Awesome Snacks

We love us some nice crispy French fries. Mental Floss host Justin Dodd digs into the origins of this fast food staple, its varieties, and why it’s become one of the most popular side dishes on earth. Along the way, you’ll enjoy a snack of potato chips and Tater Tots.

Say cheers to Hilliard’s Craft Beer Brittle. Cooked in copper kettles, and packed with crunchy spanish peanuts, fresh brewed beer from the Shovel Town Brewery creates a buttery, nutty flavor with enough hoppiness to balance things out. Perfect for microbrew fans.

This limited-edition popcorn adds a delicious touch of cinnamon and sugar to Smartfood’s calorie-conscious crunchy snack. The reviews say it tastes more like those cinnamon twists from Taco Bell than a cupcake, but we’re good with that too.

When we’re dragging, one of our go-to snacks is peanut butter and cheese sandwich crackers. They offer a savory mix of carbs and protein and help us power through. Science Channel’s How It’s Made goes inside the Lance factory to see how they’re baked, cut, and assembled, and where that orange color comes from.

Energy bars shouldn’t taste like sawdust or be as caloric as candy bars. Kate’s Real Food Bars stand out in a crowded field by delivering delicious, nutritious whole-foods bars made from organic ingredients like nut butters, fruit, and the complex carbs of oats and crispy brown rice. No soy, gluten, GMOs, or junk. Sold in 12-packs.

Opopop injects new life into a snack staple with its line of “flavor-wrapped” kernels. The crunchy popcorn comes in sweet and savory flavors like Vanilla Cake Pop, Salted Umami, Cinnalicious, and Chedapeño. Grab their $40 Discovery Kit, and you’ll get a microwaveable popping bowl along with sample packs of six flavors.

This goofy-looking gadget reminds us of Wolverine’s bone claws. The SNACTIV is designed to keep your fingers free of Cheetos and Doritos dust while performing other tasks. They work sort of like a pair of chopsticks, but they require none of the operational skill.

Combining and balancing flavors in an unexpected yet delicious way, these milk chocolate bars have been infused with sriracha hot sauce and a dash of pink Himalayan salt, resulting in a perfect mix of sweet and spicy. The 2.5 oz. bars are sold in a three-pack.

This video from National Geographic dates back to 2012, but we figured Funyuns are timeless so what the heck. The clip takes us inside one of Frito-Lay’s factories, where the crunchy fake onion rings are cranked out by the millions every day. In case you were wondering, they’re made from puffed cornmeal, much like Corn Pops.

Craving carbs? White Mountain’s 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle is covered with images of Hostess snack cakes like Twinkies, HoHos, Ding Dongs, and Suzy Qs. We can’t guarantee it won’t make you hungry, but it will give you something to do other than running to the pantry to snack while you’re stuck at home.

Halloween 2020 is going to be different than normal, with trick-or-treating restricted for many. Vintage Candy Co.’s care package is a great way to make the holiday special. It comes with more than 90 candies including some full-size bars, hard-to-find treats, and decorative skulls, eyeballs, pumpkins, and fangs.

Do you love the taste of fresh-baked soft pretzels? Just add butter, and Farm Steady’s kit gives you everything else you need to make delicious and chewy homemade pretzels. The kit makes a dozen pretzels, along with yummy beer cheese to dip them in (BYO beer). Also available without the cheese.

Love the delicious cinnamon-sugar flavor of Cinnamon Toast Crunch? B&G Foods has announced it’s releasing a seasoning blend that combines those flavors with vanilla and graham, making it a perfect topping for ice cream, cakes, cookies, and more. Cinnadust is a Sam’s Club exclusive and expected in stores around 9.1.2020.

Ali Ali’s silly commercial envisions a world where Egyptian bakery company Edita is struggling to move its HoHos snack cakes, and how one clever employee comes up with a simple design change to send sales through the roof. We wonder what these could these guys do to sell more Twinkies.

Pringles teamed up with Wendy’s to create a limited-time flavor inspired by the tasty Baconator burger. Through the wonders of food technology, each potato crisp tastes like beef, American cheese, applewood-smoked bacon, ketchup, and mayo. Each can comes with a code for a free Baconator with purchase via the Wendy’s app.

Hah. You and your nine-layer dip. Tasty host Alvin Zhou and his guest Kelsey Impicciche have you beat by an 11.1-to-1 ratio. Watch as they assemble this insane party snack which seems like it would be impossible to dig into without a shovel. And yes folks, every layer has a different ingredient. The layering fun starts at 4:04.

A few years back, we had the opportunity to taste several prototype flavors for Lay’s potato chips. Now, a tasty new flavor has gone into production, with chips that replicate the delicious flavor of a grilled cheese sammie and a cup of tomato soup. Available for a limited time starting on 10/21/19.

Bon Appétit pastry chef Claire Saffitz takes a stab at replicating one of our favorite guilty pleasures, Pop-Tarts. We’ve had some gourmet hand pies before, but never one that looked as accurate, tasty, or toaster-friendly as Claire’s.

A look inside the factory where The Piping Gourmets make their gluten-free whoopie pies. While mixing up the ingredients is a pretty mundane task, we loved watching the machines that precisely squirt out the cake batter and frosting. We also love the way the narrator says “whoo-pee.”

Love you some Pringles? Just remember that next time you chow down on one of those neatly-stacked, perfect potato chips, you’re actually eating a delicious pressed, formed, and precision-cut mush of potato flakes. They’re like the Chicken McNuggets of chips.

Celebrate the premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones with these limited-edition treats. The classic chocolate and creme-filled Oreos come embossed with sigils for House Lannister, House Targaryen, House Stark, along with a cookie for the Night King.

Looking for something a little different from ordinary caramel and cheese corn? Look no further than HR Poppin’ Snacks popcorn. They come in tasty flavors like S’mores, cookie dough, PB&J, lemon drop, root beer float, strawberry vanilla, and even Mountain Dew.

Snack cakes in ice cream form with the help of Nestle. There’s CupCakes: chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, cream frosting; Twinkies: buttercream ice cream, sponge cake, vanilla frosting; and Sno Balls: marshmallow ice cream, chocolate cake, coconut swirl. Coming soon.

Ever wanted to taste the crazy snack foods they sell in Japan? NapaJapan ships such delicacies as Sour Cream and Butter Pringles, Mountain Dew Cheetos, Green Tea Latte Oreos, Ginger Ale Cough Drops and other oddities worldwide.

KIND’s first foray into savory protein snacks are a real winner. They taste delicious, and remind us more of a meal than sweet bars. Flavors include roasted jalapeno, honey mustard, thai sweet chili, hickory smoked, and honey smoked BBQ.

Combining the spicy, vinegary hot sauce flavor of Buffalo Wild Wings with the crunch of Ruffles, these delicious deep-ridged potato chips are a gift from the gods of snack food. Great with ranch dip or right out of the bag.