Schneider's Hot Stuffs Philly-Style Cheese Steak

Even though I've posed my version of the Schneider's girl that adorns all their packaging in an electric chair, I'd just like to remind you that these pocket-sized delicacies are baked, not fried. That still didn't stop me from giving her all 9-volts of my mini-electric chair, sending her little Dutch bonnet flying and messing up her hair. But she kind of deserves it if she chooses to associate herself with these edible atrocities. I dusted off the old lab kitchen microwave to prepare for this Hot Stuffs experience and also removed an old meat pie from inside its radioactive cavity, a meat pie that I'd actually been saving because its crusty, dried gravy-clotted doughy dome uncannily resembled Ernest Borginine's face and I was planning to use it in my Ernest Borgnine museum that I hope to open one day. Moving on to another kind of meat, I was highly anticipating this dough-covered meat treat because I'm a huge fan of Philly cheese steak. I've never tried one hermetically sealed in a breaded casing before making the whole undertaking all that more bewitching. I radiated the two that came in the box for the specified time the instructions suggested. It was recommended that I place them on a paper towel on a plate while microwaving but I didn't have a paper towel and thought of using a sanitary napkin instead but spotted a coffee filter at the last minute, which was fortunate because I'm not sure sanitary napkins are safe in the microwave. After the allotted two minutes cooking time I then let them sit for an additional two minutes per the instructions, perhaps to save you from a hot gush of Philly cheese steak arterial spray when you puncture the encasing and release the pressure of its heated and turbulent centre. Now I'm no fool to believe that everything appears in reality as it does in the advertising or photos on the packaging but this thing couldn't have been more misleading than if it were a Wall Street banker in front of a Senate committee. The package shows it practically bursting with formidable strips of steak surrounded by a rich slathering of molten cheese and studded with red and green peppers that look like they were plucked only moments ago from right out of the Hot Stuffs garden. The crust in the photo is a golden brown, not unlike my parents after one of their many visits to Acapulco, but because I went the microwave route I wasn't expecting the carapace to achieve this result. Nevertheless, what emerged was this rectangular construction with a jailhouse pallor and a kind of listlessness I associate with obese people in unwashed sweat suits. Hot stuff indeed if you live on cell block #6. The first bite revealed nothing but a mushy, tasteless mire. The second bite deepened my suspicions. The third bite and I was sure I was eating a Depends undergarment. Unused of course because a used one would have had more flavour. Whatever facsimile of steak there was was beyond miniscule. A hamster has more meat on it than this thing. They weren't so much bursting out of the casing as much as cowering in a gooey mucilage that could've been cheese or white glue or an intriguing mixture of the two. I think I got a pepper stuck between my teeth at one point but it could just as well been a remnant of the cardboard packaging that I'd failed to remove. Oddly enough, it still didn't stop me from eating the second one although I did douse it with enough hot sauce to cover both the lack of flavour and kill any bacteria that might still be lingering on the odd sliver of slaughterhouse scraping that I was actually only too happy to discover if only for a change of texture. Am I now dissuaded from ever touching Hot Stuffs again? Or jaded about what they hold in store for me in the world of efficient snacking? Nope. Trooper that I am next time I think I'll try pepperoni. Although if J. M. Schneider were alive today he'd get 9-volts from me and my mini-electric chair for letting this monstrosity out of the meat laboratory.

Here I've posed the Hot Stuffs Philly-Style Cheese Steak with a toy scuba diver so you can get an idea of the scale of this snack food. Obviously this thing wouldn't stand a chance in a bathtub filled with barracuda.

 In this photo Boris the Galachialsaurus is infuriated by the sadly lacking and near-empty Hot Stuffs interior and now has to look for his meat from other sources. You've been warned.