Puff nutty.

Something unusual popped up in the store this week, and since it wasn't some bug-eyed fish or cleaning product, I decided to eat it. Fortunately it was, indeed, food. 

You handsome folks out there in blogland are probably well aware of my weakness for snacks, as well as my weakness for peanut butter. And yet the two weaknesses have never really been combined in such a way as this. Bamba Peanut Puffs is the product, and you may be wondering, as I did:

1) What the heck is a peanut puff?

2) Why is there a weird baby on the bag?

3) What's this Osem outfit who made it?

4) What's it doing in my supermarket? 

5) Is it any good?

So here's the answers -- a peanut puff turns out to be a puffed treat like Cheez Doodles, only instead of Cheez, it tastes like peanut butter. This is a mind-blowing combo. It's like biting into a salmon burger when you're expecting a hamburger. At first you go What the hey! And then you go Mmm. Unless you hate salmon. Or in this case, peanuts. The texture simply is not something I associate with PB, but that doesn't mean it's bad. 

As for the weird baby, it appears to be the mascot of the company Osem for the peanut puff products, and his name is Bamba Baby. These would be inappropriate snacks for an infant, but perhaps okay for kids older than six months. Foreign mascots always seem a little off to me, like they're created by people who don't understand them but think they're necessary. (Then again, Izzy was no prize, either.)

Osem is one of Israel's largest food outfits, but is owned by those Swiss folks at Nestlé. So I figure paranoiacs could call delicious snacks a plot by either the Swiss or the Israelis to conquer America. Because the peanut puffs are pretty good.

As for why it's in my supermarket, we have a large population of ultra-orthodox Jews in the neighboring village, and while they have their own village shops, they also come to the supermarkets on the goyem side of the tracks from time to time. So it's worthwhile for the store to stock up on kosher goods and snacks which those customers would be familiar. It also seems like Nestlé is trying to be more of a force in the U.S. snack market, after having sold its American candy business to Ferrero. 

Anyway, peanut puffs are good, weird baby notwithstanding, and I'd buy them again, but they're not so good that they could conquer America. In an alternate world, however, I can imagine the Swiss inventing ice cream and using that to break our will. 

I'm not saying they would, but it would be a fight, that's for sure.