Mole

Rating: ©©©-3/4 chips (notable)

Now that Doritos has disclosed that the winning flavor of their Bold Flavor Experiment is none other than Test Flavor: 855, we felt like this entire experiment, and experience, deserved a bit more conversation.

Test Flavor: 2653: Chocolate Chipotle Bacon

Our final ranking: 3rd place

Thoughts on the reveal: Makes sense. You can tell that this was the flavor Doritos wanted to shock people with. Chocolate, on a chip? Bacon, on a chip? Frankly, neither of which seem that weird to us, but the simple fact of the matter is that these flavors do not compliment Doritos tortilla chips extremely well. Our original guess for this flavor was mole, which really isn’t all that different than Chocolate Chipotle Bacon. But, our description below in the end does pretty much spell out Chocolate Chipotle Bacon. We love the creativity, and the execution is pretty spot on, but we just don’t love the combo with Doritos. Thank you Doritos for such an amazing flavor experiment!

>> Original Review Below <<

Attention! Quiet please! Doritos has decided to spend less time and money on marketing and packaging their super popular tortilla chips, and more on creating supposedly top secret new flavors that shall only be named or described using numbers!

All jokes aside, we love this!! This is what we thrive on! Truth be told, as much as we hate to admit it, most days we just sit around at home doing nothing, anxiously anticipating the day that some new and unusual chip promotion will hit the market! Well folks, today is that day, and we have sprung into chomping action!!

Bravo Doritos! Bravo for having such high confidence in thyself that you were willing to produce three ‘Test Flavors”, named or described only using, what appear to be random number configurations (although we’re pretty sure that 2653 is probably someone’s last 4 from their social). And, at the same time having enough faith that your U.S. consumers would still be willing to shell out cold hard cash for unknown flavors! It is sort of like, Doritos roulette! Or, playing the Doritos lottery! Let us just hope that we don’t get JACKED!!

*Side note: We here at Chip Review have never been the hugest fans of the JACKED line from Doritos. They are indeed – BIGGER – BOLDER & THICKER, and while we have no problem with the bolder aspect (bolder of course equaling more flavor); our issue with the JACKED Doritos lies in the tortilla chips themselves. The chips just seem too big, and their texture is so thick that they no longer encompass that perfect Doritos light, crispy crunch that we all know and love. *end side note

According to Ad Age.com “Doritos is also giving away daily prizes of $1,000 in gold to people who vote at a special website called BoldFlavorExperiment.com. The gold giveaway is meant to play off the origin of Doritos name, which connotes “little bits of gold” in Spanish, according to the brand. (“Dorado” means “golden” in Spanish.). As with most food products, the brand will have to list the ingredients on the package. Shouldn’t that be enough to provide some pretty strong clues? Not necessarily. Mr. Krishnan (VP of marketing for Frito-Lay) said that the flavors come from how the ingredients are mixed together. He would only say that the flavors would be “complex.” The brand will not identify the flavors until later this summer, after the 60-day voting period ends. In the interim, Doritos will give clues to consumers who partake in an online scavenger hunt on the promotional site.” (www.adage.com)

Again, can we just say how giddy these test flavors make us! Whether or not we end up liking the chips, frankly we don’t care, and we simply find this entire experience exciting! We will not delve deeply into our thoughts on what we think either of the two other flavors may be, but based solely on their listed ingredients, we suspect that from Test Flavor: 855 we could be getting some form of hot wings with bleu cheese (too simple, and safe – we know, probably not). From Test Flavor: 404*, we suspect to taste some Chinese sweet & sour chicken (wouldn’t that be weird!? – can’t wait). *now that we have tasted the 404’s, you can find out what flavor we really think they are over here.

As for Test Flavor: 2653, well, let’s just say that this bag’s ingredients had us the most excited and confused! What do we get when Doritos combines their JACKED tortilla chips with: paprika, chile powder (including Chipotle), sugar, brown sugar, CHOCOLATE LIQUOR, BUTTER, NATURAL BACON and smoke flavors; along with plenty of the usual chip ingredient inclusions? Well, at first, we get a powerful splash of some slightly spicy chile powder, and once that subdued a little bit, then some sweet notes began to develop. Then suddenly pop, there in the background the chocolate essence did appear, and definitely added some of that unique depth and complexity we expected from these chips! On the tail end, we also noticed plenty of smoky notes, probably from both the pork and the chipotle ingredients. All in all, these are good chips, but not really any we would purchase again. Honestly, despite their unusual ingredients, they are not really that much different from Doritos JACKED Smoky Chipotle BBQ chips. We respect them, more than we love them!

So, what do we think Doritos has attempted to create with Test Flavor: 2653?? Drum roll please……..

Our money is on: Sweet & Spicy Mole!!

Well, there you have it. One of three test flavors down the review hatch. Anyone else out there tried them yet? Thoughts? Stay tuned for reviews of the other two coming soon!

As always we would love to hear what you think. Agree or disagree. Let us know.

Chips discovered at Target; Willowbrook, Illinois

Doritos Official Website

Chip Ratings Scale:

(1/4 increments)