Meijer Spicy Trail Mix (Meijer)

No thanks.

I feel like I’ve written too many long-winded intros for trail mix lately, so just as a tl;dr version: I don’t get lunch breaks at work any more, so I just bring some snacks to nibble on throughout the day and trail mix is one of my favorites because I can eat as much or as little as I need to keep me energized.

Anyway, now we turn our attention to a spicy trail mix from Meijer, where my wife has been doing almost all of our grocery shopping lately. I haven’t tried any of their varieties, so it will be interesting to see how they compare to Aldi brand, which I’ve eaten quite frequently, and Kroger’s, which I just tried recently for the first time, and was pretty impressed with.

Oooh yep...this one misses the mark for me, by being an almost perfect example of what not to do with a trail mix. Why is it that all trail mixes seem to have the requirement that they are overly sodium-packed? I never understand why they have “exotic” ingredients like nacho corn sticks and chili bits—things that would taste pretty good on their own—then add boatloads of seasoning to the extent that it's all you can taste.

That’s exactly what happens here, making each bite a pretty repetitive experience, despite the inclusion of many different types of nuts and other goodies. The base mix actually tastes very similar to Aldi’s Sweet and Spicy trail mix, but as that name implies, Aldi was smart enough to counteract the overly salty portion, with some little candied peanuts to help offset the sodium burn. Since there’s no such balancing agent here, all we’re left with is what tastes like essentially the same bite, over and over and over again, no matter what combination of ingredients you're eating.

Piling on it while it’s down, the value here is rather nonexistent, with a 12 oz. bag retailing for $4.49. That’s about 40 cents cheaper than Aldi’s version…but for about 12 oz. less. To be slightly more fair, they do offer larger bags (in the case of the spicy, it’s 18 oz.) for $6.49, which brings the cost per oz. down a teeny bit (from about 37.4 to 36), but that’s still giving you less than similar Aldi trail mixes, but for over a dollar more.

Unless you’re a huge fan of overly salty snacks with little in the way of variety, just consider this one an all-around failure.

Overall: 3/10. This is a hugely disappointing trail mix that makes the fatal mistake of drowning everything in salty seasoning. What’s the point of even having chili sticks and nacho corn sticks when you don’t give those flavors room to develop? Instead, every bite is just overly salted, and they all start to blend in with one another almost immediately out of the gate. Value is also fairly poor, with a 12 oz. bag retailing for $4.49 (or an 18 oz. bag retailing for $6.49), while Aldi offers up bags that are around 24 oz. for under $5. Not a fan of this one at all.