The Great Gross-Off: International Edition

There's a lot of division in the world today, friends. Lots of yelling about closing borders, a rise in casual xenophobia, and a startling spike in the number of widely disseminated conspiracy theories about all the things "they" don't want you to know. In trying times like these, we here at Jefitoblog HQ feel it's important to bring people together by focusing on the things that truly unite us — life, liberty, and most importantly, the pursuit of empty calories.

With that in mind — well, either that or she just wanted to laugh while we tried to eat this stuff — Cherished Friend of Jefitoblog Robin Canan shipped us a gigantic box of international foodstuffs of the junk persuasion. If you've ever spent time looking at the strange-to-us flavors that line the snack food aisles in other countries, you probably already know where this is going. If you don't, well, maybe just be glad you weren't selected to be part of the expert (and semi-unwilling) panel we rounded up for the seemingly endless taste test leading up to this installment of the Great Gross-Off.

The things we do for you. And science. And global harmony!

First, we dipped into a bag of Hot and Spicy Braised Duck Tongue Flavor Lay's, which seemed like it'd probably be like ripping off the Band-Aid and diving right into the most hair-raising end of the program. Dreams of encountering a smell that would somehow offset the decidedly unappetizing flavor description were quickly dashed; following that, we pinned our hopes on a flavor that would be spicy enough to crowd out the "braised duck tongue" of it all.

Those hopes also came to naught, although they are at least a little spicy. The first note from our panel was "It's a tuna forward flavor," which is something you really never want to hear when you're eating a bag of potato chips. Another member of the panel said "I taste pickle," which is better, although I don't know what that has to do with duck tongue, and I am fine with this. Still another panelist remarked "Masala," which, fine, whatever.

One of us went back for seconds.

From there, we moved on to the bag of Hot and Sour Lemon Braised Chicken Feet Flavor Lay's, which seemed marginally more appetizing if only because the sight of a chicken foot on a bag of chips is slightly less jarring than the sight of a duck tongue. Once again, our hopes of opening the bag and getting an enticing introductory whiff were met with derision by the fates; instead, as one member of the panel noted, "These smell like mice."

Fortunately, the taste proved somewhat friendlier than the smell; notes from this segment of our noble ordeal include "Inoffensive," although another panelist argued, "I like tongue better than feet." Still, the overall experience is probably best summed up by the panelist who declared, "I would not choose to eat these."

One of us went back for more. If you have guessed that he is the same person who wanted more duck tongue chips, you are correct.

Next up was a bag of what at first appeared to be cheeseburger-flavored Cheetos, but upon closer inspection (and the use of a translator app) proved to be Guilty Donut Cheetos, which brazenly seek to reproduce the shameful experience of chowing down on a cheeseburger with a fucking donut for a bun. Given that this is their stated goal, I can confidently state that these things are a failure, if not an abomination, something upon which our panel heartily came to agree during a Statler and Waldorf-style descent from "Hmm, what's this" into "Never again." The notes:

"Smells like Kraft mac and cheese"
"Canned, sweetened odor"
"Oh! I taste a burger!"
"Puréed cheeseburger. Why"
"Cheeseburger that's been fished out of a lake"

Disregarding the urgent pleas of our tastebuds, we continued by trying Scallops with White Cream Sauce Lay's. I feel a little sick just typing those words — there's something about "white cream sauce" that feels fundamentally incorrect in the context of a potato chip flavor — but there's no getting around the fact that these things smell and taste very much like scallops, and if you are for some reason seized with a hellish hankering for a snack that combines the satisfying snap and crunch of a potato chip with the experience of eating an ocean mollusk, well, here you fucking go, you maniac. Our panel begrudgingly admitted partial success where these things are concerned, or at least the members of said panel who did not suddenly claim to have a scallops allergy; the note that sums it up best came from the panelist who wrote "This definitely tastes like scallops to me. I don’t like it."

One of us was genuinely excited by this and may have eaten most of the bag. Were they the same panelist who happily chowed down on duck tongue and chicken feet? I feel like you know the answer already.

Sensing that perhaps we could use a bit of a break, we returned to land-derived chip flavors by opening the bag of Kobe Steak Lay's, which seemed like it'd probably be pretty inoffensive, at least when sampled side-by-side with some of its competitors. I am 50 percent pleased and 50 percent disappointed to report that this did indeed turn out to be the case — Kobe Steak Lay's are the type of new and somewhat strange snack food variety that you see and say "Sure, I guess, but why," and you feel basically the same way after you've tried it. Although one panelist wrote "I'm getting basement" after sniffing the open bag, this was one case where the taste improved on the smell, although it didn't have a hell of a lot to do with steak unless "You exhale out your nose and you’re paying VERY close attention." It was also described as "Inoffensive" and "The least bad."

Just as the glass of bourbon I was using to cleanse my palate between rounds started to get dangerously low, we came to our final stop on the Indigestion Express: The bag of goddamn Roasted Garlic Oyster Lay's that had been lurking ominously in the box since we started. Now, obviously, if you have to choose between "scallops with white cream sauce" and "roasted garlic," you're probably going to say that the former option sounds less appetizing as a potato chip flavor; however, at this point, we'd all been slapped around pretty good by the stuff we'd already eaten, and most of our ability to taste things was gone, along with much of the panel's willingness to indulge this type of tomfoolery any further. Due to these eminently understandable factors, I can tell you only two things with certainty: One, that the scent of these chips was described by one of us as "PEE" (caps theirs); two, that the flavor of oysters is indeed extremely prominent. One panelist used an exclamation point when proclaiming that they "Taste like oysters!" Whether this was meant as a recommendation or a warning, I can no longer recall.