Category: Food

Star Wars Tuesday: Food Packaging

Star Wars has been used to promote food for decades now, and every now and then I’ve bought something and kept the packaging. Here’s what I found in storage:

The above is a box of Star Wars cereal released in 2016. This was released to promote The Force Awakens and in total there were eight different designs. It’s also one of my favourite pieces of Star Wars ephemera. I don’t recall eating any of the cereal.

General Mills released a lot of Star Wars branded boxes that year, and I have the two above as well. You can see these included a little ‘droid viewer’, but strangely I seem to have discarded those. These three are the only cereal boxes I own (I think…) which is just a drop in the bucket of the over 2000 Star Wars cereal boxes released worldwide since 1977!

The above is a true curiosity, since it’s a store brand item (Price Chopper is a local supermarket) that also happens to be Star Wars themed. I’m sure I threw away the gummies and kept the box, and I wonder how many Star Wars food box collectors worldwide would love to have this rare item in their collection?

Jelly Belly used this branded packaging in 2017 and they were available everywhere for a long time. I think there may have been other wrappers as well, but the above are all I have.

I don’t remember this Skittles promotion at all (from 2005) but obviously I bought at least one pack. ‘The Hunt For Grievous’ was obviously to raise hype for Episode III, which makes it stranger I don’t remember it since merchandise for that film seemed slim.

Around the same time – and as part of the awful ‘Star Wars Mpire’ cross-branded event – these M&Ms were released. I only have the above wrapper, but the back shows a Sith version was available as well. I used to enjoy M&Ms, but no longer like the taste of their chocolate.

And speaking of M&Ms, although it’s not Star Wars themed, here’s an Indiana Jones wrapper from 2008. This was of course to promote The Crystal Skull film, and I like the designs on the candies as well as the white variant.

Space Punch was a horrible drink – far too sweet for even my taste buds – and in 2018 the German company released a large variety of Star Wars themed cans and distributed them worldwide. Heavily marketed to collectors, people were trying to sell the ‘rare’ cans for silly money online. The above was the only one I ever saw/bought (in Oregon), and I’m happy it’s Artoo for reasons that will be clearer on Friday.

I’ve bought lots of other Star Wars foodstuffs over the years – including ice creams, waffles, cookies, candy and many other drinks – but I’m not one of those lunatics that keeps the packaging just because it has a Star Wars character on it. Most of the time, anyway 😉

Fry Guy

I ate fries at five fast food places here in Oz. How did they compare? Let’s find out!

McDonalds fries are exactly as you’d expect since they taste the same everywhere. They have a familiar if unremarkable taste but the excessive salt is a distraction from a hint of grease and perhaps even an inkling of regret. Of the five types of fry I tested, these were the worst (and yet paradoxically the ones I ate the most).

Hungry Jack’s (aka. Burger King) served up robust and tasty fries with a slight crispy snap to them. I got these three times and every time they were piping hot, not too salted, and delicious! And yet, I’d only rank these fourth of the five…

The above sad excuse for a fry serving was from Henny Penny, but they tasted much better than they looked. But this review is based on the large serving Sue and I shared a few days prior, which was delightful. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo but the fries were hot as hell, thick and full of potato energy, not greasy at all and dusted with delicious chicken salt. They were fantastic, but still only the third best of the five I tried.

Incidentally I feel obliged to showcase the ‘chicken roll’ I bought at Henny Penny, which was undoubtedly the single worst piece of food ever served to me:

Cold garbage chicken on a stale roll: this travesty was possibly excreted by Satan and I hurled it into a bin at light speed!

I’ve only had KFC once this trip, but it was in the middle of a long walk and I was very hungry at the time. The fries were extraordinary! Crispy and fluffy inside, they were golden brown and drenched in chicken salt. I devoured them in seconds, would happily eat more, and yet they’re still not the best I’ve had this trip.

And so we get to Oporto. I’ve had it several times this trip, and every time the fries were perfectly cooked, served hot, generously portioned (the above is a small serving), chicken-salted and tasted wonderful. And I don’t even have to give them extra points for giving me the longest fry I’ve ever seen! So just as Oporto served the best chicken tenders last year, this year they served me the best fries 🙂

Truth be told though, the fries at all five of these fast food places were all good, and even the worst were tasty. But if you’ve only got time for one fast food visit in Oz, as always my suggestion remains Oporto!