Griffins Marvels Popcorn

Let's start with an education for those who haven't been to Australia.  The Golden Gaytime is a popular ice cream novelty treat, made by Streets, and I've reviewed it before.  The Gaytime is a frozen ice cream adjacent novelty on a stick, with vanilla and toffee ice cream inside, chocolate coating, and biscuit crumble over it all.  It is iconic, and vendors of all kinds try to use it for inspiration for items, like the truly incredible Golden Gaytime french toast I had at Three Williams once (truly the best french toast-ish dish I've ever had), or the savory lamb rib with crunchy nuts at (now closed) Pinbone.  

Snack foods manufacturers also get in on the trend, which leads us to Griffins Marvels, an Australian brand.  They have no connection to Marvels the comics, as far as I know.  They tend to make items like biscuits and cookies (which do come in a Golden Gaytime inspired flavor too), but they also make ... popcorn!  Regular readers of my blog will know how much I adore all things popcorn, so to say I was overjoyed when some Australian co-workers visited and brought me a bag of, wait for it, GOLDEN GAYTIME POPCORN is an understatement.

Golden Gaytime Popcorn.

"A popped time is a Gaytime! Golden Gaytime Popcorn - The iconic combination of Gaytime vanilla biscuit crumbs and toffee you love, now in irresistibly delicious morsels of popcorn!"

I took a huge handful to start.

Wowzer. This is, well, sweet doesn't even begin to sum it up.  It literally makes my teeth hurt to think about it, let alone consume a handful.  And yes, the first ingredient, literally, is indeed sugar.  This stuff is intensely sweet.  Under the thick, sweet caramel there is well popped popcorn, and it is drizzled with additional sweet white and milk chocolates, and coated with some biscuit crumb (although I didn't really find much of that), but the toffee is definitely the dominant thing going on here.

Now, did it remind me of a Golden Gaytime?  Not exactly.  But the vanilla and toffee aspects were definitely there and unique from most caramel corn.  I think if the biscuit component was more prevalent it would be more akin to a Gaytime.

It is good, don't get me wrong, but I really couldn't eat more than a few pieces at at time (which is perhaps good, as the small bag has what they say is 5 servings).  I found it best to just pop a few pieces alongside a dark, black coffee or glass of red wine (the pairings really do work!), or to mix it with plain popcorn.

I was glad to try this, but I don't think I'd actually purchase it again.  ***+.