Desert Drinks & Exotics, first taste

Here it is, the first batch of reviews from my megabox of worldwide treats from Desert Drinks & Exotics!

First up is something safe, Chocolate Moon Pie from right here in the USA. Took just a bit of a beating in the shipping, but not terrible shape. That’s where ‘not bad’ ended. Who the heck likes these?! It was SO. DRY. Saharan. It also had almost no chocolate flavor to speak of. After a couple of bites I couldn’t even be bothered to finish it to avoid wasting food, especially expensive food. I threw it out instead of wasting more calories on it. I ate maybe a third, which is also a “serving” of the three 100-calorie servings packaged snack.

I didn’t get a pic of the next one, but it was similar, the Strawberry Moon Pie. Rinse, repeat. SUPER. DRY. It had a sort of vague strawberry cereal scent. Also a vague strawberry flavor. This went into the trash after just one bite. So disappointing.

Say hello to Oreo Wafer Rolls from Thailand!

As you can see, the box suffered, but everything inside held up fine. There are three little packs, each contaning three wafer rolls. Nice symmetry. Look at those pictures on the package, chocolatey, crispy rolls filled up with strawberry cream!

Right. The wafers, as you can see, look great. Thick and crispy. But, uh….where’s the cream at? If you zoom in on the inside of the roll you’ll see a thin coating on the inside. Every one of the 9 rolls was exactly like that. Seriously false advertising. That aside….

These rolls smell very strawberry-y. Chomping away, these have a very crispy crunch. The flavor is sort of like a strawberry ice cream (apart from the chocolate, of course). The wafer is not much like an Oreo, either in texture of flavor. The texture is more light and crisp instead of crunchy. The chocolate isn’t as strong in the cocoa department as Oreo cookies, either. Overall I found these tasty and three rolls was a decent afternoon treat. They’re nothing like an Oreo, but then again neither were Oreo Cakesters. I wanted more strawberry cream, like the pictures, but a thumbs up.

C’mon down, Tropical Fanta from Macedonia.

Finally opened up my first drink what with the company being called Desert Drinks and such. This drink has a vaguely fruity smell, not strong, maybe a touch of pineapple and lime. It was lightly, if at all, carbonated. I can’t say if that’s intentional or a result of extensive handling. It wasn’t a problem.

The flavor was sort of light and hard to pin down. But, yeah, reminiscent of ‘tropical’. Also orange-y. Definitely some unfamiliar flavors, maybe passionfruit. I did a little online searching and saw that on some cans of this flavor from other countries they seem to show orange, peach, and passionfruit, maybe mango. So I sort of nailed it, at least partially. After getting the peach clue, the peach flavor was more obvious. It was very sweet. I don’t think this would be very refreshing on a hot day. It was OK, but this is a one and done purchase for me. I left the open, empty bottle on my desk for a few hours and it began to smell sort of like I had a fruity candle burning in the room. Not a bad thing, but it got to be a bit much after a while.

That would be a Chocolate Twinkie from Egypt. Clearly I had high hopes looking at the package. Look at all that chocolatey filling! But, just as with the Oreo rolls, look how much filling is actually in there. *sad trombone*

The flavor is drier than I remember Twinkies, which I haven’t tried in years. The chocolate filling, when encountered, was rather thicker than usual Twinkies’ cream filling. There was really not much of it at all, that last picure was the biggest deposit, if you can see it. It wasn’t bad tasting, but I’m not sure why anyone would buy these. Dry, not much filling. The sweetness was about on par with a snack being sold in the USA. As you can see, it handled the shipping well. Not bad, but only for the curious.

My hopes were pretty high for this next one, Peanut Butter Kit Kat Chunky from the UK. Kit Kat. Wafers. Chocolate. Peanut butter. All good things. I ordered two!

As noted previously, this suffered badly from shipping during a heat wave and being packed in with heavy bottles, etc. OK, deep breath and here we go.

Tearing open the package, these have an offputting aroma that is neither chocolate nor peanut butter, somehow. Not like anything gross, just not nice. I took a bite and, wow! Chocolate, peanut butter, wafers…remember? How are these disgusting?!? I have no clue, but I found it disgusting. The chocolate is flavorless and there’s barely any peanut butter flavor to be had. What a disappointment. Obviously I didn’t finish it. I had about half, hoping it would grow on me or something. The second bar? It’s in the fridge to stop further melting and my wife is going to give it a try. Maybe it will hit someone else better than me. It almost have to, otherwise it wouldn’t be on the market. (update: she wasn’t impressed either)

Last up for today is one I was so eager to try – Passionfruit Frenzy Mountain Dew from New Zealand. Another item I was so excited about I got two. Here’s the thing…see that note below the name, “with a citrus flare”. Let’s start with the negatives. The citrus flare seriously dilutes the the passionfruit “frenzy”. I wanted a more passionfruit forward flavor. I also wanted more carbonation, but again I’m going to chalk that up to all the handling before it got into my hands.

Now the good. It’s a big bottle. I had it in two ample servings. Also, while diluted with citrus, there’s no doubt this is passionfruit. Hard to see a more passionfruity Dew than this showing up. It’s also sweet (I mean, of course it’s sweet) without being overly sweet. And it’s not syrupy like too many novelty Dew flavors. Between that and the light carbonation it’s close to drinking orange and passionfruit juices mixed together. Very refreshing with the added bonus of lots of caffeine, which I needed today. Final verdict is that I like this and will enjoy the second bottle I bought, but I can’t believe I’d buy more. Save for the caffeine, I can mix passionfruit and OJ and get a similarly refreshing drink.

There we go. A big bite into my first box from Desert Drinks. Not a lot of hits, right? Some total misses. But I don’t think any of them are the fault of Desert Drinks’ shipping or handling, they seem accurate representations of the product for sale here or overseas. Just didn’t hit me in my wheelhouse. Lots more strong chances yet to come and lots more passionfruit!

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