge.”  Ha.

Today, Part 1: Snack Factory Dark Chocolate & Peppermint Pretzel Thins!

The Money Shot

Snack Factory Dark Chocolate & Peppermint Pretzel Crisps were seen and purchased at Walgreens. When I saw these, I immediately thought of the Rold Gold variety, which were purchased (and still in stock) at the same store.  The bag had a very festive appeal to it – green and red and white, with clear pictures of the snack inside, and sticks of chocolate and peppermint.  Yummy looking.

Snack Factory, huh?

I’d never heard of the brand Snack Factory before…and they don’t really have a website, just an entire page dedicated to these crisps.  It’s either their wheelhouse, or…their only product.  (Update: it’s their only product). Originally founded in 1970 to make funnel cakes, Snack Factory has evolved over the past 40 years to now solely manufacture pretzel crisps.  The story is quite fascinating, actually.

Rethink, jerk!

Per their website, Snack Factory indicates “Taking our own ‘Rethink Your Pretzel’ tagline to heart, we decided to rethink our packaging too, with brighter colors, an updated logo, and sparkling new photography.” Well, I do have to commend them – this package is pretty.  RETHINK YOUR PRETZEL! is kind of intimidating though.  I mean, pretzel crisps are pretzels which have been flattened…there…I’ve rethought them.

Frozen?

Sweet indulgence and salty crunch is a great description…but can these deliver?

Dems some big ole pieces of candy

Opened the bag, and a good dark chocolate smell wafted out.  Very nice.  These crisps looked decked out in chocolate…

Ripply dipped

…and there really wasn’t much skimping on the peppermint candy.  I like the non-uniform peppermint candy piece crumbles too – contrasted nicely with the ripply surface of the fudge dip.

Crunchy peppermint

Fudgey and encrusted

Let’s get right to the taste, however.

The crunch: Because these are pretzel crisps/chips, they are more crispy than crunchy. The crisps were so coated in chocolate that a lot of that snap was lost – I mainly felt the snap of a chocolate bar in my mouth, rather than the snap of the pretzel itself.  That said, as I chewed, they were plenty crispy – but they didn’t feel as lightly crunchy as the Rold Gold variety.

The chocolate: VERY good dark chocolate.  Covering every angle of the crisps, there was no empty patches, it was all rich and slightly bitter, like a good dark chocolate should be.  Good quality too – didn’t taste like a bunch of powder or plastic.

The peppermint candies: Crunchy crunchy crunchy, which I really liked.  These added to the crunch of the pretzel nicely, and each time a piece was chewed it gave a nice peppermint POP to the flavor profile.

The combo: Definitely tasty, but something sort of lacked.  For me, the one drawback of this combo was the use of dark chocolate. The whole pretzel/chocolate salty/savory thing really explodes in the Rold Gold version because they use white fudge, which is VERY sweet. That is to say, The salty works best when the sweet is…well, sweet.

In this snack, while the peppermint worked well with the dark chocolate, I’m not sure the saltiness of the pretzel and the bitter of the chocolate matched.  Overall, still a tasty snack I would demolish – but just a LITTTTTLE bit off.

Tomorrow, I review the white chocolate variety of these Pretzel Crisps in Part 2 of our challenge.  We’ll see how those hold up.

Any thoughts? Tell me in the comments below or hit me on Twitter @junkfoodguy or on my Facebook Page.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy