(no subject)
The problem with Chex party mix (and its equivalent store-brand knockoffs) is that it suffers from severe inconsistencies in the quality of its various snack components. From what I can remember off the top of my head, the mix is comprised of the following types of "snack":
-pretzels
-regular chex
-bizarro brown chex (which I can only assume to be wheat/rye chex or something)
-knobbly generic cracker/bread things
-white bagel chip things
-dark brown bagel chip things
all covered in some salty-savory flavor powder. I'm sure the creators of chex party mix had nothing but good intentions, and theoretically it's a golden concept: a variety of tried-and-true snacks all combined together in a package that, by itself, provides the beneficiary with a wide variety of potential dining options.
Unfortunately, the last two snack types (especially the dark brown ones) are far and away better than the rest of them. They also happen to be exceedingly rare: probably 80-90% of the contents are chex and pretzels, and the pretzels in chex mix are of significantly lower quality than regular pretzels (they're flavored with the weird powder instead of actual salt, and they don't have quite the distinctive crunchiness that one would normally associate with good snack pretzels). This results in an unusual set of predicaments:
1) You actively hunt down and eat all the bagel chips (only the dark brown ones if you are a particularly discriminating eater) and, as the supply of bagel chips depletes, it gets harder and harder to find more bagel chips, and the return on investment (so to speak) gradually decreases. Eventually you're left with a bag full of refuse, unwanted by you (because you've already had your fill of the best that bag ever had to offer) and unwanted by anyone else (because now everything else in the bag is covered with the accumulated discarded skin cells and saliva from your repeated treasure hunts). The bag finally gifts you with a lingering feeling of guilt, as you realize you spent way too much money on a bag of junk food that not only made you work to get what you wanted, but didn't give you very much of it
2) You eat the bagel chips as soon as you come across them, but instead of seeking out only bagel chips, you restrain yourself, and attempt to eat the other snacks in fractionally-equal amounts in order to maintain the concentration of bagel chips in the bag. This way, you tell yourself, I won't feel bad about leaving a pile of despoiled food behind, and I can look forward to encountering bagel chips with regularity. The problem here is two-fold: for one, it's difficult to tell how many bagel chips are in the bag in the first place, so sometimes you just get screwed from the get-go. Secondly, the ultimate result of this strategy is that the eater of the snacks just ends up eating more than he or she ever wanted in the first place. You want to eat more bagel chips, but you are also compelled to reduce the population of the other types simultaneously, and in the end you've eaten more salty junk than you intended to and you don't feel very good and it was just an unpleasant time overall.
In conclusion eating chex party mix is an unsatisfying experience
-pretzels
-regular chex
-bizarro brown chex (which I can only assume to be wheat/rye chex or something)
-knobbly generic cracker/bread things
-white bagel chip things
-dark brown bagel chip things
all covered in some salty-savory flavor powder. I'm sure the creators of chex party mix had nothing but good intentions, and theoretically it's a golden concept: a variety of tried-and-true snacks all combined together in a package that, by itself, provides the beneficiary with a wide variety of potential dining options.
Unfortunately, the last two snack types (especially the dark brown ones) are far and away better than the rest of them. They also happen to be exceedingly rare: probably 80-90% of the contents are chex and pretzels, and the pretzels in chex mix are of significantly lower quality than regular pretzels (they're flavored with the weird powder instead of actual salt, and they don't have quite the distinctive crunchiness that one would normally associate with good snack pretzels). This results in an unusual set of predicaments:
1) You actively hunt down and eat all the bagel chips (only the dark brown ones if you are a particularly discriminating eater) and, as the supply of bagel chips depletes, it gets harder and harder to find more bagel chips, and the return on investment (so to speak) gradually decreases. Eventually you're left with a bag full of refuse, unwanted by you (because you've already had your fill of the best that bag ever had to offer) and unwanted by anyone else (because now everything else in the bag is covered with the accumulated discarded skin cells and saliva from your repeated treasure hunts). The bag finally gifts you with a lingering feeling of guilt, as you realize you spent way too much money on a bag of junk food that not only made you work to get what you wanted, but didn't give you very much of it
2) You eat the bagel chips as soon as you come across them, but instead of seeking out only bagel chips, you restrain yourself, and attempt to eat the other snacks in fractionally-equal amounts in order to maintain the concentration of bagel chips in the bag. This way, you tell yourself, I won't feel bad about leaving a pile of despoiled food behind, and I can look forward to encountering bagel chips with regularity. The problem here is two-fold: for one, it's difficult to tell how many bagel chips are in the bag in the first place, so sometimes you just get screwed from the get-go. Secondly, the ultimate result of this strategy is that the eater of the snacks just ends up eating more than he or she ever wanted in the first place. You want to eat more bagel chips, but you are also compelled to reduce the population of the other types simultaneously, and in the end you've eaten more salty junk than you intended to and you don't feel very good and it was just an unpleasant time overall.
In conclusion eating chex party mix is an unsatisfying experience