I Wanted This Aldi Snack To Taste Like Frosted Animal Crackers, But It Was A Major Disappointment

You know that wise piece of advice about never grocery shopping while hungry? It's a critical grocery shopping mistake that I, as I'm sure many people can relate to, am not good at abiding by. Although it has caused me to overbuy groceries on several occasions, it has also led me to discover some of my favorite Aldi finds. There's a seemingly invisible string that pulls me to the aisles where my deepest snack cravings lie, and I certainly thought that the Clancy's Birthday Cake Pretzels were going to satisfy an itch for a nostalgic treat that I just happened to be pining for on one particular shopping excursion: frosted animal cookies. 

Although this Clancy's snack obviously swaps the animal cracker base for a pretzel one, I hoped the coating would be just as sweet, creamy, and free from a plasticky aftertaste. However, Clancy's pretzels were the definition of "overpromise and underdeliver." The texture was dusty, like the pretzels had been coated with the crumbs on the bottom of a Cheerios bag in addition to the familiar nonpareil topping. They weren't even like the name-brand, chocolate-covered pretzels, Flipz, that I had enjoyed on many road trips because they weren't as snappy or as sweet. They didn't really taste like anything. While a part of me was glad that they weren't so sweet that my teeth hurt, seeing as Aldi's candies (especially its chocolate bars) tend to do so, I expected a sweet snack would be at least, well, sweet. I'm not even sure a child would like eating them, which says a lot about their quality and overall deliciousness. 

As with all of the Aldi products I've tried and disliked (of which there are admittedly few), I did some research to see what other customers thought about them. In a Facebook group, customers shared that they had found the birthday cake flavor alongside the milk chocolate-covered and toffee-covered pretzels, the latter of which sounded more delicious right off the bat. Toffee is naturally sweet, and since there's no such thing as "bad" milk chocolate, this seemed far superior to the birthday cake version. I wasn't able to find the chocolate toffee pretzels in my store, but it's clear there are more than enough birthday cake pretzels to go around (I wonder why ... ). If I could find the choco-toffee variety, I would love to try it.

That said, some online feel that the birthday cake variety is worth buying, but one of those individuals said they were as good as the strawberry-and-cream version, so I think they might just have bad taste in pretzels all around. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask a sweet pretzel to at least taste somewhat sweet instead of like wet chalk, but maybe I am just asking too much here. Meanwhile, a TikToker said, "These have potential. They have a birthday cake taste," but I personally think the only thing they have potential for is landing in the trash. They're a major skip.