In the deliciously vast food-scape of sweet and salty there are a few quintessential combos that in my mind define the flavor profile to a T. The first, and the one I go to for arguments sake when people tell me they don’t like sweet and salty, is the chocolate covered pretzel. How can you not like a chocolate covered pretzel? It’s textbook sweet and salty perfection. A crunchy, bread-y, salted snack, covered in creamy, sweet, slightly bitter chocolate. It’s magic to my tastebuds, and most people, once they realize that is the core of sweet and salty, take back their malice and admit its deliciousness.

The other staple, and one that has been very popular for the last five years or so, is salted caramel. Whether taken straight in candy-form, as ice cream, or worked into a pastry, the simple act of adding some salt to cut through the hyper-rich sweetness of caramel creates nothing short of balanced mouth-magic. Even though its trendiness has gotten a bit out of hand, there’s no denying it is fantastic, and it is by the marriage of these two pillars that the ultimate sweet and salty mouthgasm – Caramel Sea Salt Flipz – were born.

The nose on these sparkling bright blue bad boys is sa-WEET. A beautifully recognizable slightly artificial caramel smell tickles my nostrils with delight but there are no obvious cocoa notes to be found. They look a little different than I anticipated too, even though the bag showed me what they would be like, in my mind I pictured a milk chocolate dip drizzled with caramel and salt, but they’re fully submerged in caramel and drizzle with chocolate – makes sense.

These Flipz are SALTY. They start with a lovely smooth and creamy caramel corn sweetness and quickly begin to pop with aggressive bursts of sea salt. My initial feeling is that these may have tipped the scale of sweet and salty too far to salty and sweet, disturbing the perfect balance created by the almighty chocolate pretzel. It takes a lot of saltiness to bully out the intense sugary stature of caramel, but these Flipz are doing it, and certainly aren’t for the faint of heart.

I had some stashed Birthday Cake Flipz on hand to do a quick comparison, and yep, next to the caramel ones the cake Flipz don’t taste salty at all. To be fair they’re probably the sweetest of all Flipz, but my palate has been so rocked by the sea salt explosion that there is no sweet and salty gratification left at the birthday bash.

While these are definitely a very intense snack that not everyone will be able to handle, the more that I ate them they truly grew on me for what they are. By the very nature of already being sweet and salty, it only makes sense that a product with “sea salt” in its name has to take it up a notch. Whether that notch went one step too far will be up to individual taste, but taken in small quantities these are a fun snack, just make sure you’ve got some water or coffee nearby.

Rating: 8/10
Found at: Walgreens ($3.99)
Quick Nutrition: 7 pieces – 130 cal – 6g fat – 4.5g sat fat – 150mg sodium – 19g carb – 12g sugar – 2g protein