Doritos 3Ds, We Hardly Knew Ye

Sometime in the Mid-Late Nineties up until the early turn of the millenium, FritoLay Inc. produced a snack-chip that would forever change my life. Of course, if you've read the title of this post, you already know I'm talking about the enigmatic Dorito 3D chip. This is one of the greatest displays of snack food technological improvements to date (with respect to Combos).

A Dorito 3D is like a regular Dorito chip in that it holds a triangular shape, but this chip is not held in check by the boundaries of two simple and paltry dimensions. Rather, the Dorito 3D is puffed up and inflated in the center, in a ping pong ball-sized shape so that there are 3 corners of the triangle jutting out the side. The purpose of these 3 little cones is presumably to give the chip structural integrity so that it can survive the arduous journey from the Dorito 3D Factory directly to your hungry gullet.

Now you have a sound mental image of what these little heavenly snacks look like. Comtemplate the taste: they had 3 different flavors if I can recall correctly. Nacho Cheesier, Jalepeno Awesome-sauce, and... um... Fried Chicken. The flavors weren't the best part of this chip. Nay, the best part was undoubtedly the texture. I've always considered myself to be a texture man. Who among you doesn't appreciate a good texture? Exactly. No one. And that's why these little chips fucking rule. The wall of the chip is extremely thin but thickens upon reaching the cone making for a perfect crunch, every time. Even when you get to the bottom of the bag and all you have are those little broken up chip-lets of discarded cones, you are still satisfied with the sweet, sweet crunch.

Anyway, I spent most of my late-middle school, early highschool years playing a shit-ton of computer games with my equally socially-impaired nerd friends. StarCraft, Halflife (Counter-Strike), Worms Armageddon; I could go on forever, baby. These events could, and would, last all through the night. I don't know about you, but if you've ever played StarCraft for 6 straight hours, you pay a price. A price in hunger. Fortunately, snack-food technology had caught up to us at this point and all we needed to do was sink our sweaty mitts into a bag of 3Ds and grab like 7-8 of them and cram 'em all in our respective snack-holes at once. The noisy compaction of all these chips at once was so damned gratifying, so damned satisfying, you felt like you were on top of the world. That's when you hit them with the carrier rush (or Deagle head shots for those CS fans).

So what happened to the Doritos 3Ds? This question has been plaguing me ever since I took my eye of the proverbial ball. Sometime in the early-middle of high school I found myself looking more at girls and less at my kills-to-death ratio. Sometimes these things happen. After some time I thought back to my simpler, fancy-free days as a super-gamer-nerd and I thought to myself, "Holy shit, those 3D motherfuckers were good." I went out to get a bag only to find that they COULD NOT BE FOUND ANYWHERE.

Devastation.

I haven't seen a bag in ages. I haven't heard that crunch of satisfaction in so long. Sometimes, I don't even know why I go on. After some exhaustive research, the internet has assured me that they are gone for good. One forlorn snacker going by the handle cannibus is just a plant writes "They were too extreme for most people". I think that there is more truth to this message than our cannibus-smoking friend lets on; The world simply wasn't ready for a snack chip with some fucking attitude (by attitude, I'm referring to it's pingpong ball w/cones shape).

So what's next? I say, bring the boys home. Time has passed, and the need for the 3D Dorito is stronger than it has ever been. Wars, famine, recession, pestilence, swine flu, tv commercials; these things are tearing the Earth apart at the seems. I have a dream, friends. I have a dream of puffed-up doritos that crunch in beautiful syncrony, that boldly satisfies the unsatisfied man (or woman). In my dream, they rain from the sky. (I realize that if Doritos 3Ds did indeed rain from the sky, everyone would have to immediately seek shelter from their deadly cones, but bear with me). Everyone reaches out their hands, opens their mouths and lets the Dorito usher in a new ago of prosperity and wonder. And deliciousness.

How can you help? Well, some guy started an online petition to bring back the awesome. I didn't sign it because that shit is lame, but isn't it time that you should?