The holidays are coming up, and one thing that I can always count on is the return of the popular Christmas character, the Elf on the Shelf, to haunt me in my nightmares.
It’s one of the traditions that I didn’t really comprehend. From my understanding, parents would place this elf on the shelf of a room and claims that it is a spy sent by Santa to check and see if you were being naughty or nice. The idea that Santa is “always watching” was always something that concerned me, but honestly the idea that the doll was always going to watch me concerned me even more. And the face was really creepy. Like I said before: nightmare fuel.
When I heard that iHop was going to be doing a promotion with the Elf on the Shelf through Instagram, I was blown away. Why. Why out of all the franchises in the world. Would they choose the Elf on the Shelf. Naturally, I had to go.
Look at how creepy this child is...
The main feature that they were promoting was their “Jolly Cakes” and the “Merry Marshmallow Hot Chocolate,” so I decided to get those to see what kinds of modifications they made in order to fit the theme that they were going for.
One thing to note is that the menu items were almost identical to the ones that they were serving last year when they were trying to promote the new Grinch movie. They had some sort of green pancake monstrosity alongside some weird hot chocolate monstrosity. This year was not different. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the pancakes were the exact same as the ones last year. Not that I got that last year. I had standards back then.
The first thing that came was the “Merry Marshmallow Hot Chocolate.” It was advertised on their menu as having a toasted marshmallow flavor added to the hot chocolate as well as some candy decorations and whipped cream. My initial thought when getting it was “how in the world am I supposed to fit this into my mouth?” When I pressed my lip up to the lip of the cup, the whipped cream reached my nose, so there was no way not to drink this without it touching my nose in some capacity.
But there are some moments where a person just has to do what he has got to do in order to drink a beverage. So I just dove right in without a care what people thought. And I instantly regretted it. As I suspected, the marshmallow syrup that they used made the hot chocolate too sweet. I felt as though I needed way more whipped cream in order to compensate for the amount of drink that was placed before me. It did taste like toasted marshmallows, but I felt like I was drinking a candle scent. Sure, it smells good, but it’s not something you would want in your mouth.
I think whipped cream went into my nose....
Once I was finished with half of it, the pancakes arrived. The “Jolly Cakes” were promoted as green pancakes with cream cheese frosting, whipped cream, and something called “elf sprinkles.” Which were the same candy decorations that they used for the hot chocolate. Even from the pictures, the only thing I could think was “it’s going to be too sweet…” And I was correct… To an extent.
It smelled like a plate of candy.
There was only one thing in this dish that I could not stand: the cream cheese frosting. It had the consistency of Toaster Strudel frosting and the flavor of the frosting on top of a cake that you want to scrape off because it overpowers the flavor of the cake. Which is exactly what the frosting did in this case. The only thing that I could taste in the first layer of pancake was the cream cheese frosting. I feel like they used whipped cream in order to cut the flavor of the frosting, but in the end, the only thing I could taste was the cloying frosting.
This is where I thought they should have used more whipped cream. I feel like they should have just left a can of the whipped cream just so I could directly deposit it into my mouth. Or maybe I just really like whipped cream? I digress.
Overall, my only thought was sweet. Too sweet. I’m not a huge fan of things that are too sweet or overstep the boundary of the original base food. Like I always mention before, what you put on the food that you are eating should always enhance the original base food. It should never overwhelm.
In the end, I realized that I really just need more whipped cream in my life.
Final Rating: Pancakes – 2/10; Hot Chocolate – 4/10
Bonus
It seems like chicken sandwiches will always follow me no matter where I go. One thing that caught my eye on the iHop menu was their “new” chicken sandwich. I posted a picture of it as a joke and people commented asked how it was, so I decided to get it to see what they changed about the formula of a chicken sandwich.
I will never escape the chicken sandwich...
It did not change anything that wasn’t expected. iHop isn’t exactly fast food, so I was expecting at least a slight jump in quality from the chicken sandwiches that you’d get from fast food restaurants. But no. It wasn’t better. For the price increase, it was actually worse than those restaurants.
Why in the world would I pay a few dollars more for something that only adds lettuce, tomatoes, and onions? Honestly, it was a slightly fancier Chick-Fil-A deluxe sandwich. Not worth it fam.
Final Rating: 2/10
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