Junk Food Nation, Happy Monday!  Let’s dive right in – have you heard about the Hidden Cash craze?  I just learned about it over the weekend, and I want to know what you think. Basically, a multimillionaire (or maybe billionaire?) has decided to give some cash away to anyone who can find it.  He created a Twitter handle, @HiddenCash, and started out dropping clues of where residents of San Francisco could find envelopes or toys full of cash around the city!  Might be tucked in a park bench in Mission, or hidden inside an Angry Birds shell at Candlestick.  And people have ACTUALLY been finding these bundles of cash (from $20 to $100).

The San Fran donor called it “a social experiment for good.”   The most amazing thing to me – the craze has spread to other cities, and even more amazingly, by copycat million/billionaires!  It’s spread to Los Angeles, Dallas, New Orleans, Chicago, the UK, and even here in DC!

What do you think of this?  For me, I have a bunch of thoughts:

(1) FREE CASH! GIMME!   But am I going to go crazy and miss work and go stooping under boat docks, etc for a mere $20? You gotta load up that envelope, son!

(2) Why not? If he/she wants to give away his/her money and bring some brightness to someone’s day, I AM ALL FOR IT.

(3) Although it is a little bit like social manipulation, isn’t it?  For $100?  I’m just imagining some millionaire sitting in an ivory tower tweeting out a location of a bag of nickels cackling, “DANCE MONKEYS DANCE!!!!”  No thanks.

(4) I wouldn’t go out of my way for an envelope with $40 in it…but if the location that was tweeted out was, say, right outside my office building?  I might take a stroll down there…I’m jus’ sayin’.

Tell me what you think of this Hidden Cash business in the comments below.

Today’s junk food: Limited Edition Extreme Creme Twinkies!

Looking at these boxes of Limited Edition Extreme Creme Twinkies, I suppose they should be called eXtreme Creme Twinkies, but I refuse to give in to the establishment!  Or something like that.  Anyways, I JUST saw the new X-Men movie over the weekend, and was surprise to see this product at my local Walmart the very next day.  X-Men and Twinkies, cross promoting?  Sounds like a match made in…well, never.

Limited Edition Extreme Creme Blue Raspberry Twinkies feature blue raspberry creamy filling and displays Mystique, Colossus, and Beast on its box face.  I’m not sure how I feel about blue filling.  I am sure how I feel about Jennifer Lawrence in blue body paint.  Let’s move on.

Limited Edition Extreme Creme Strawberry Twinkies feature pink strawberry creamy filling and displays Halle Berry, Bishop, and Professor X on its box face.  How do I know all these characters?  Because I was a comic book geek for a good portion of my life.  And knowing what I know about the X-Men – none of them ate Twinkies, ever.

Limited Edition Extreme Creme Blue Raspberry Twinkies contain “blue raspberry concentrate” and two types of blue food coloring.  This, in more than two ways, scares me.

Limited Edition Extreme Creme Strawberry Twinkies have strawberry juice concentrate and “strawberry flavor/” Why would you need strawberry flavor added when you already have strawberry juice concentrate?  Frightening.

From the top, these Limited Edition Extreme Creme Twinkies look pretty normal, but…

…from the bottom, these Limited Edition Extreme Creme Twinkies reveal their diabolical insides.  Let’s break these suckers open.

Wow.  I opened up these Limited Edition Extreme Creme Twinkies, and …well, they didn’t skimp on the pink or blue food coloring, did they?  There’s no mistaking which one is which.  Time to taste! (IF I DARE)

First of all, these Limited Edition Extreme Creme Blue Raspberry Twinkies are so blue that it’s scary.  However, would a less blue creme make any difference to me?  besides the feeling that I’m eating LESS food coloring, not really.  Blue food is always going to creep me out.

Once I got past the color, and focused on the flavor, I thought these blue raspberry Twinkies were just so-so. I could taste, upon the initial bite, a small taste of blue raspberry.  It was sweet and tasted of raspberry before the sugariness of the creme took over as I chewed the spongy cake.  After that initial raspberry flavor, the rest of the Twinkie was standard – standard taste, and standard feel. Nothing else really special about this Twinkie.  The Blue Raspberry flavor faded and didn’t stay at the forefront of the flavor.  It did turn my tongue blue, though, which is…eh, which I’m not a huge fan of.  Whatever.  Moving on.

The Limited Edition Extreme Creme Strawberry Twinkies were much better than the blue raspberry variety, IMO.  The creme inside of this cake was instantly recognizable as strawberry, and reminded me a lot of the flavor of strawberry ice cream (although, obviously, the texture was of creme and not ice cream).  Eaten with the spongy cake, these definitely triggered “strawberry shortcake” vibes in my mind.

Each bite I took, the strawberry shortcake flavor kept coming back, again and again – no fade.  I liked these even more than regular Twinkies, in fact.  Nice job on these, Hostess.

PURCHASED AT: Walmart

COST: $2.98

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