At the 2016 Sweets & Snacks Expo – an annual trade show dedicated to garbage food – DeMet’s Candy Company unveiled Caramel Sea Salt Flipz. You probably didn’t know this because 1) it was a low-key announcement, 2) you’re a normal human being, and 3) you don’t read about junk food trade shows on the toilet. But for me? Caramel Sea Salt Flipz was a big deal.

Ask me what the most underrated snack is right now, and I will tell you about Flipz. I reviewed Birthday Cake Flipz in the wee stages of Junk Banter’s life and enjoyed them so much that I sung Rihanna tunes. Christmas was extra special that year with Candy Cane Flipz and the Christmas Tree I made with them on the floor. For Valentine’s Day, I celebrated soul-crushing loneliness with the Strawberry Flipz and couldn’t have been happier.

I can’t wait to see what kind of weird response I’d have when I tried Caramel Sea Salt Flipz.

Caramel Sea Salt Flipz

This flavor makes perfect sense after all. Pretzels are salty, salted caramel is salty… what the hell took so long? The suspense has been killing me, too, because these were supposed to launch in summer 2016. For the past year I’ve checked every grocery, gas station, and Bed Bath & Beyond for a product that wasn’t even out yet. This really interfered with my usual routine of checking every grocery, gas station, and Bed Bath & Beyond for products that weren’t even announced.

What could cause this kind of delay? Was the formula difficult to master? Are Caramel Sea Salt Flipz going to suck? Did I just waste another year of my life?

What’s not clear is what exactly these pretzels are covered in. I can’t tell if it’s actually caramel, caramel-flavored chocolate, or caramel and chocolate. Maybe these are the things they wrestled with for the last 365 days instead of releasing the product.

The ingredient list has “caramel flavored coating” first, and then “milk chocolate flavored coating” much further down the list. That seems to jive with their appearance, a caramel color with chocolatey drizzle. However I’m not so sure that “caramel flavored coating” jives with their claims to use the choicest chocolate in all their pretzels. The chocolate they chose doesn’t even contain cocoa.

…maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut so this doesn’t end up back in the lab for another year.

I’m still confused after eating my first pretzel. The coating doesn’t come across distinctly chocolate-y nor distinctly caramel-y. I’m less confused about the salt content. These pretzels are loaded with a strong salty flavor. Some Caramel Sea Salt Flipz are studded with so many salt crystals that they taste like Atlantic Ocean Flipz. The extra salted ones are way too salty much for most palates.

The ones with less salt are much better; only then can you taste a more rounded caramel flavor. The sweetness breaks through when there’s less surface salt, and the end result is enjoyable. The pretzels inside are supremely crunchy which is something I’ve always loved about this brand. But a few pretzels later, I got another extra salty one and was turned off really quickly.

Welp a year and a day later, I finally got my Caramel Sea Salt Flipz and they’re my least favorite flavor. I was really hoping I’d love em and they’d elicit some kind of weird response like every other Flip I’ve reviewed here.

Ah, to hell with it:

The Atlantic Ocean Rating: 8 out of 10
How Much I Want Rihanna To Lick Me Rating: 10 out of 10
Overall Rating: 6.5 out of 10

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