Good & Gather Mixed Fruit Snacks

I've always loved fruit snacks ever since I was a little kid. Fruit roll-ups, bars, leather, strips, gushers...you name it. I'd beg my dad for them every time we went to the grocery store.

Parents look at the label and see something about "real fruit juice" and feel okay about letting their kids have them. In reality, I'm sure they're nothing but sugar with a few drops of actual juice, but hey, they taste great, they're convenient, and they're not crazy expensive.

These Good & Gather dealies are no different. We generally have a box laying around the house and toss a couple bags into the car for road trips or hikes. They're the perfect mid-meal snack for boosting blood sugar and avoiding hangriness.

There's a strictly berry version of these fruit snacks, but this one here has cherry, grape, orange, apple, strawberry, and raspberry flavors. They're all sweet and surprisingly tasty. 

For $5.19, you get 22 bags. There's also a 50 bag option for around $9. Not too shabby. I'd say it's worth it. 

It's been a repeat purchase at our house for the past year or so and we'll undoubtedly keep some on hand for the foreseeable future. One of my favorite items from GAG.

I give Good & Gather Mixed Fruit Snacks 8 out of 10 stars.

Good & Gather Peanuts, Almonds & Peanut Butter with Cocoa Drizzle Nut Bars

Target really needs to work on their marketing, packaging, and labeling strategies. Can you imagine if you happened to LOVE these things and wanted your SO to pick some up on their next Target run? "Honey, can you pick up those Good and Gather Peanuts, Almonds, and Peanut Butter with Cocoa Drizzle Nut Bars?" That's a freaking mouthful if I ever heard one. They should give it some clever name like NICE bars. "Honey, grab me some NICE bars please!" It just rolls off the tongue.

For some reason it wasn't apparent until I actually opened the box and looked at the individual bars, but these are quite obviously GAG's take on KIND bars. They're mostly just nuts and grains all fused together with honey and rice syrup and...ew. Soy protein?

There's a thin layer of what appears to be chocolate coating the entire bottom of the bar. But there's no "chocolate" listed in the ingredients. I guess they're approximating it now with cocoa powder, chickory root, milk powder, and various oils. They call it a "cocoa drizzle." Fair enough.

I guess the bottom line is if you like KIND bars, you'll like these. I'm okay with either brand. They're vaguely not-bad-for-you and somewhat tasty.

$4.39 for four bars. Wait. You're telling me each of these little snacky snacks is more than a dollar? Dang. Inflation gonna inflate.

I give these KIND knockoffs 7 out of 10 stars.

Good & Gather Organic Strawberry Shortcake Whole Grain Bars

GAG is back with another orgasmic—er, sorry—organic snack offering. It's for sporty, active, healthy individuals, and you can tell because there's a blue bicycle bursting through a debris field of giant strawberries, chunks of cheese, and angular white razor blades on the cover. I, personally, would have added an explosion, a bit of blood spatter, and maybe a dinosaur or two. But either way, it's obvious that this snack is not for the faint of heart.

Honestly, it tastes like plastic a little. I mean, the bars are dense, moist, and filling, which is good. There are 12 of them in there, which for $7.29 is a so-so value, IMO.

They don't taste much like strawberry at all. The "shortcake" is predictably less like real shortcake and more like the bread in a typical cereal bar. But make no mistake, these aren't cereal bars. They are whole grain baked bars—that's baked, never fried, in case you were wondering.

And they're gluten free. How's that possible? Ah. Oats and oat flour rather than wheat. That's unexpected.

I, personally, wouldn't buy these again. I bet the wife will like them a lot more than I do. The "strawberry shortcake" moniker is a stretch. The texture is better than the flavor.

I give these bars 6 out of 10 stars.

Good & Gather Organic White Cheddar Baked Corn Puffs

"Yeah, I want cheesy poofs!"

Ah, but do you? Do you really? Well, first of all, we have to realize not all cheesy poofs are created equal. Pretty sure the version Eric Cartman was craving wasn't organic. I'm also willing to bet it wasn't Target brand.

But hey, he might like these. They're vaguely cheesy. They're crunchy enough.

But they're also dry. I mean they aren't oily or greasy at all. Just look at that pic—not even a hint of a stain on that napkin. To me, that would usually be a good thing, but in this case...I dunno. It kinda creeps me out how dry these things are.

And Good and Gather Organic White Cheddar Baked Corn Puffs are stiff, almost stale-feeling straight out of the bag. They have the texture of styrofoam packing peanuts. They're more rigid than your run-of-the-mill cheesy poofs.

$6.39 for the 10 oz resealable bag. I know I said I'd only review trail mixes on this blog from here on out...but I lied. The local Target didn't have any new trail mixes that I hadn't reviewed yet, so here you go: another non-trail mix GAG review. 

The wife liked them okay, so I'll go easier on them than I might have for their final score.

I give these organic cheesy poofs 6 out of 10 stars.

Good & Gather Organic Veggie-Flavored Tortilla Chips

If it ain't broke, then don't try to fix it.

It might be a cliche, but it's generally a good rule of thumb in my book. Target obviously disagrees.

I've been aware of this Good & Gather shift for quite a few months now, even though this is our first review of a Good & Gather product. Heh. As an acronym, Good and Gather spells GAG. 

So long, Archer Farms. I think we'll stick with "What's Good at Archer Farms?" as the name of this blog for the time being because 1) the first line of this post 2) I like the name "Archer Farms" a lot more than "Good & Gather" and 3) It's a nod to the classic golden age of Target fare of the past decade? Decades? I'm pretty sure AF was around since I first started shopping at Target some time in the early 2000's.

Isn't "good" either an adjective or a noun? And "gather" is a verb. So...those two words don't belong together in any case. 

I guess it could be short for "Do good and gather stuff" or some other inane simplistic mantra of modern Minnesota marketing masters, but whatever. At least it's alliterative. I'm not into it, but that doesn't mean that we won't see some tasty products coming down the line with the GAG moniker.

First impression of these chips: not great. They tasted burnt in a weird, subtle way. They're thick, relatively rigid...and vegetabley. At first I wasn't into the veggie + corn vibe.

But I must admit they grew on me by the end of the bag. They need salsa. And their girth and sturdiness really lends them to dipping into chunky salsas or dense queso or guacamole.

The flaxseeds provide an earthiness to the product. You can't really taste the individual vegetables listed on the bag like carrot, tomato, beet, and spinach, but rather an interesting blend of all of the above. Still, corn is the dominant taste.

My initial reaction was somewhere in the ballpark of 5 or 6 stars, but like I said, I came to appreciate them more by the time we finished the package and had tried them with numerous condiments and dipping situations. They're pretty versatile and have a unique flavor.

I give Good & Gather Veggie Flavored Corn Tortilla Chips with Flaxseeds 7 out of 10 stars.