One of the best culinary revolutions of the 20th century happened to take place in snack form. I speak of course of the square orange crackers that have a vague cheese taste and the dehydrated peanut butter that lays in between them. Whatever kind of master chef/stoned person thought of mixing peanut butter with cheese deserves some sort of nobel prize for food, or at least my handshake. One of the main problems with achieving something so magnificent though, is how everything else seems quite lackluster in comparison.

I assume that plain crackers with peanut butter were a fairly well selling regular until the secret ingredient was found and forever changed up the snack game. In the case of these Pepper Jack crackers, we have something that has the makings of being great, but it just needs that golden touch of a secret ingredient. I’ll be the first to admit that I have no idea what it could possibly be either. What seems to need the most work off the bat is the cracker itself. It’s rather flour heavy and much drier feeling than most other crackers I’ve eaten in my life. It’s almost as if they took a Saltine cracker, took all the salt out of it, and then dehydrated it. With a spicy cheese filling and a super dry cracker these things should almost come with a mandatory “drink needed to properly ingest” warning printed on them.

The whole reason I would consider these to have the makings of being great though is said spicy cheese filling. Pepper Jack is of course Monterey Jack cheese with bits of jalapeno peppers in it, and it’s great melted on everything from burgers to pasta to Sundried Tomato Sun Chips. Unfortunately the whole dehydrating process they put the cheese through makes it a much weaker flavor than its regular counterpart. It really is a cheese that works best with other things, and on top of an already bland cracker the whole package is rather boring, albeit with a decent amount of residual pepper heat.

For some people that may be enough, but I’m looking for a spice to enhance another flavor, not for it to be the entire package. Again this product has a lot to live up to based on how awesome cheese and peanut butter crackers are. For being an acceptable edible product, this easily earns full marks. If you’re wondering if it’s something exciting and new, well, would you kindly view the score below?