Monday, June 27, 2016

Dear Doritos...


Dear Doritos:

You got me.  I don't care about your regular flavors - your nacho cheese or cool ranch don't tempt me at all.  Quite frankly, if I'm going to eat some chips, I'll go for some kettle-cooked BBQ chips over yours, every time.  But I don't make chips a habit, so for me to purposely buy a bag is unusual.  Which is why I'm a bit chagrined to admit that when I was waiting to checkout at Target and saw your throwback packaging with taco flavor chips, I was intrigued.  But I did not buy a bag, as it's not something I automatically do anymore.

However.  I kept thinking about those chips.  Honestly, I know that it was the old-school packaging that got me...I'm a sucker for nostalgia, and evidently I'm old enough that things from my childhood are now considered retro, and as we all know, retro is cool.  Which is why I always consider buying Necco wafers whenever I happen to see them, even though I'm pretty sure there are only about two flavors in the entire package that I used to like...but that wax-paper package full of pale, cornstarch-dusted discs gets me right in the memories, and there you go.  

A week later, we had to make another Target run.  As we were driving there, I told Jeff I wanted to buy a bag of those Doritos.  The lure of the packaging, of the old-school flavor, was too much for me.  I had to have some.  He said "of course you do - I'm surprised you waited this long" - so see, I have some willpower.  And I will say, the old Shelley, the pre-2008 Shelley?  I would have bought the chips without Jeff knowing and would have sneakily eaten the entire bag myself.  So this is, for me, progress.  

As for the chips, they tasted like we both remembered.  Taco flavor was good!  But, the chips were a tiny bit on the stale side...or else that's what Doritos really taste like?  I honestly don't know, and I didn't buy another bag for comparison.  We finished off the bag over the next few days, and while I'm glad I satisfied my curiosity and craving, I won't be needing to eat these again.

I'm sure I'll come across another retro snack soon, and I might even buy it, but it feels like I have a better handle on this situation than I would have had in the past...I'm going to claim progress, not perfection, with this.

Is there any retro snack/candy item that you would buy, if you saw it now?  For me, I could pass on a lot of things (like Tab - ugh, that was nasty back in the day and I can't believe they brought that drink back), but I'm sure there's something else out there that will call my name once more.

24 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if there is any retro thing I used to eat that would call my name now.Thanks for the warning that such things are out there I will be on my guard now.

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  2. There probably might be some retro food that when I see it I want to try it again but at the moment I can't remember anything.

    I'm so impressed with your willpower!

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    1. Well, true willpower would be not having bought the bag of Doritos at all... ;)

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  3. Gosh I had forgotten all about those Doritos! As soon as I saw the photo all the memories came flooding back. Taco salad was introduced to my family in the 1970s and she always crumbled those Doritos all over the salad.

    My favorite nostalgia food would probably be a Hostess Blueberry Pie. I'm sure I'd be disgusted with it now but as a kid, my day was complete if I opened my lunch bag and mom had put one in there. Oh how I loved those - but only blueberry flavor!

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    1. I remember those Hostess Pies, with the thin coating of glaze on the outside! We didn't see them hardly ever in our lunch boxes, but I felt the same way when a Hostess Ding Dong or Cupcake, or that other thing...what was it? A hockey puck-shaped chocolate-covered treat...any case, whenever any of those appeared in my lunch box.

      Good to hear I'm not the only one remembering that bag of Doritos. :)

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  4. Does Easter candy count? I still want the Palmer's bunnies and the Peeps (only yellow chicks) at Easter. Even though I don't like the Palmer's chocolate so much any more...

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    1. I forgot about holiday candy - yes, some of it is still on my list, even though, like you, I actually don't like it very much now.

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  5. Keebler's Danish Wedding Cookies would get me right in the heart strings! I don't go down the cookie aisle, so I wouldn't know if they still make them. PS...As kids we ate our Doritos with french onion dip for extra unhealthiness. LOL.

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    1. Oh man, French onion dip...now that was some good stuff!

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  6. This is funny! The people who work in the Doritos marketing department will e glad to know they've done their job! They got ya!

    I use to be like this with Oreos. Whenever a new flavor would come out i'd be intrigued, but after a few I got my fix and would not need to buy another package. Besides, Oreos have got quite expensive, haven't they?

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    1. I never got into Oreos (thankfully), but I seen other bloggers writing about all of their new flavors.

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  7. I've been thinking a lot about ho-Ho's lately. Not exactly retro but a blast from my childhood for me! I haven't succumbed yet!

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    1. I bought them for my kids when they were in elementary school, and you know, they weren't as good as I remembered. :(

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  8. Now see, something like that could send me into a complete binge. It's interesting (and commendable) to me to see how you analyzed it, decided to try some, and now are over it.
    I hope to attend a talk this week about all the environmental factors and hidden persuaders of what we eat. Obviously with an eye to combating them. Maybe I'll hear something new.

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    1. I would love to hear what you learn from the talk - and honestly, while I like salty things, it's the sugary stuff that would be much harder for me to stop eating, so I get what you're saying, absolutely.

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  9. Um, that's pretty much the best Dorito - the taco flavor. But I am a sucker for the cool ranch too.

    Tony always talked about a candy bar called a Zagnut, and I have no recollection of that candy bar, or ever being able to find it for him when he was alive.

    Sure enough, at a truck stop on our road trip to Virginia last year, I found a zagnut candy bar, bought it on the spot, where it now resides in my freezer. Whenever I see it, it reminds me of him, although I have been curious to see what it tastes like!

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    1. For me, the classic Taco Dorito is and will always be my favorite. I cannot have them in the house, because I WILL eat them until they are gone. Love, love me some Taco Doritos.

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  10. I never was a big Doritos fan. Nostalgia for me would be Little Debby. The oatmeal pies and the nutty bars. I haven't had one in years. I will admit to purchasing the Booberry or Frankenberry at Halloween because it's fun, even though not all that good. I really only get it for the marshmallows anyway LOL.

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  11. I am much more the salty eater than the sweet, so plain old Doritos are still my favorite. However, the thing I would snap up in a heartbeat if they ever brought it back is the Betty Crocker box mix for date nut bars. I doubt there were many real dates going on, but something about the smooth sweet date middle between the layers of crumb bottom & top just put me over the moon! My brother recently asked me "do they still make that date bar mix?" (he's lived out of the country for the past 12 years), and I had to answer, sadly, no. I've tried many different from-scratch recipes, but they just don't measure up. And now I'm hungry...

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  12. I could pass up the Doritos because to me they taste like fake spice. Remember those pale orange "circus peanuts"? People used to give those out at Halloween when we were little but I thought they were yucky too! And that orange was the color of vomit, if you think about it...

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  13. Nostalgia for me is Dairy Queen ice cream, or rice krispie squares. I had some dairy queen ice cream a while ago, it wasn't as staggeringly delightful as I remembered, so I'm good for a few more years. :)

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  14. Taco Doritos were pretty good back then, but gosh - I haven't had them in years. I always tell my kids we didn't used to have 50 different varieties of all these snack foods. I always prefer the original flavor.

    Does anyone remember Carnation Breakfast Bars? They basically were chocolate chip candy bar-type things, but I LOVED them as a kid.

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  15. I never liked flavored chips - blech. I'm a sucker for candy, old-timey stuff. We were in a candy store several weeks ago, and they had Chick-o-stik! BB Bats! Chicklets! Rootbeer Barrels! I showed considerable restraint and didn't buy a thing. My son, however, opted for a Ranch Dressing Flavored soda, which was just as disgusting as it sounds.

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  16. Snowballs - you know those disgusting pink coconut covered round cakes. And twinkies.

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