I’ll try to summarize what I found out about these: Basically, Ring Dings were first, Ding Dongs were second but were originally called King Dongs, then King Dons, then Big Wheels. Now they’re Ding Dongs but as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I can’t keep up with companies buying each other. In the end, Hostess bought Drakes but you can read all the sorted details in this Wiki entry.
Ring Dings:
I don’t know when they stopped wrapping Ring Dings individually in foil but they are paired in cellophane now. The cake was slightly dry but soft and the creme was good; moist and with just enough vanilla flavor. The outer chocolate coating was ok, not all that chocolaty in taste, but like chocolate it started to melt a little if held too long.
Ding Dongs:
Ding Dongs are noticeably taller than Ring dings. I cut open a couple of these and neither of them had a continuous creme center, they seemed to be injected in two areas. Ethan found the creme to be plasticy and we both thought the chocolate coating was wax-like and stuck to our teeth. The cake was flavorless and dry.
Wrap up:
Bigger isn’t always better. We weren’t impressed with Ding Dongs, the whole product seemed tasteless in every way. When he was done tasting, Ethan just said, “These are pretty bad.” Ring Dings aren’t the awesomeness I remember from childhood but they were definitely better than the Ding Dongs.
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First I’d like to apologize for the terrible pictures, I’m not sure why all my close ups have the same quality of lost footage from a bigfoot expedition but you get the idea. Tato Skins had an okay crunch, the sour cream & onion flavor was somewhat sweet and had good potato flavor.
Between 4 of us tasting these we agreed that Doritos have a nice roasted corn flavor and good crunch. There was just enough flavor on the chip and we found there was a nice mild tang to to the cheese.
We noticed these were paler than Doritos and had less flavor. They also seemed very dry and overbaked. Someone said these were like “toasted cardboard” and smelled like “dry catfood”, which after hearing, Ethan couldn’t get out of his head because it actually did.
Right away Mark noticed the strong ultra-sweet orange smell, like orange candy (which it is) and found it to be very pleasant. Sarah felt it had a slightly weird after-taste, we realised it was because of the rosin, actually listed as “ester of wood rosin”. It actually wasn’t bad though but after we read the label it seemed to taste even more “rosiny”. We also thought it had the deepest orange color.
Fanta had the same strong orange smell. We found it to be the more fizzy and sweeter than Sunkist. It seemed more artificial and somewhat flatter in flavor.
Crush had lighter smell but we found it to be overwhelmingly sweet. We all agreed this was the most artificial of the three and Ethan described it as “water from a pool”. This lacked any real flavor and was not enjoyable at all.
For this tasting we had our friends Mark and Sarah help with the evaluation. Mark found the green (parsley?) specks visually pleasant. Sarah found them to not have a lot of cheddar flavor and were a little too salty. We all agreed they had a nice crunch, similar to a Cheeto.
We found these to be even crunchier than Andy Capp’s. Mark noted they have a strong smokey smell. We found the cheddar taste to be stronger and sharper. The bacon flavor was just enough to compliment the cheddar.
This gum is very sweet, the bubble gum flavor is apparent but is kind of masked by the overwhelming sweeteness. The liquid center has a little thickness so it doesn’t just spill out (although normally it shouldn’t matter because it’s in a mouth anyway). The texture is nice and soft and is elastic enough to blow some bubbles, not the best, but okay.
I had high hopes for this classic but even though the initial flavor was decent, it only lasts for what seems like only a few seconds. The liquid center is much more gooey and kind of gross. The chew on this is pretty bad, there’s is no elasticity so in under a minute I found myself chewing on a hard, tasteless wad of something that resembled gum.
But I guess why would they make two liquid-center gums? I did a little looking online but didn’t really find anything on Bubbaloo so I can’t tell if this is a copy-cat or sister product. I tried it and it looks and tasted like the Bubblicious except that it had better bubble blowing abilities.
As suggested, we put these in the toaster. I actually did look at the cooking instructions and like 
Ethan didn’t like the strawberry filling in this one and said it just doesn’t taste as good in general. The frosting was especially tasteless and dry.
I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you these were disgusting. How could such a great combination of ingredients go wrong? We felt these were bland and had too much wafer, which had a burnt popcorn taste. Ethan said he got “glob” of peanut butter in one bite, which one might think would be a good thing but even the PB was so bland, the glob wasn’t a treat. Also I think the coating was some sort of “mockolate” that had no chocolate flavor. We only took a bite or two and threw the rest away. 
Although it looks lighter, the chocolate flavor is much more present in this bar. The peanut butter actually smells and tastes like peanut butter and the wafers are sweet, not burnt-tasting. There is a perfect chocolate/wafer/PB balance and light delicate crispiness when bitten into.
After cooking in its special crisp-inducing microwave sleeve, we noticed there was in fact, a small amount of crisp on top from the sprinkled cheese. We agreed the dough was nice and soft, yet not undercooked. Inside was a good combination of sauce, cheese and meatball. The sauce was pretty flavorful, even “zesty” (but not too zesty like they just dumped a bag of oregano in it) and the cheese tastes like, as the box says, real cheese. We were impressed with Hot Pockets. The only thing that might be misleading is that the meatball tasted more like Italian sausage, but it’s good for those who like a spicy meatball!
Tony’s didn’t have any special cooking sleeve, just take it out of the plastic casing and pop it in the microwave. We noticed the dough was thicker and gummy in some places and too chewy or dense in others. The sauce was bland and we couldn’t really taste the cheese. We cut these in half and I think Ethan got all of the meatball because I didn’t remember tasting any. Only when Ethan said there wasn’t as much meatball as Hot Pockets, I realized how unnoticeable it was in my half. So the meatball presence was either absent or they put it on one side.
An attractive blend of Chex cereal, mini-melba toasts, square grid and round pretzels and little “bread sticks”. We noticed that there seemed to be a hierarchy of these ingredients. The best part is the Chex squares which had a great toasty flavor and a satisfying crunch. Next best were the pretzels, then the bread sticks and last were the melba toasts which we found to be a little too hard. Overall, it had a nice flavor and a good balance of ingredients.
I had high hopes for Cheez-it Snack Mix because Cheez-its are one of my all time favorite foods, but I was really surprised by this. The “seasoning” (flavor powder) was really strong and tart, like maybe the powder used on sour cream and onion chips which totally overpowered and compromised the flavor of the Cheez-it. Ethan said it tasted like they poured vinegar all over it. The mock Chex squares had a flat, dull crunch and were lacking the toasty taste real chex had. The one thing we did like were the mini-melba toast which were light and crisp but that wasn’t enough to reverse the overall disappointment of this product.