Which Beloved Items Are In Trader Joe's Hall Of Fame?

Beginning life as a beleaguered competitor to 7/11, Trader Joe's has blossomed into a beloved institution of food shoppers, offering an assortment of private-label foods, snacks, and sweets. With its premium ingredients, rustic branding, and each location themed (however vaguely) around its surrounding neighborhood, the company does its absolute best to make itself irresistible to you, the yuppie with a craving for chocolate-covered pretzels. Is it worth the gentrification and union-busting? That's a matter of debate, but the pretzels slap nonetheless — as do the six items in the Trader Joe's Hall of Fame.

Wait, Trader Joe's has a Hall of Fame? Yes, but it's not a brick-and-mortar establishment you can visit, like the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Instead, it's a way to recognize items that have become so popular that they dominated the Trader Joe's Customer Choice Awards, where patrons vote for their favorite products. By being "inducted" to the Hall of Fame, these items are, therefore, out of contention for the Customer Choice Awards — just to keep things interesting. 

The six items in question probably won't come as any surprise to Trader Joe's faithful, including dinnertime stalwarts like the Mandarin Orange Chicken, choice cheeses like Unexpected Cheddar, and classic snacks like the Peanut Butter Filled Pretzel Nuggets. (If it helps to set the mood, you can listen to "Sirius" by the Alan Parsons Project while reading the Hall of Fame entries.)

Since the start of the Customer's Choice Awards, Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups have been a perennial in the Best Desserts/Sweets category. Their secret is keeping things simple with pure peanut butter and chocolate — an unbeatable flavor combination in general — and the fervor surrounding these little treats proves that this approach pays dividends. We don't include them on our list of the best Trader Joe's snacks for nothing.

As previously mentioned, classics like the eminently upgradeable Mandarin Orange Chicken and the salty, crumbly Unexpected Cheddar (so named for its apparent and wholly unexpected transformation into Parmesan upon taking a bite) are represented in the Hall of Fame. So, too, are those addictive pretzel nuggets filled with peanut butter. For those who crave a vegan treat, the Soy Chorizo is a well-loved inductee to the Hall of Fame. And rounding things out, there's the newcomer, the Chili & Lime Flavored Rolled Corn Tortilla Chips — basically Trader Joe's take on Takis.