Snack Attack: Ranking Trader Joe's Snacks

MUNCH you can count on Trader Joe’s to always supply a surplus of interesting snack options, but where to start? Photo courtesy of Google.

Trader Joe’s, for those not in the know, is a chain of American grocery stores that has a large surplus of its products under private labels. One thing Trader Joe’s is best known for is its wide array of unique and ever-changing food options. I thought I’d do myself a favor by exploring their catalog, trying out five different snacks and then giving my opinion on each of them. To decide what options of snacks to try out I examined the Trader Joe’s website and chose what sounded interesting. I landed on (in order of least favorite to favorite) “Scandinavian Swimmers”, “Pink Lady Apple Chips”, “Just The Clusters Maple Pecan Cereal”, “Single Origin Organic Dark Chocolate with Vanilla Bean” and “Nocciolini Tiny Hazelnut Meringues”.

Even though they weren’t bad, the Scandinavian Swimmers are my least favorite. Held in an adorable package of gummies in the shape of different aquatic creatures with flavors that are even unique for each of them. There were blue huckleberry dolphins, orange orange rockfish, yellow mango-peach sea horses and red lobsters with a pleasant amalgamation of berries for its flavor (loudest among them was probably cherry). I have to say that the sea horses were my favorite out of the bunch however and that the mango-peach kind of matched all other parts of the gummy. It echoed the feeling of a gummy peach ring but in a new format. All of the gummies kind of felt like Welch's fruit snacks when I bit into them, very chewy indeed. Not really for me, mostly because of the texture.

Next up are the Apple Chips and they really live up to the chip part of their name. They were incredibly crisp, even more so that you might expect out of any regular old potato chip. They did a great job blending the flavors between the apple and cinnamon sugar. It was a near perfect size for a midday snack or just whenever you’re feeling a bit peckish. Additionally, the pricing was fitting to its literal snack size as well, only coming out to $2.29.

Third in line is Maple Pecan Cereal. They were lightly sweet, grainy and had enjoyable sprinkling of pecans throughout. These ones were more like a squirrel's version of popcorn though, if that makes any sense. They felt like all the best parts of trail mix minus the chocolate. Another great aspect was the versatility. You could easily use it to top yogurt or as a breakfast cereal.

And then there were two... the Vanilla Bean Dark Chocolate hit all the bars for good dark chocolate for me and the vanilla revealed itself the more the chocolate melted, with its creamy flavor that really helped to make it pop. Each square was portioned well also, being slightly larger than you might usually expect but just enough for a miniature desert.

Lastly, there was the Hazelnut Meringues. In a few ways, these were somewhat similar to the Maple Pecan Cereal in that they were both light, airy and crisp. The Meringue’s had a neat slightly-larger-than-chocolate-chip shape which was the largest visual difference. When I first ate one it was almost impossible not to have more. I couldn’t resist the crunchy texture and sweet gentle flavor that made me think of a thicker and more brittle version of a graham cracker. Apart from the difficulty of putting them down they were the perfect snack.