Junk Food Nation, do you guys remember online poker? I do. Full disclosure – I never was able to bet a penny online. I remember being really interested in it though, after seeing Rounders in 1998. When Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker with an online seat won through PokerStars.net – that’s when you knew online gambling was going to start becoming HUGE.  I had friends with thousands on sites like PokerStars, BoDog, and FullTilt.  It was big business, and the fact that it was online meant that it was nearly untouchable by state and federal gaming laws.

Nearly. On Black Friday, or April 15, 2011, the US blocked internet access to these international sites and froze millions in gambling assets.  A friend of mine had upwards of ten grand on one site (he wouldn’t tell me which). And he was stunned – after the freeze, he couldn’t get one cent.  What would the end game be?  Well, the hammer fell yesterday; Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars agreed to settle and reimburse online gamblers, forfeiting a total of $731 million dollars.  Wow.  That’s a whole lotta chedda. Somehow, however, I still feel like that’s just the tip of the profit that was reaped from online poker.

And so ends the brief period of world history in which online gaming was king.  For a little over a decade, people were able to bank full salaries off this internet Ponzi scheme.  And while I know that some of my pals are STILL bitter that online gaming is gone, it is just that – gone.  Ah well.  I can still watch Rounders and remember the good ol days.

Today’s junk food is essentially part 2 of yesterday’s review: New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls!

What’s better than peanut butter?

As I mentioned yesterday, there are THREE new flavors of Nabisco’s Honey Maid Grahamfuls: Banana Creme, Peanut Butter, and Peanut Butter/Chocolate.  Pictured above is the peanut butter variety.  I was gonna buy those, when I thought: “Well, Peanut Butter + Chocolate > Peanut Butter alone.” Am I right? So no – I won’t be reviewing the straight PB version. But I took a nice picture of it in case you were wondering what it looked like.

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls: The Money Shot

Nope, today I tackle New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls. After Banana Creme was such a success, I was really curious about peanut butter plus chocolate in a graham cracker.  Nabisco already did the PB/Choc mix with their Ritz Crackerfuls, a more savory/sweet take on things. How would these stack up?

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls: Flowing rivers of PB and Chocolate

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls: I like the idea that these are FUEL.  Makes it sound so rugged.

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls: 120 per – a little more fatty than the Banana Creme variety

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls: Corn Syrup Solids???

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls has “corn syrup solids” in it, despite claiming it had no corn syrup on the box!  What gives??

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls: Snack pack

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls: Elongated and crunchy

The innards of this New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamful smelled faintly peanut buttery, and looked pretty plain too.  I don’t know why I always expect the companies to swirl this stuff – when you pipe two long strips of goo, it makes me feel like you don’t care, Nabisco.  Sniff*

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls

I tasted the ingredients of this New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamful separately.  The peanut butter was not sweet at all, and had a really deep peanut flavor.  A decent texture, and sort of dry, the peanut butter had a nice salty kick and wasn’t really the “spreadable” type – it was kind of solid and only spread on my finger with a good push.

The chocolate half was sweet, and had a texture that resembled Oreo creme – very easy to manipulate. The  cocoa flavor was decent, although it did taste more artificially chocolate-y than deep cocoa. Eaten with the peanut butter, I must say, I did enjoy the flavor – the sweetness of the chocolate creme and the peanut butter saltiness blended well together and produced a sort of saltier Reese’s flavor.  I liked it.  Artificial and all.

New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls

The graham cracker was standard, tasty, and full of honey flavor.  Again, kudos to Honey Maid.  When all components of these New Honey Maid Peanut Butter Chocolate Grahamfuls were eaten together, it was a really nice treat – the taste I was getting from the slightly salty sweet chocolate peanut butter mixture was really enhanced by the addition of the honey flavor from the graham cracker.  And the salty from the peanut butter made the graham cracker taste even sweet.  It all worked together.

It was, admittedly, a little dry – but that’s what I expected.  After all, they are graham crackers, and graham crackers are dry.  And you might not like these if you’re expecting “cookie.” This is not a cookie.  It’s a cracker snack where you get to relive your childhood by prying some chewed graham crackers off the roof of your mouth with your tongue.  Really good.  This flavor of Grahamful – thumbs up!

PURCHASED AT: Walmart (also seen at Giant Grocery)

COST: They were 2 for $5.00

Thoughts? Please comment below (I always reply) or hit me up on Twitter @junkfoodguy or LIKE my Facebook Page and message me there. Also, you can always email me at junkfoodguy@junkfoodguy.com. Let’s hang out.

Sincerely,

Junk Food Guy