Betty Crocker Reese's Puffs Muffin Mix

Meta meta meta meta. Oh, god, it was only a matter of time before corporations started running out of ideas and just started mashing their already-successful, already-existing ones together. Which is totally freaking sweet. In the great wide world of Famous Things People Love, like Reese's and muffins, foods are haphazardly combined in what we now call "breakfast," but can really mean "any food you decide to cram into your sleep-riddled, slack-jawed maw before 11AM or whenever mom bangs on the door." Joyous day! So yeah, these exist for me to write about. I'm like a less shocking Triumph, y'see?

These just beg to be judged. From the enthusiastically branded box packaging to the shoddily tacked-on "don't eat raw muffin batter" on the back of the package, these are a fat kid's wet dream. The batter is shockingly close to an actual Reese's, albeit with a gloopier texture and oilier aftertaste. It has an aggressive salty bite and heavy nut-based flavor, with the milkiness of chocolate taking a backseat.

The wheaty, glutenous flavor even rendered it one rung on the incestuous General Mills family tree closer to its namesake, Reese's Puffs. It was impressive and heightened the anticipation of the end product. The streusel topping, initially chemical in flavor, had a strangely synthetic crunch to it, in a "Fun with Dental Surgery" kind of way. After (illegally?) tasting the batter, we were excited for the end product.

Apparently, this went through some Krazy Khemical Khanges while baking in the oven. Odors of microwaved popcorn, cardboard, and butter wafted through the kitchen, but not a single hint of muffin was to be smelled. Visually, they were stunning out of the oven, emerging nearly identical to their Photoshop enhanced counterparts. Unfortunately, they tasted worse than Reese's knock-offs- bland, pasty, and inexplicably tough. All the flavor from the batter was gone. Without the strudel's molasses-tinged magic, it was a cardboard-infused weak chocolate flavor with an inexplicable glutenous texture.
These were improvable, but only with the luxurious lubrication of butter and Nutella, essentially turning them back into the candy they'd sought to leave behind. Okay, whatever, so give me an instance where turning your breakfast into a snack cake doesn't improve it. (ed. note: see Grits v. Timmy, 2007) These clearly weren't meant for ingestion. Try using them as instant implants. Or wheels. Or perhaps you haven't been out of the house since 1952 and want to try that new-fangled greasy legume-paste cakes the kids are yapping about. Just don't get them to eat.