SnackSurprise - The October Box: Turkey (and yes, I know it's late...)

Another month and another snack box, and this month's box of delights features snacks from Turkey.

It was cold so no blanket shot this month.

Fourteen different snacks this month as you can see from the booklet and I've also included the pages of the pamphlet about the Premium Box so you can see what else you might get if you want to pay the extra.

The Mini/Original Box contents.

The Premium Box extras.

In what seems to be an emerging pattern, we're starting off with the savoury snacks first and what appears to be a rather generous bag of hot pepper corn crisps called Patos Rolls. 

Ice Tea not included.

Except it's not generous at all. This is a 25g bag of crisps masquerading as something three times its actual size. And you thought Walkers were stingy bastards...

I kid you not, nothing has been removed from the packet yet.

But what about the taste? Actually rather nice - these are rolled Doritos in essence. Crunchy, a tad powdery and with a good taste, these take a good three or four before you get any kind of tingling of heat on the tongue, which makes them a pleasant (and milder than expected) snack to eat. Just a shame the packaging (and flavour) promise more than they deliver.

These really shouldn't work, but they do.

Eti Crax are something of a mystery, offering a chilli and lime flavour in a crunchy stick. What they actual give you is a wonderful hot and sour taste that certainly packs more heat than the Patos Rolls. We couldn't manage more than a couple each before the heat became too much but they are easy to return to. As far as this snack box goes so far, this is a cracking start. 

Conjoined buns.

Cake now and Dankek 8kek. Nope, no idea what the name signifies but what you get is a lovely, soft, moist banana cake covered in a thin layer of chocolate. Each flavour is quite potent and combine well overall. It's sweet, but not overly so, and I think would go very well with a brew.

If this was a tree frog, I'd stay well away.

Eti Puf is a marshmallow and biscuit combo that screams out to be loved. I mean, look at those sprinkles!!! It's so cheery and demanding to be liked. It also looks garishly dangerous, like an Amazonian amphibian warning you to stay the hell away. Yet what we actually get is an extremely sweet biscuit that's at least not hard, and a firm marshmallow. It wasn't to my taste though my good lady enjoyed it's nice coconut taste. She did add that it wasn't as good as a Tunnock's. She's not wrong.

That laughing/crying packaging is disturbing...

Eti Cin is apparently a Turkish favourite -  a sweet biscuit tart covered in orange jam and then dusted with chocolate sprinkles. The packaging gives the impression that it knows something is up and it's not letting us in on the secret. That secret is that it's not very nice - the jam is too cloying and the orange overpowers the senses - think a Jaffa cake but four times the intensity of flavour. Really not nice at all.

We're gonna rock down to, Eti Bidolu.

Eti Bidolu is a wafer sandwich with nut filled chocolate as the filling. The wafer is a tad dry but the filling is gooey enough to save your mouth from desiccation. I liked it but my good lady didn't take to the peanut pieces at all. So a marmite style wafer then. 

This sweet biscuit was sponsored by the Umbrella Corporation.

Eti Tutku (and the last of the Eti branded snacks) are biscuits with a cocoa cream. They aren't too dry, and the strength of flavour is pleasant without being too strong. As noted in the pamphlet, these would go well with a cuppa and are an inoffensive biscuit.

Nothing witty at all here - must be slipping.

Away from Eti now and onto Alpella 3Gen. This is a white chocolate bar with layers of white chocolate inter-spaced with wafers. Tasting like a Milky Bar on steroids, it's very nice though I think some people might struggle to finish a bar in one go - it is very sweet because of that white chocolate.

Or here. WTF is going on???

Another chocolate bar next and a familiar one at that. Ulker Albeni is a giant single bar of Twix. There you go, that's pretty much it. Pretty easy to describe and pretty easy to recommend if you like a Twix. 

Nor here either. Though you may have thought that with every caption so far.

Proper ket now (that's not Turkish, that's a local term), and Jelibon Sour Patch Karpuz. Melon sours to us. Soft jelly centre surrounded by a sour crystal like exterior, these deliver the initial sour taste and then a lovely, refreshing watermelon burst once you get chewing. The zing they deliver is mouth-watering and they don't leave any kind of nasty aftertaste which is always a good thing.

It's definitely not toffee.

Kent Tofita are a cherry heavy tasting chew and look pretty much like Chewits. The cherry is strong with this one and they are long lasting. Not too hard and, in a pleasant surprise, not likely to pull fillings out if they stick to your teeth. We didn't mind these at all.

A reason not to go into that bloody wardrobe.

Okay, full disclosure time here. I detest Turkish Delight. Have done since being a child and in the intervening years have now and again sampled it with the same outcome. My good lady, however, was willing to try this one and... nope. Again, it's one of those Marmite decisions.

Probably wouldn't taste better even if covered in cocaine...

Suitable for all muskets and pistols.

The Eksiyuz Sakiz are small, hard, sour bubble gums that kind of worried me when I took one out of the wrapper. You'd kind of expect some give in a bubble gum but no, not here. These things could be used in a musket! Actually trying one was also bad as it had an incredibly sour taste that wasn't just unpleasant - it was actively foul. After disposing of the offending sweet, the aftertaste hung around like a losing Presidential candidate and was almost as salty as those horrible Swedish things from a couple of months ago. These are ones to avoid.

Not rancid fruit piss, which makes a pleasant change.

Finally, we have the included drink and, in some weird tear in the fabric of reality, the Dimes Visne really was quite pleasant. A sour cherry drink, this has a good initial punch of flavour which then politely fades away, leaving a subtle hint on the palette. It's refreshing and worth another go. I think this is the first drink we've had in a snack box that we have actually enjoyed.

So there you have it, another box done and, looking back, more hits than misses, or so it feels. There was an over-reliance on chocolate but other than that, there's been some decent ket in here. Roll on the next one.