Limited Edition Foods

Last week I posted about the Steelers and Cardinals limited edition Gatorade bottles in honor of Super Bowl XLIII. Yesterday I got the Limited Edition Championship Gatorade bottle for Super Bowl XLIII. Last year they released one for when the New York Giants won the Super Bowl and I think they sold that on their website. This year they released the championship bottle in honor of the Pittsburgh Steelers winning Super Bowl XLIII. From what I hear they only made 45 of the bottles this time and I do not think you can get them through just buying them through normal channels as they did last year.

The Champs bottle is very similar to the Super Bowl ones they released for the two teams in this Super Bowl before the Super Bowl. The front has the same G Gatorade logo with a small Super Bowl XLIII to the left. The background of the label is also black, as the Steelers one that just said Super Bowl XLIII had. The back has Super Bowl XLIII written in smaller print to make it fit on one line instead of two, as it was on the pre-Super Bowl version. Underneath Super Bowl XLIII it says CHAMPS in big letters similar to how Super Bowl was on the first bottle. Other than it now saying Champs the bottle really does look the same. It also has the same Gatorade flavor as the other bottles (Lemon Lime). This seems very appropriate, as it is kind of a Steelers color and more importantly it was the type dumped on the coach after the win.

Chuao Chocolatier has released a limited edition boxed set of chocolate called the Love Feast for Valentine’s this year. The Love Feasy box of chocolates includes 12 chocolates. It has 6 different types of chocolates in the mix and two of each kind. The types are Parchita bonbon (passion fruit blended with caramel inside a heart shaped milk chocolate), Miel (sweet honey and almond hazelnut praline in milk chocolate), Modena (strawberry caramel with balsamic vinegar from Modena in dark chocolate), Pucker Up bonbon (pomegranate inside dark chocolate), Picante bonbon (Napa Valley cabernet caramel spiced with Pasilla chile and cayenne pepper inside dark chocolate), and Firecracker (caramel fudge with chipotle chile and salt inside dark chocolate). The Love Feast box of chocolates can be bought on their website here for $25 and in their chocolate cafes in the San Diego area.

In honor of Valentine’s Day coming up the custom mixed cereal company mymuesli in the United Kingdom has made a special mix called Love Crunch. The Love Crunch cereal mix includes pine nuts, apple bits, apricots, strawberries, figs, amaranth pops, and their crunchy oat and wheat base. All the ingredients their products, such as the Love Crunch cereal, are organic. The cereal comes in a special “I Love You” packaging. The product can be purchased from their website here for £6.65 for 1 can or £33.25 for six cans. Each can has 575 grams of the cereal. Their shipping is a reasonable flat rate of £3.90 no matter how much you order. It sounds like an interesting cereal for breakfast on Valentine’s Day. I assume they only ship to United Kingdom addresses, although their website does not clearly say one way or the other.

Veuve Clicquot has released a special limited edition gift set for Valentine’s Day in New Zealand. The gift set includes a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Rose that has a pink ice dress that helps keep the champagne cold for up to two hours. The pink ice dress has two leather tags that have pre printed gift cards with romantic themed Veuve Clicquot images. On the gift cards you can write your own Valentine’s message. The tags also have the Veuve Clicquot logo on the back of them in a somewhat subtle way. The Veuve Clicquot Rose champagne is described as having aromas of fresh fruit such as raspberry, strawberry, cherry, and blackberry and notes of almonds, apricots, and brioche. It is also decribed as being a true delicacy. The ‘Love’ gift set is only available at Glengarry stores in New Zealand and are priced at NZ$105.

Just the other day I was talking about being surprised to not see any Super Bowl special packaging besides the Gatorade bottles I received. Yesterday in the grocery store (Safeway) I noticed they had some Super Bowl cupcakes. They were actually pretty cool, as they were decorated with blue Super Bowl XLIII design rings on top. I am not much into cupcakes, especially ones with a lot of frosting like the bakery ones tend to be, and these were only in 12 packs, so I did not even consider buying them. However, if they had a six pack of them I might have. They had packs with just Super Bowl XLIII cupcakes and packs with a mix of the Super Bowl XLIII ring cupcakes and red frosting cupcakes in honor of the Cardinals since the store is in Arizona.

Talbott Teas company has released a special edition tea called Clara’s Tea. The tea is named after Clara from The Nutcracker and made specially for the Joffrey Ballet. Clara’s Tea is a caffeine free tea, as it is made with rooibos tea (red tea). The suggest adding milk and sugar to the tea, but personally I think it is horrible to ruin good red or green tea with such crap. The only tea milk and sugar belong in is the dreadfully tasting black tea in my opinion, but I would rather just entirely avoid black tea. Anyways, the Clara’s Tea blend does sound like a good red tea that does not need to be ruined by adding anything to it. The blend includes rooibos, strawberry pieces, rose petals, blue cornflowers petals, natural vanilla and strawberry flavors.

Clara’s Tea can be purchased from their website here for $20.

Tomorrow, January 31, 2009, Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey are launching the 2009 limited edition of their Red Poppy Ale. The Red Poppy Ale is a Flander-style red ale. The ale is made with cherries. It is aged for a year in French Oak barrels. The Red Poppy Ale is bottled in 375ml bottles with a cork. It is described as having a reddish brown color, a fruity scent, and a flavor mix of cherry, plum, and red wine with accents of chocolate and vanilla. This year’s release contains only 375 cases of the Red Poppy Ale. This limited edition ale is only being sold directly from the brewery starting at 10am tomorrow. They are limiting the sales to a maximum of 6 bottles per person. The bottles are being sold at $15 a piece.

In honor of the teams that are in Super Bowl XLIII, Gatorade has made two different commemorative bottle designs. Both of the bottles contain lemon lime flavored Gatorade, which makes sense for the Pittsburgh Steelers, but it would have been nice if the Arizona Cardinals one was a red Gatorade flavor. However, it does seem the lemon line is appropriate for all of the NFL teams, as it seems that most of the Gatorade baths show them being drenched with the yellow stuff or clear/water stuff. At least it is some sort of limited edition food item in honor of the Super Bowl, as I have not seen or been able to find out about any thing else Super Bowl related. I guess the food companies were mostly too busy making Obama and Valentine’s limited edition stuff. Still I am very surprised to not have seen stuff related to the Super Bowl, especially Arizona Cardinals related.

Both bottles packaging is similar to some extent. They are both 32 ounce bottles of Lemon Lime and they both have the same Gatorade G design and little Super Bowl XLIII logo next to it. The labels each have some unique aspects, as well. The Pittsburgh Steelers bottle has a dull black colored background on the label and the Pittsburgh Steelers logo on the side opposite of the Gatorade G logo. The Arizona Cardinals bottle has shiny red colored background on the label and the Arizona Cardinals logo on the side opposite of the Gatorade G logo.

Gatorade is also going to release a special Champs bottle for the winner similar to the NY Giants one they released last year.

Paul Pape Designs made similar Chocolate Avatars last year for Valentine’s Day. Due to their popularity they are back this year with some changes. One change is they are now called Chocomiis, which is much more appropriate, as they are basically chocolate Mii characters and not just any old avatars. Another change is that the figures are no longer 3D Mii characters and instead are Mii characters on a chocolate slab in the shape of a Nintendo Wii. This change was made because the characters look more realistic this way and are less likely to break before you want to break it yourself. Also, the hearts are now a sugar candy heart instead of a red hot heart.

The Chocomiis come in sets of two. You can choose to have them be two males, two females, or one of each. Each chocolate is about 2 ounces. You can choose to have them in milk chocolate, white chocolate, or dark chocolate. The thing I like the most is you can have two different types of chocolates in the package. Thus you could get one to represent you in your favorite type of chocolate and the other to represent your significant other or friend in their favorite type of chocolate even if you prefer different types of chocolate. Each Chocomii is individually wrapped in plastic and placed in a plastic tray insert. The plastic tray insert sits inside a box that looks a lot like the Nintendo Wii. The box says “Wii belong together, you and Mii” on top.

They are currently on sale for only $10 per box and $1 per box is donated to the Child’s Play charity. They can be purchased here.

The newest Limited Edition Turkey Hill brand ice cream flavor is Gertrude Hawk Box of Chocolates. This is there January 2009 flavor and is actually a come back of the same flavor they released around Valentine’s last year. The flavor is a milk chocolate base with dark chocolate raspberry cups, chocolate covered almonds, white chocolate chunks, and chocolate chips mixed in. It sounds like a really good flavor.

Turkey Hill also currently has a few other Limited Edition ice cream products out. For their Frozen Yogurt line of products their current Limited Edition is Nutty Caramel Caribou, which is toffee flavored frozen yogurt with Denali caramel, chocolate covered peanuts, and peanut butter cups mixed in. Their current Duetto line limited edition is called Banana Fosters, which is a mix of banana flavored Venice ice and spiced caramel flavored soft serve ice cream. Their current limited edition sherbet flavor is Cherry Orchard, which is cherry amaretto flavored sherbet with black cherries mixed in. They even have a limited edition ice cream sandwich flavor currently available. The ice cream sandwich limited edition is called Strawberry Cheesecake, which has cream cheese flavored ice cream with strawberry swirls between two vanilla wafers.

The Gertrude Hawk Box of Chocolates premium ice cream flavor is expected to be in stores only in January. Nutty Caramel Caribou frozen yogurt flavor and Banana Fosters Duetto flavor are expected to be stores January through June. The Cherry Orchard sherbet and Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream sandwich flavors are expected to be in stores from January to April.