Snack Review: Nacho Cheese Dorito-flavored Smartfood popcorn
Part one of my series where I review snacks I get from the 7-Eleven while at work.
It was a Wednesday afternoon, lunch ended hours ago, and it was clear that the soup and clementines I brought earlier were just not going to cut it to get me through the day. Conveniently enough for me, there is a 7-Eleven on the first floor of my work building, connected in such a way that I don’t even have to go outside to get there. Now I’m a girl on a budget (even though I’m working so much all the time!) so hitting up a convenience store in downtown Chicago of all places is not something I like to make a habit of. But when things are dire, 7-Eleven can take care of me.
But last Wednesday they absolutely did not take care of me. I love white cheddar popcorn in a bag, so a snack-sized bag of that would have been perfect for me but there was none to be seen. Then I went to see if there were any Ruffles and they only had cheddar (it’s NOT the same). 7-Eleven was really dropping the ball but I thought to myself, “They would at least have nacho cheese Doritos, right?” Wrong. They only had hot nacho cheese Doritos, which I was not in the mood for.
I was ready to give up completely—it must have been a sign from above that I should just abort my convenience store mission for the day and go back upstairs in defeat. Then I saw it. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me at first, but no it was very real and it was right in front of me: Nacho Cheese Dorito-flavored Smartfood popcorn. The collaboration of the century.
As I mentioned earlier, Smartfood popcorn and Nacho Cheese Doritos are two of my favorite convenience store snacks, and now they were sitting on a shelf right in front of me, combined into one super snack. I had questions. Why did this 7-Eleven just stop carrying all of the best snacks (obviously my favorite snacks are the best snacks) and instead dropped a weird snack-homunculus in its place? The stocking situation at this branch has been sketchy for a while now, but this decision felt like they were trying to play God.
This nacho cheese popcorn combination was weird, but I am not a good writer nor snack connoisseur unless I tried these for myself. I bought a bag along with some sour Haribo gummy bears and went back upstairs. I posed a picture of the popcorn bag on my Instagram story and commented, “They flew too close to the sun with this one.” I received a lot of messages asking how they were and let me tell you: they were not good.
It was naive of me to think that a combination this powerful could be anything other than bad. Smartfood white cheddar popcorn in a bag is a top-tier snack. Nacho Cheese Doritos are a top-tier snack. They are so incredibly different that there was no way that this could possibly end in a way that would make anyone happy. The nacho cheese flavor works on a Dorito because it is a Dorito. A corn chip is the only correct vehicle for flavor powder that powerful. To put it on something like popcorn is an abomination.
Of course I finished the whole bag in one sitting. One, I didn’t want to spend another day eating this very bad snack. Two, I paid like $3 or something stupid like that for this popcorn, and I don’t waste food. I did not enjoy any of that experience past the initial novelty of the whole thing. I’ve been back to that same 7-Eleven once again since then, and the shelves are pretty bare (considering that they don’t stock anything) but the section that has this vile creation is full as hell. People are right in trusting their gut. Do not buy this product. Love yourself instead.