What's this? Pasta in a cup?

Wandering aimlessly into poundland, I decided it was time to review their food. 3 sachets of Mug Shot Pasta for a pound. It has to be worth it. It was a chilly day, and what better way of warming yourself up is there than to have a cup of pasta. Of course, it isn't all fun and games yet. I still have to cook it, however easy it might be. For those of you that don't cook, don't worry, as you get a free cooking lecture on the back of the sachet. I guess I should run you through the instructions, however.

How to make it?

"Creamy cheese" - one of many souvenir cups Mug Shot make

Thankfully, the instructions were set out on the back quite clearly in a step by step format. There were only 6 simple steps. First of all, you are asked to empty the sachet into a standard size mug. Already, they seem to be admitting there isn't much in the sachet. The mixture looks like your average cuppa soup, but with pasta in it, and once opened, you get a strong cheesy whiff, not disimilar to very cheesy crisps. Secondly, you are posed the task of filling the cup 15mm from the brim with boiling water. So i get my ruler ou... haha, only kidding!!! Anyway, this is not the time for joking. There is actually a decent amount of pasta in the packet and I have no complaints about the amount you get for 33p. The third step involves you stirring thouroughly. At this stage, the mixture starts to thicken and it actually looks pretty decent. After allowing the pasta to stand for 5 minutes, as step 4 suggests, and i say "suggests" because they probably are just suggestions, i get back to stirring it again. This was step 6. I decided to leave step 5 out because it was a completely pointless step that no one buying sachets of fucking pasta would do - "Top up if a thinner sauce is required". Required for what? Your fancyfuck dinner you're making for your family? I bet you were even telling them that you made it all yourself. Judging by how it tastes, they'd probably laugh at your chef skills...

How edible is it?

It doesn't taste wonderful. What did you expect? It's edible and still worth the pound for 3 sachets, but it's a fairly boring cheese flavour and the sauce runs out after a while, leaving a lot of pasta. With my first sachet, I found that the pasta never really got soft. It was still quite crispy even when i got to the bottom of the cup. Having reached the bottom, and deciding I didn't want to go through that experience again, I decided I may as well take this opportunity to try out the 3 sachets in 3 different environments. From that, I could answer the questions "Is it more enjoyable in different environments?", "Do you learn to love the taste?" and perhaps "Does the pasta go soft on most occasions or does it not do that?"

Environment 1 - Sitting on the sofa in the living room with the tv on

I have already detailed what my experience was like with my first sachet. The television being on did little to improve the experience, but it probably did distract me from the crispy pasta and knowing I had 2 more to go at some point slightly more than it could have if the television wasn't on.

Environment 2 - Walking about I think, but I can't remember where

I'm really sorry. But what I do remember is that the pasta was soft this time, which is a good thing. I may have left it standing less than 5 minutes the first time, which could explain the crispy pasta.

Environment 3 - A passenger in a car driving over a stony beach on an island off the coast

I do remember this one. I was making bonfires during the morning on an island off the coast. After a busy morning, I felt that being more hungry may improve the experience of "Mug Shot" pasta. It was a shitty wet day and I was going back onto the mainland to load logs off somewhere. There was an electric kettle back at the workhouse and it was a good opportunity to quickly boil some water and then miss out step 4 onwards. Surprisingly, the pasta was soft, but it was still as completely uninspiring as the other 2 cups. With numerous potholes and bumpy lanes, the pasta in the cup could have easily led to a chipped tooth or boiling cheese over my face, but it cooled down fairly quickly and I managed not to smash my teeth.

Are they worth £1?

Overall, the 3 sachets are definitely worth the pound you pay people! Taste-wise, it isn't great, but that's why there are better quality, more expensive pasta dishes out there. There wouldn't be any point having nutritious, tasty pasta dishes for lots of money and then similarly nutritious, tasty pasta dishes for less money. The important thing is that it is edible, and edible without any particularly nasty, lasting tastes. The pasta looks like pasta and the "cheese" flavour is pretty cheesy. How much you enjoy your cup probably does depend on which environment you are in, but the same goes for most things. And finally, what I can now say after 3 sachets, is that the pasta does go soft on most occasions. What more could you want from pasta in a mug, eh?

Any suggestions?

Just an update to remind you that I am more than willing to review products that you suggest. I know you all find this blog helpful, so i figure this is just adding to the usefulness of it to you, the viewers. Looking forward to hearing your responses! 

Coming up soon: Do the egg timers eggcel or are they an uninspiring yolk?

Oh...and just another reminder that I will be reviewing one of their Christmas albums soon. Check back within the next couple of days!

Have a very poundland christmas!

It's that time of year. What was the Halloween aisle is now the Christmas aisle and you know you need presents. But you browse through it and realise that it's obviously got nothing to do with Christmas presents. Instead, it is full of wrapping paper, hats and decorations. I didn't buy anything in this aisle, but instead bought a set of fake moustaches as a "gift", you know, that you give to people to show that you know they exist and that you got slightly annoyed thinking about them because all you could think was that that person would probably expect a present from you despite not knowing what they would want, and given their very specific interests or perhaps even their lack of interests, you have a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting them something they will enjoy. Anyway, that's what I assume when people get me things. So why am I reviewing the christmas aisle if I haven't bought anything from it then? Well in work the other day someone mentioned that the santas hat I had worn on 5 separate occassions over the last month, came from poundland. And yes...it was £1.

Santa Hat

Since i didn't really pay attention to my hat, not just because it's a stupid thing to pay attention to, but because I didn't know it was from poundland, I found it doing what a hat should do; make you forget that it's even there. I do actually remember a couple of occassions where I went to scratch my head forgetting it was there, so that backs up my point as proof! Its comfort rating is perfectly acceptable. 

What was I wearing the hat for in work? I was supposed to be an elf, for the purposes of keeping children occupied by pointing out reindeer made of foam for example, before they meet santa, get a present and fuck off. However they had no elf costumes. I assumed that if you were going to keep the whole idea of me being an "elf" up, you would need me to actually look like an elf. But no one questioned this. Not one. So did this seemingly ordinary santa hat with a flashing light (i will get to that) actually make me look convincing as an elf. I don't know. I am left unconvinced. Other people were wearing them and they didn't look like elves to me. But since it didn't cause me any bother when I was wearing it, I would highly recommend this £1 hat for similar purposes.

The flashing light is a great added gimmick. It has an indiscreet button on the outside of the hat to switch it on and I never had the problem of it stopping working.

But the best thing about the product? Well, I never guessed it was from poundland. Yes, it doesn't show any of the normal signs of being from poundland. Something that Red Mountain coffee and various types of egg timers never achieved.

So, overall, this product has far exceeded its £1 pricetag. And you could even claim you weren't in poundland if you're feeling extra sneeky. They won't even know.

NEXT...I will be reviewing a christmas album full of all your favourite christmas covers, which on first listen makes it seem like steel drums were the only type of drum available to them. Check back around the new year! But in the meantime... Merry Christmas!!!  

Diamante in-ear earphones

I had originally said this blog had a solitary motivation of helping you figure out which products in your local poundstore are worth their £1 pricetag and which ones are not worth even that. I may have misinformed you slightly. Indeed that would be a genuinely helpful purpose for the blog once it starts, but why did I feel like starting it? Well I bought a pair of £1 earphones...

Walking into poundstore, I was skint but I knew I needed earphones. I had spent too long using a pair of sennheiser cx 300’s with only one fully working earphone. I had recently figured out that taking the bud off the earphone with shitty sound was advantageous if you were to cup your hand over your ear whilst you were wearing them. This was only feasible in bed when I could just lie on my hand, as cupping my ear while I was walking not only makes my arm sore, but other people could also have assumed I wanted to listen to music way too badly or that I was pretending to be on the phone to avoid conversation. I felt that buying a pair of £1 Diamante in-ear earphones was something I really wanted. I chose them over the other ones on display because I don’t like wearing outer-ear earphones and because they couldn’t possibly brag about their earphones so much only for them to end up being incredibly shit. “A new, more exciting sound experience” as the product blatantly assures us it will be.

My experience didn’t start off well when I realised they didn’t actually work. Perhaps this was the “new” experience. But not to worry! Everything was fine when I realised I just simply had to rotate the earphone connection in the socket until it started producing sound and thereafter completing the puzzling level 1, you were required to repeat this process every few minutes. Needless to say, I was relieved and realised “silly fucking me”.

Sound

At first, it sounded like I was listening to music through a mobile phone but with some amount of bass trying to get out but never quite managing it, wavering in and out of actually being where it should be. Yes, it does warn you on the packet that “the rubber earbuds block external sounds and enhance the bass impact”, or at least it should be warning us. I can’t help but feel that it is stating it as a positive point. That wasn’t a great idea. For people who bothered to look at the description of the earphones before they bought them (people who aren’t me), elation is the first feeling that will overcome them, knowing how fucking excellent these earphones are BOUND to be, only to gradually become more and more disappointed as they realise that everything that could potentially have been “fucking excellent” about that product, e.g. “specially designed”, “bass impact” and of course,”a new, more exciting sound experience”, actually made it really fucking terrible.

They were correct about the bass impact, as it impacted on me being able to listen to anything without hearing the shitty bass rattle the earphones, overpowering other more distinct, subtle sounds. So perhaps change the volume then?

Volume

The range in the volume is excellent. It goes from what I would describe as “quiet” to “piercing” so there are no complaints there. Basically, it has a good average sound. It’s sort of like being constipated one day and not shitting enough to having diarrhoea the next and shitting far too much and then telling someone that there’s nothing wrong because I shat the average amount of shit over the past 2 days.

All I can think of when they say “a new, more exciting sound experience” is that the earphones tend to produce their own noises while you aren’t listening to anything. It’s a soft hiss that becomes more evident as you move the earphones about, however when you move the connection slightly while it is connected to a device, it crackles. When you are on a bus, moving along a bumpy road, there is a lot of crackling going on. It certainly gives you the full experience of surround sound. You end up being convinced that invisible flies are buzzing around you with speakers as eyes, sending out static messages to each other. Then you catch yourself on, because, haha, what would be the point in evolving speakers to replace eyes. Can you imagine humans evolving amplified voice boxes? Anyway, this is completely off topic. On a positive note, if you are a fan of the arctic ambient genre, then you can buy these and get ready for your listening experience to be “enhanced” like it says.

Appearance

The earphones describe themselves as “stylish earphones with fab bling”. Now. When I think of bling, 2 words that come to mind are “flashy” and “excessive”. Assuming this was the way in which they were using the word “bling” and not using it to describe the sound of the earphones (which was something the earphones did have), then they have made a very poor attempt at it. They are black and not very shiny. They also don’t look like jewellery and I would be hard-pushed to find anything different about their appearance to an ordinary pair of inner- ear earphones. When you are selling a product for £1, your customers are not going to be people who give a shit about what the earphones look like when they are wearing them, especially customers who were having to cup one of their ears wearing their last pair.

On second glance, perhaps I’m being critical and really quite rude, because I realise they were describing the bling as being “fab”. You see, I was just looking at the earphones from the point of view that they had to encompass the whole idea of being “bling”. But no! These earphones are promoting themselves as being a particular type of bling. Lets look deeper. The word “fab” seems to be short for “fabulous”... Ok, so I was right the first time. These earphones do not have fabulous bling.

Other relevant points I haven’t already made

Are they comfortable? Yes. But are they as comfortable as they make them out to be. They certainly set themselves an extremely high bar. I mean, I was fine with them being comfortable but apparently there’s a new type of extreme comfort. In fact, these earphones actually describe themselves as having the highest possible amount of comfort. Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you... “ULTIMATE COMFORT”. I don’t know what that is, but I reckon these earphones don’t possess ultimate comfort. Ultimate comfort in your ears would surely be not putting anything in them at all.

Conclusions

So, I have established that these earphones are not what they say they are. They seem to think they are ground-breaking, possess ultimate comfort (which is just a ridiculous thing to suggest) and they do not resemble pieces of needlessly large, shiny pieces of jewellery. They are however, worth £1. Considering I was wearing earphones that didn’t totally work and would make me look ridiculous if I were to try and better the sound, then I guess they are worth it for me. I leave it up to you to decide.

I took my own snazzy, angled pictures of the earphones in their full naked glory, however, so fabulous was the bling, that my camera has had problems uploading the pictures. The following picture taken from another source will have to do.



A disappointing picture showcasing the packaging more than the earphones. Look at them - just raring to get out!



UPDATE: It is 9 days since i bought the earphones. One of the earphones cut out last night, however, moving the cord about, I was able to get it work for a while. It became increasingly difficult to find the exact positions it needed to be in, so much so that I couldn't find it. I felt like it was probably not worth the effort anymore and, with much frustration, I had to switch my ipod off and listen to something that didn't necessarily require 2 working earphones...AM radio. I fell asleep soon afterwards (a couple of hours later) from boredom. So, anyway, my opinion of the earphones haven't changed. They are still worth £1 in some situations. My target was to gradually fall the fuck to sleep that night and it still happened, but from boredom instead, so there you are. Nothing has changed.