Product Review: Trader Joe's Peanut Butter Pretzels

Trader Joe's is a fantastic store. Interesting products and flavors not always stocked in a traditional grocery store. Friendly staff. Reasonable prices. It's the kind of place where you can pull in to the lot and find a Jaguar parked next to an early nineties Corolla with rumpled shirts and textbooks strewn across the back seat. For as wonderful as the store is, however, it has its share of items I'm not sure I'd purchase again. The Chocolate-covered Peanut Butter Filled pretzels are such an item.

The name "Chocolate-covered Peanut Butter Filled pretzels" does indeed hold promise. What's not to like about peanut butter and chocolate, especially in the same bite, plus the salty crunch of pretzel? A bag of these pretzels had been sitting in our kitchen cupboard for a while, most likely a pre-Christmas purchase that got lost in the seasonal flurry of sweet treats, only to be banished from sight during January's healthy eating crusade. Three months later, it was time to break the seal on the bag.

It is only fair to preface my review by mentioning that the expiration date for these pretzels was the last day of February. As of this writing, it is early April. One might argue that the product was not at its peak and thus my review is biased. But I was raised to believe that expired yogurt and dented soup cans should be fine, no problem. The manufacturers build a cushion into that expiration date stamped on the package, I have been told. It should follow, then, that a sealed bag of pretzels just two months overdue should be okay, no?

Let's start with the size. Each pretzel is a hefty-looking nugget covered in a generous sprinkle of salt. The crunch could have been better. Perhaps this was due to staleness, or perhaps it was the result of the enrobing process. That's right, the best thing about these little pretzel bites was that they were enrobed in a thick layer of milk chocolate. The chocolate had a good, rich flavor, although I wonder if dark chocolate might amp up the flavor a bit more. According to the package, each pretzel was "filled" with peanut butter. Hold the pretzel to your ear and shake it, however, and you'd hear the sound of a hard peanut butter pellet rattling around inside. Bite into the pretzel, and it's almost as if the peanut butter was not there. The chocolate and salt came through loud and clear, but the peanut butter, usually a potent flavor, was lost. I was expecting something creamy, fantasizing about that chocolate-peanut buttery perfection of texture and flavor found in a Reese's cup. The peanut butter pretzel did not match that fantasy. Perhaps the shelf life issue played a role. Perhaps I just had a sub-par batch. At two hundred calories and eleven grams of fat for six quick bites, I'd sooner savor a Reese's cup, or simply buy some pretzel rods and a jar of Jif.