Cracker Jack'd


I was off onone of my "scratch-and-dent" adventures on Thursday, October 24. I chose the "Monroe Loop," which takes me from Evansville, through Brodhead via Highway 104 to 11, then through Monroe, and then back on Highway 59 through Albany and back to Evansville. It's a very pretty drive, through some of Wisconsin's "driftless" area when you cross into Green County. It also affords several stops at various merchants and outlets (the "bargain" part), and there are several good restaurants in Monroe to have a nice meal (the "binges" part).

My first stop was at Detweiler's Bent and Dent,  which is off Highway 104 on Atkinson Road. This is a marvelous surplus grocery outlet, run by the Amish. It is not only well stocked and the inventory changes often, but it has another store nearby called Detweiler's Bulk Baking Supplies. There, you can buy all sorts of flours, grainmeals, sugars, spices, etc., all in bulk. A thriving Amish community nearby has first access to both the baking goods (to make stuff for all their bake sales) and the surplus store (to feed their community). They then sell their excess stuff to us "English" to raise capital to further fund their benevolent efforts.

The "dent and bent" store is a little further in back of the baking supply store on Atkinson Road, maybe about a quarter mile. The "store" is a pole-style structure, of about 1,000 square feet. It is set up with electricity and central heat for the comfort of us English, and to enable the Amish to ring up their sales on an electric cash register. I guess the Amish get around this rule of "no modern conveniences" because, technically, this is no one's home and is strictly a place of business.

The place is buzzing with perhaps half a dozen Amish women who roam the six or so aisles with rolling carts, placing upon the shelves food and other various goods they obtain regularly from their wholesale source in more or less logical categories. Everything is in a can, box, package, jar, bottle, or blister pack. There is nothing in the store "fresh" (i.e., refrigerated) or frozen. Occasionally, there is some seasonal produce from nearby vegetable fields, and on this particular day they had butternut squash for a buck apiece. Everything else is dented, pushed in, past expiration, discontinued, overstock, or a combination thereof.

My most interesting "find" of the day was a 2-ounce pouch of a product called "Cracker Jack'd." This is another one of those products born of misguided enthusiasm within the hallways and cubicles of the Frito Lay Corporation (parent company of Cracker Jack), which felt in its collective heart (or faulty marketing research) that the American public needed chocolate-coffee flavored biscuits laced with caffeine.



The pouch was unblemished, and just a little past expiration, which stated June of 2013. It is indeed a discontinued product, but the good folks at Frito Lay are not through Jacking the American public just yet, as they currently offer seven other flavors of "Cracker Jack'd," including "Spicy Pizzeria," and "Salted Caramel." At least none of the current offerings contains any stimulants.

Let's for a moment set aside the sheer insanity of this superfluous spinoff from the original (and very tasty) Cracker Jack, and return to the now defunct "Cocoa-Java" variety. Upon opening the package, and inspecting the contents, one can immediately see the problem:


OK, is it just me, or do these look like something your average cat would deposit in a litter box? Somehow, they just don't appear very appetizing. But for 25 cents for the pouch, they provided a tasty and inexpensive snack, and fuel for the blog.


Bruce

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