X-13D

Have you tried the Doritos "flavor experiment" X-13D?

First of all, the bag is awesome.

Dear America: Please start putting everything in Cold War MRE packaging. Thanks!

I had half of a bag the other night, and they're weirdly awesome. Only half a bag because I picked up a high-functioning crackhead who, seeing me eat a Dorito, begged "Oh please mister let me have a chip you gotta let me have one chip I just can't stand it." You have to choose your battles in this world, and nowhere more so than in the frontseat of a cab, so I decided that giving her the rest of the bag was easier than listening to her beg the rest of the way.

Anyway, the taste is so close to what they're trying to emulate that it's a little uncanny, but unlike those disgusting candy bar milks (which taste exactly like you smooshed up a candy bar and poured milk over it), the proximity is curiously delicious.

As for what the taste IS, I've revealed it below in ROT13 in case you wanted to try the chips first (which I highly recommend, by the way):

N purrfrohetre - fcrpvsvpnyyl gur ovgr jvgu cvpxyrf naq bavba cvrprf.

The marketing behind this is genius...I'm genuinely impressed. The only minor flub is the ambiguous "Name It" portion of the contest. Most people have interpreted this like "Name That Tune," which isn't that tough; they taste exactly like a big bite of purrfrohetre. Instead, the contest is to come up with a name for the product.

Oh, and the winner gets a year's supply of Doritos, which is...what? Five or six bags?

*

Upon further reflection, doesn't it seem a bit old-fashioned that in these allegedly health-conscious days a chip company would give away massive amounts of its product as a prize? I'm not saying it should necessarily be like this, it just has a curiously outdated ring to it, like a contest from 1978.