SUPERPRETZEL

Soft pretzels.  Not a staple of my life, but, I do have a few fond memories of buttery food court pretzels from Auntie Anne's.  But the "industry standard" for soft pretzels is SUPERPRETZEL.

I'm sure you have had them before.

But let me back up.  When I set out to write blog posts, I often do research into the product and company I'm reviewing.  I find fascinating things.  Like, the story behind SUPERPRETZEL.

Iconic Signage.

SUPERPRETZEL was started by a guy who bought a failing soft pretzel company from a bankruptcy auction in the 1970s. He named it SUPERPRETZEL because he liked Superman. And then he built J & J Snack Foods around this product line, which now includes basically all the snack foods you get at amusement parks, stadiums, and more, including Tio Pepe's Churros (which I've review), both Slush Puppie and Icee, another churro company (California Churro, an acquisition), funnel cakes, and more, 25 brands in total, mostly targeted at the food service industry, although SUPERPRETZEL is also sold in grocery stores (and Target, Amazon, etc). These are everywhere, I'm sure you recognize the sign above.

Branded Pretzel Warmer.

J & J Snack Foods takes an interesting approach to merchandizing, by providing the displays for all their sellers, including servicing and calibrating all the Slush Puppie machines, the churro warmers, etc.  They own the patent on the proprietary pretzel displays that have heaters built-in, allowing vendors to heat the pretzels from frozen without an oven.  Its interesting, right?  You'll see their signs everywhere, if you start looking.

Anyway.  SUPERPRETZEL.

"SUPERPRETZEL Soft Pretzel products are available for both foodservice and retail outlets in a variety of flavors, shapes and sizes. Delicious, nutritious and fun to eat, SUPERPRETZEL Soft Pretzels are great at home, school, sporting events, and theme parks. You can enjoy Americas Favorite Soft Pretzel just about anywhere!"

The most familiar of the products is a large, doughy, twisted, soft pretzel, served warm.  These come in regular, multigrain, and sweet cinnamon.  They also make bite sized, cheese filled, and pretzel dogs.  All are distributed frozen.

Soft Pretzels.

"SUPERPRETZEL Soft Pretzels are the classic baked snacks that fit any occasion. Whether it’s your birthday, Monday, or both, there’s no better way to celebrate snack time."

The pretzels are fine.  They aren't fresh made Auntie Annie's mall pretzels, so they aren't as soft, they aren't as doughy, and they certainly aren't coated in delicious butter.  They are about on par with standard table pretzels I had in Munich.

Standard shape, standard crust, decently soft.  No more, no less.

Soft Pretzel Bite

"Our twist on our classic SUPERPRETZEL Soft Pretzel was to untwist and shrink them down to bite-size. They’re the simple, dippable, dunkable snack sure to please any crowd."

I also tried the little bite sized pretzels.

I like the texture of crust, the pretzel had a nice chew to it, yet was still very soft inside.  I loved the giant salt crystals.  The form factor was better for dunking into dips, which, I'll be honest, is really the part of soft pretzels that I like.  They went great with fancy mustards and cheese dips.