Combos Zesty Salsa Tortilla Flavor

Combos. What a strange snack. They're made by Mars, and basically they're crunchy tubes filled with flavored paste. The tubes are made of a variety of different "snack cracker" doughs, and the pastes come in a bunch of different flavors (mostly cheese based.) For example, one of the flavors is "Pizzeria Pretzel" - the tube is a pretzel-style cracker and it's filled with a cheesish mixture seasoned to resemble the taste of a pizza. The flavors are all pretty authentic to what's shown on the labels, so as junk foods go Combos are on the decent side.

And therefore I had no fear of getting ripped off when I bought this little packet of Combos newest flavor - Zesty Salsa Tortilla - from the snack machine at work. For this variety, Mars added cornmeal to the cracker to give it a tortilla-chip taste and texture, then doctored up the paste with tomato, cilantro, and lime flavors to help it taste like salsa.

The result is no less than amazing. Seriously. Pop one of these into your mouth and give it a chew and it tastes just like eating a tortilla chip dipped into a jar of salsa. I was quite efficiently wowed, especially after I broke one open to see where the flavor was coming from and found nothing but a thick extrusion of crumbly red paste.

Now, bear in mind that my wowitude is based on comparing these Combos with cheap-ass salsa from a jar, not on freshly made hand-cut real salsa from juicy ripe garden tomatoes, fresh-squeezed limes and chopped onions. So temper your expectations...but enjoy.

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