Cheez-It Cheeseburger, Cheese Pizza & Cheddar Nachos Review

Cheez-It Cheeseburger, Cheese Pizza & Cheddar Nachos Review

Cheez-It.  Those baked cheddar snack crackers that have been around forever… like, seriously.  Forever.  Let’s check out a brief history of Cheez-It:

1921: The Green & Green Company creates the first Cheez-It.
1932: Sunshine Foods acquires Green & Green Company, and Cheez-It follows along.
1996: Keebler takes over Sunshine Foods, taking Cheez-It with them.
2001: Kellogg buys Keebler, and we finally start seeing some new versions of the popular cracker.
2014: Cheez-It Grooves is released.  FINALLY something other than a simple cheese cracker!

Now, we have a nice assortment of Cheez-It products like Extra Toasty, Snack Mix, Grooves, Duoz, and different flavor choices like Baby Swiss, Colby, Provolone and more.  There are even Scrabble Cheez-It, BIG Cheez-It and Star Wars Cheez-It.  But the biggest news to come from Cheez-It happened this year.  Their “You Choose The Champion” campaign offers something extremely unique and fun – three new flavors unlike any other, that consumers can try then vote for their favorite.

The You Choose The Champion flavors include Cheesburger Cheez-It, Cheese Pizza Cheez-It and Cheddar Nachos Cheez-It.  Whoa.  Those are some bold flavors, aren’t they?  I’m most excited about the cheeseburger flavor – after trying the Ruffles Flame-Grilled Cheeseburger chips, I was left with huge disappointment.  I hope Cheez-It can pull it off!

Honestly, I’m more of a Cheese Nips girl.  I would take a box of Cheese Nips over Cheez-It any day, but I’m still pretty excited about these fun flavors!

The Cheeseburger Cheez-It is my first up on deck.  When I opened the box to take a big, long whiff, I immediately detected relish.  Pickle relish, for sure.  There’s a nice picture of a big, juicy cheeseburger with mustard, ketchup, lettuce, tomato and onion on the box.  I’m hoping these taste like that.

Right away, I taste hot dog.  A hot dog with mustard and relish (which is my favorite way to eat a hot dog).  That’s weird, because pickles and relish aren’t listed on the ingredients. I picked another cracker with more stuff on it – flavor crystals or whatever.  After a few more crackers, the only thing that changed was the hinted addition of onion. If you like hot dogs, this is a great cracker.  I can honestly say I barely taste any cheese in them, and the relish/mustard flavors definitely linger.

Next up is the Cheez-It Cheese Pizza.  This can’t be too hard to nail, right?  The crackers are already cheese… although the image on the box definitely shows a mozzarella or white cheese topped pizza with flecks of oregano or parsley or whatever that green plant/spice stuff is they put on pizza.

The initial “Whiff Test” got me excited.  This really smells like pizza!!  Another big whiff proved heavy tomato sauce or seasoning in these crackers.  After eating about 4 of these, I was really impressed.  They pretty much taste just like they should – cheese pizza. I don’t get the mozzarella in them, but that doesn’t affect the taste.  These are really yummy!  There’s not much more to say about them, other than I can taste the tomato sauce, cheese and that green plant/spice, and they blend perfectly to create the illusion of cheese pizza.

Cheddar Nachos.  You cannot go wrong with nachos. The picture on the box shows tortilla chips loaded up with melted cheese, jalapeño, green onion and some kind of red food – not really a tomato looking thing, but maybe a red pepper?

These don’t smell like any nachos I’ve ever had. I can smell jalapeño and onion, but little else.  I hesitantly grabbed a cracker and popped it in my mouth.  You know those gas station nachos that you can score at 2am?  The boxes of chips that you squirt on nacho cheese (dare I say “nacho cheese”) from a machine that hasn’t been properly cleaned for a few years, then top your “nachos” with dried out jalapeño and yellow-tinted onions… you know what I’m talking about.  Don’t pretend you haven’t been drunk when you stumble into 7-Eleven and crave those nasty nachos.  That’s pretty much what these taste like.  Nacho flavor?  No.  Not even close.  Strong jalapeño and melty fake cheese flavor?  Yep.  They should have called this “Gas Station Queso Cheez-It.”  After eating two of these, and struggling through each, I’m done.  I do NOT like these.

My final thoughts – I would vote the Cheese Pizza Cheez-It over the other two.  That’s #PizzaCheezIt by the way. The Cheeseburger Cheez-It was good, but it wasn’t a cheeseburger, it was a hot dog.  And the nachos just failed miserably.  However, the cheese pizza was pretty yummy and impressive.  Will I buy them again?  Naw, like I said – I’m a Cheese NIPS kinda gal. 🙂