Monday, April 30, 2012

Not Getting My Vote: Cheez-It Colby Snack Crackers Are Pretty Disappointing!


The Good: Comparatively inexpensive.
The Bad: Indistinct taste, Problematic smell, Not overly healthy
The Basics: As Sunshine Biscuit has fans voting on Cheez-It flavors, I lean against saving the Colby Cheez-It !


Despite being, generally, on a health kick, I have succumbed to my wife’s desire to treat me to the occasional salty snack these days. This has left me eating pretty much whatever she gets me for review and today, that is Cheez-It Colby baked snack crackers. This is, as a very good exception to the general rule of my wife getting me great stuff, a virtually inedible snack cracker.

Actually, they are not terrible, but the problem is that they are not very good at all. As a result, these salty crackers with a somewhat off-putting aroma made it easy to pan and pass by in the future!

Basics

Colby Cheez-It, for those who are not familiar with them, are baked snack crackers. Sunshine Biscuits has marketed their Cheez-It chip line as a fairly high quality, but inexpensive bite-sized cracker. In recent years, they have flooded the market with new flavors of Cheez-It crackers and that has yielded some interesting results. Unfortunately, the Colby flavor is not one of their best attempts. The chips look like small square cheese wedges. The Colby flavored Cheez-It crackers are a slightly lighter orange than the standard Cheddar Cheez-Its.

Colby Cheez-It come in various sizes, but usually in a bag inside a box. The standard size box that I have found is 13 oz. The crackers are square and approximately 7/8" by 7/8" by 3/16”. Each cracker has a hole in the center and slightly scalloped edges.

Ease Of Preparation

Cheez-It Colby are simple to enjoy; all you need do it open the bag inside the box and remove the crackers from it! There is no trick to eating Colby Cheez-It; they are a snack that is ready to go from the package to the mouth.

Taste

Colby Cheez-It smell surprisingly sour, like actual Colby cheese. The scent is actually somewhat unappealing as it instantly made me think of either expensive cheese or spoiled milk.

Fortunately, in the mouth, Colby Cheez-It crackers are salty and dry, with a strongly cheesy flavor that is very much what one expects of Colby. Colby is not one of the most distinctive or forceful cheeses in the pantheon of cheeses, but these crackers have a flavor that is more than just salty, like many crackers. There is a slightly sour, barely bitter aftertaste that is reminiscent of a cheese flavor.

Even with the flavor hit, the aftertaste of Colby Cheez-It crackers is simply dry and somewhat unpleasantly so. These crackers left a somewhat acidic taste in my throat.

Nutrition

Colby Cheez-It are nowhere near all-natural, nor are they particularly healthy. Loaded with preservatives, they are made primarily of enriched flou, vegetable oil and cheese made with skim milk. These snacks have a pretty limited shelf life; our box, which we bought in February, had a June 21 (2012) expiration date.

Each twenty-one gram serving of Cheez-It Colby has 110 calories, fifty of which come from fat. There is less than one gram of dietary fiber. While there are 6 grams of fat and 2 grams of protein, there is a pretty hefty 160 mg of sodium, which represents 7% of one's RDA of sodium. There is a smattering of Calcium and Iron, but no vitamins, including Vitamin C. There is a dietary note that the Colby includes wheat, soy and milk ingredients, which prevents them from being Vegan compliant at the very least.

Storage/Clean-up

Kept in their bag, Colby Cheez-It will remain fresh for a year and as long as the bag is resealed, one suspects they will last for a few weeks before getting stale. I've never had to deal with issues of freshness for my Colby Cheez-It.

Cleanup is simple as well. Colby Cheez-It are a dry food and thus leave no mess behind. Because they are very flavored, though, it is entirely probable that they will leave salt on one’s hands. Simply wash your hands, throw out the bag and cleanup is done!

Overall

Colby Cheez-It are a mediocre flavor that does not inspire one to continue trying the other, better, flavors of Cheez-It crackers!

For other snack foods, check out my reviews of:
Special K Southwest Ranch Cracker Chips
Tostitos Hint Of Lime Tortilla Chips
Planters Flavor Grove Vanilla and Caramel Almonds

3.5/10

For other food and drink reviews, please click here to visit my index page!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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