Tamales in a Can

(Image taken from the following website: http://evilwarpingkitty.com/food2.htm)

I've decided to go with The Downside first for this one:

I have never been a big fan of canned meat products. Vienna sausages, spam, chili, whatever, the fact that there is some sort of ambiguous meat floating in a metal can sounds absolutely disgusting to me. And, go figure, whenever I'm adventurous enough to try a canned meat product, I am usually let down. Hormel's tamales in a can is no exception to this rule.
This Hormel product was an unfortunate staple of my childhood meals. I would cringe every time I asked my mom what was for dinner, and the reply was "tamales." I absolutely love Mexican food, but Hormel's version of a tamale (and pretty much every canned tamale I've ever had) is a pathetic excuse for food.
When you open the can, you have to fish out a slimy tamale out of some sort of meaty juice. After you slap one of these beasts onto a plate or a tray (depending on how exactly you plan on cooking them), you have to pry it from its wax paper covering. As if it wasn't nasty enough, you have to free your so-called tamale from its waxy skin. What you are left with is a some sort of soggy, sad-looking tortilla with the best mystery meat Hormel has to offer. No matter how this has been cooked, I have always noticed that it keeps its soggy disposition, and the taste is incredibly bland.

The Upside:
I suppose if you covered it with tons of salsa and pico de gallo and whatnot, you could pretend you were eating a real tamale. But you'd known deep down you would know what you were really eating--a slimy thing you pulled out of a can.

Rating: 1/5. I really should give it a zero. But, my little sister loves these things, so maybe someone out there will, too.

Russell Stover at 320 E 51st St, Kansas City, MO

The Goodside:
Let me start off by saying that I love sweets. I love chocolate, caramel, sugar, whatever. I am addicted, but I'm okay with that. When I saw this Russell Stover store, I knew I would have to stop in sometime. And today I did!
I didn't expect this store to have as much as it did when I first looked at it. It looks tiny from the outside, but as soon as I stepped in, I noticed they had a pretty large selection. I had never been in a Russell Stover store before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I was pretty surprised! They had everything from cookies to ice cream to their prepackaged chocolates and so on. There were a couple tables with free samples as well. I didn't know where to start, but I knew I wanted to get something.
There was a man mopping the floor when I came in. He didn't say hi to me, but that might have been because he was busy cleaning the floor. Eventually, he asked if he could help me, and I said I wanted to try some of the cookies. He put his mop up, cleaned his hands, and picked out my cookies for me. As he was ringing me up, he talked to me about the weather, and he seemed like a pretty nice guy. He also told me that they had just made these cookies so they were very fresh. I mentioned that the caramel covered apples looked really good, and he said people buy those all the time. I wanted to get one, but they were five dollars, and that was a lot to me. Eventually, we were all finished, and he told me to have a nice day.
The cookies I got:
*Oatmeal with raisins and walnuts
*Chocolate chunk full of chocolate with a piece of a chocolate bar on top
*They were both a bit bigger than a Subway cookie
*They were both very soft and tasted homemade
*They cost $1.09 a piece for a total of $2.28

The Downside:
To me, this store was a little expensive. Paying about $5.00 for a caramel apple (although they weren't just plain caramel apples; there were different kinds of nuts as well as white chocolate on some of them) was too much for me. I also thought the cookies were overpriced. They were good and big, but $1.09 is a bit much for a single cookie whenever you can literally walk a couple of feet to Subway and get several cookies for cheaper.

The Random Reviewer's Rating:
3.5/5 Good enough to try.