Trader Joe's Root Beer Float Cookie Pieces Taste Test Comparison

Is this the summer of Root Beer Float? This is the second Root Beer Float flavored item that I've seen this summer. While wandering through Trader Joe's I saw this with all the other snacks. I've never seen them before, so I had to get them to try. And we're here with some friends who are going to try them with us! 

We'll have a real root beer float to go along with it and see how much these Trader Joe's Root Beer Float Pieces taste like the real thing! 

The front of the package promises Root Beer flavored Float Pieces. Vanilla Sandwich Cookie Pieces with Popping Candy in a Root Beer Flavored Confectionary Coating. The pieces are dark brown, nearly black, like root beer soda color. 

The back of the package. I can't find anything special on the ingredient list except maybe the "dark confectionary coating" which I guess doesn't have enough chocolate in it to call it chocolate. 

My ingredients for the root beer floats today. 

Our friends from Georgia are here at the campground for a month and will be trying these along with us. 

Root Beer floats are tasty. I can't say anything bad about those. 

The cookie pieces are interesting. I am noting that the packaging was a little extreme in their coloring. These look like a milk chocolate color, and even on the light side of that. Nowhere near the dark dark pieces it was showing. And it literally looks like they took an Oreo cookie and cut it into quarters, then dipped them in the coating. 

An incomplete covering on one confirms my suspicions. 

Peeling it open, that's a vanilla sandwich cookie alright. There's a white "vanilla" filling. 

I was able to get the coating off the cookie to get a look at the vanilla cookie itself. Looking at the stamp pattern, it doesn't quite match the Joe-Joe's vanilla cookie.

Joe - This one does smell like root beer. 

Camille - I smell chocolate. 

Ian - It smells like root beer chapstick. 

Theresa - I wonder if it'll taste like chapstick with that waxy outside coating. 

Camille - Where does the chocolate come from? 

Joe - It doesn't say chocolate. It says Root Beer Flavored Confectionary Coating, so we'll see how that is. 

Camilla - It's got popping candy! 

Camille - I'm not tasting root beer, but I'm tasting vanilla ice cream. 

Joe - I can taste the root beer on this. 

Ryan - I'm into it. I think they taste great! 

Ian - Oh that's bad. That's disgusting.  

Jessica - To me it tastes like a spicy s'more. 

Joe - I'm getting the popping. 

Ryan - I didn't get the popping. I think I ate it too quick. I'll get another one. 

Joe - Separating the components, in the filling, I taste a lot of vanilla. And there's the popping candy. And the outside has all the root beer flavor in it. It's root beer-ish. 

Ian - I give it a zero out of ten. 

Theresa - I don't like the texture of that coating. 

Seems like the Trader Joe's Root Beer Float Pieces getting mixed reviews. I think they're tasty and something different, but then some other really didn't like them at all.