Due to popular demand and the fact that we love trying weird foods and candies, The A.V. Club will now regularly feature "Taste Tests." Feel free to suggest disgusting and/or delicious new edibles for future installments: E-mail us at tastetest@theonion.com.
Mysterious green jerky-like substance
You've been asking for Chang, and I've been looking for something to do with this mysterious vacuum-sealed food-like product that's been in my office for the last couple of months. Tasha suggested a mystery Taste Test, and dammit, that's a brilliant idea. This will be a short one, because there isn't much backstory, and very little we can tell you about the product beyond its taste.
As regular readers will surely remember, Emily Withrow, David Wolinsky, and I attended the National Association Of Convenience Stores convention this year. I'm still in the process of working through the giant bag of snacks I brought home, and I'm getting toward the bottom. Staring up at me are a couple of things that might be too boring to taste test—limon Corn Nuts, all-red Starburst, something called ZizZaz—and this mysterious green bar.
All I remember about obtaining the bar at the convention is that the booth that was handing them out had lots of alligator memorabilia—an alligator dressed in a suit, I think, and some other stuff. But I don't remember if this is supposed to be alligator jerky, or a fruit snack, or what. All I know is that it's green and mysterious. And hopefully edible. (There's an expiration date, and we're well into the safe period: It isn't poisonous until "20 Oct 09.")
Chang said he would eat it before I even finished telling him what it was. (And he's got a 12-hour flight tomorrow—that is a brave man, even if he refuses to eat Pork Brains in Milk Gravy.) So we gathered a crew in the kitchen to watch him open and consume a product that gave no indication of its contents—and looked horrendous. (By the way, I Googled "alligator energy bar" and other word-combinations in search of the product, but to no avail. I believe Emily and David might know what it is, but they're off at lunch.)
The taste: Let's let Chang's video speak to the consistency first:
Somewhat disappointingly, this mystery bar was not terrible. Chang liked it just fine, while some people had seriously adverse reactions, like accounts dude Andrew Deckard. Here's the two of them enjoying a snack together:
But mostly it was just okay. To me, it tasted like apples with just a hint of coconut. It was chewy in a slightly unpleasant way, but if I were starving, I would eat this before I would eat my neighbor.
David Wolinsky, upon his return from lunch (and after the bar had been fully consumed) swore that it's alligator meat. I would do more investigating, but it's probably better that this taste test is a mystery. You know what the man said: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." And the legend of Chang lives on.
Office reactions:
— "Not bad at all. Just tastes like a Power Bar."
— [From an e-mail titled "Nasty Green Turd."] "I spit it out. It tastes like applesauce and cardboard blended together. Sweet chunks of green cardboard."
— "It is as if this started as an apple, then it became apple sauce, but then they condensed it into bar form. Oh, and it's neon green."
— "There's just a hint of coconut."
Where to get it: Josh's desk, apparently. He's fresh out, though.