For those who don’t know what Universal Yums is, it’s a company which sends its customers a package filled with treats and snacks from various countries around the world. Whether you want to give the packages to someone as a gift or use it for yourself, you may choose to subscribe for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months. So far, my mom and I have received packages from: Germany (March), Ukraine (February), The Netherlands (January), Italy (November 2020), Russia (October 2020), and Colombia (September 2020) and many more! For the month of April, I received a package from Spain! As someone who’s been blessed enough to go to Spain, I was more than excited to see whether I recognized any of the snacks from my time there. Unfortunately, not only was I unable to recognize any snacks, but most of them were either “eh”or “yuck!” in my opinion. I’ve had Spanish cuisine before (Ooo look at lil ol’ me), and it could not compare to what was in this package. If you’ve received the Spain package and you like it, kudos to you. I, however, did not.
Disclaimer: These opinions and thoughts are my own and I by no means intend to disrespect the manufacturers of the companies nor Spaniards who may enjoy them.
With that said, I’ll begin by rating on a 1-5 scale (yuck to yum) the selected snacks I’ve chosen from the overall nineteen products within the package.
Spicy Mango Gummies (0/5….maybe even -1/5)
Absolutely atrocious. The sweet smell and even first bite allures you, but alas, it’s all a facade and a trap. After a few seconds of biting into the mango gummy, I felt as if my mouth had been pepper sprayed. The problem wasn’t that it was spicy, because I’d like to think I have a pretty good tolerance for spice. The problem was that it tasted like manufactured spice, like if you looked at the back for the list of ingredients, citrionic transformer acid or Tetrahydrozoline would appear. Also, the shape of these gummies don’t even look like mangoes, they look more like a diseased liver they’d show you to warn you of the effects of alcoholism.
Lemony Potato Chips (3/5)
No, not Lemony Snicket, though I would prefer the feeling of pubescent joy I once had while reading his books in comparison to the “eh” feeling I had while eating these chips. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t amazing either. The addition of black pepper was a nice touch, but there was nothing spectacular about these chips. It was exactly as advertised, leaving nothing more to say about this product.
Fried Bacon & Cheese Cones (3/5)
Basically Bugles chip brand but it tastes like ham and cheese instead of cardboard. This wasn’t that bad to be honest, but it wasn’t wow worthy either. The chips were small and cute, looking like mini thimbles. It was fun putting them on my fingers and then eating them, other than that though, these chips weren’t too bad.
Sour Pineapple Gummies (4/5)
These were great, especially if you’re a person who enjoys eating sour gummies like me. The only reason why I didn’t give these a 5/5 is because similar to how my mouth gets numb after eating too many pineapples, my mouth couldn’t handle eating too many of these gummies all at once.
Custard Cream Cortadillo (-2/5)
No.
Fried Egg & Sea Salt Potato Chips (1/5)
If I wanted regular fried eggs I’d go to my fridge and pull out a couple to make them myself. I do NOT need them as a chip flavor. Who likes eggs so much that they made it into a flavor? What was the reason???
Goat Cheese Potato Chips (5/5)
These chips were the largest product within the whole package and I ate basically half of the bag in a day. So good! I can’t even remember the last time I ate goat cheese, but these chips make me want to embed it more within my diet.
Roasted Chicken Puffs (3/5)
Basically air. It had a good flavor to them but I could barely taste it as I felt like I was just eating crunchy air. The package was cute and it had a funny cartoon chicken on it so that’s the only reason why I gave it a 3. Other than that though, nothing more to say about these puffs.
Cinnamon Mantecado Cookies (-1/5)
It’s like if you had a ball of sand and ate it. Very dense and very dry. I had to drink 32 oz of water after eating just one of them. It was crumblier than a Nature Valley Granola Bar which ruined the whole experience for me.
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So that’s all of my reviews for this batch. I’m impatiently waiting for whatever awaits this May, and I hope it’s drastically better than what I was given for April. In sum, for this month’s Universal Yums: Hit vs. Miss? MISS!