Taco Doritos

I’ve always assumed there were two kinds of food in the world: the kind you like and the kind you don’t like. The former category is filled with pizza, pasta, and peanut butter and tomato sandwiches; the latter category is filled with okra. However, as I’ve grown older I’ve found there’s a third category: sometimes-I-like-it-sometimes-I-don’t. Oddly enough, I place Doritos into this category.

On the surface, there shouldn’t be a time where I wouldn’t like Doritos. After all, they’re crunchy, tasty, and a single serving alone satisfies my recommended hourly minimum sodium intake. But every once in a while I look at a bag of them and think, “I’d rather eat okra chips.”

The upside of Doritos is that there are a lot of flavors. If Salsa Verda doesn’t do it for me, there’s always Cool Ranch. And if I’m not in the mood for that I can grab a bag of the default Nacho Cheese flavor and play one of my favorite puns. (“Is this my cheese? No, that’s nacho cheese.” Ha ha ha. So witty.)

But then there’s the Taco Flavored Doritos, pictured above. This particular flavor would never fall into the wishy-washy category for me. No, this particular flavor is teh awesomez. The trouble is, they discontinued it when I was in junior high. True, while other taco-ish flavors came and went over the years, none of them were the real taco flavor.

Back in the 1980s, a younger Jay Leno used to hawk Doritos in television commercials. The tag line went, “Crunch all you want, we’ll make more.” This seemed like a cruel taunt to fans of discontinued flavors, such as the aforementioned Taco. Looking back, I probably could have filed a class action lawsuit for their false advertising—and won. Apart from earning enough money that I could afford to write more than one blog post a week, I could have also lived with the eternal satisfaction of knowing I was personally responsible for Frito Lay changing their tag line to, “Please be prudent with your crunching, for this may be the last bag we make.”

But perhaps it’s good I didn’t win because it’s quite possible I would have lost it all in a Frito Lay counter-suit hinged on the technicality of, “We never said when we’d make more.” Because sure enough, the original Taco Doritos are back: at first for a limited time only . . . but if rumors are true, they’re about to be added back to the permanent lineup.

I’m going to send Jay Leno an email now to confirm. But in the meantime, please be prudent with your crunching.