Price: Provided by PR Company
SRP: $2.46
Serving: 1 pocket, 4.5oz.
Calories: 260
Fat: 11%, 7g
Cholesterol: 8%, 25mg
Sodium: 24%, 580mg
Protein: 12g
Carbs: 13%, 39g
Fiber: 14%, 4g
Sugar: 11g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Hot/Lean Pockets says: Roasted Turkey and Ham with low fat cheese with sauce in a crust.

Abi says: A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Nestle’s public relations people. They were writing to inform me that I’d be receiving multiple boxes of Lean Pockets in approximately 24 hours.

“Awesome,” I thought, knowing that the Hot Pockets category on HeatEatReview.com is sorely lacking reviews of anything but plain cheese pockets. And then I realized that they were sending that box to my old office, the one in Washington, DC.

I am in California. So, I sent an email to the PR folks letting them know about my new address. Visions of pepperoni danced in my head while I waited for the FedEx guy to show up with a box of dry-ice-encased Lean Pockets. Pepperoni Lean Pockets. I love pepperoni.

When the Lean Pockets arrived and were unpacked and sitting on my counter I realized that I had made a dreadful mistake. These were not pepperoni-containing items. They were not even the chicken fajita variety (which you should try, it is awesome), no these were all cheddar and chicken and brocolli combos.

Hmmmm. I put the boxes of pockets in the freezer and stayed away from microwave food for a couple of days, planning my dive into the world of Lean Pockets . . . I would get George to eat half of them.

My entre came the next day when George asked me if we had anything to eat.

“Yeah, I got some Hot Pockets the other day. You can have one of those.”
“Do I have to review them?”
“No, you just have to leave one for me to review.” In my mind my hands were rubbing together the way that evil super-geniuses rub their hands together when they are thinking about the destruction of the world.

George pulled a box out of the freezer and the plan fell apart.

“These aren’t Hot Pockets. These are Lean Pockets.” He said with disgust.
“You like Lean Pockets.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, those chicken fajita ones.” Do they even make those?
“I don’t see any chicken fajita ones here.”

Sigh.

I’d be alone in enduring the Lean Pocket marathon. I decided to start with the most innocuous(-seeming) in the bunch: Turkey, Ham and Cheese. I enjoyed sandwiches that contained turkey, ham and cheese. There should be no reason for me to dislike a pocket sandwich using those same items.

Holy freaking crap is this thing awful. I know that the idea is that you can have a potentially ‘healthy’ or ‘diet’ item and get to eat some hot melty cheese, but the reality of the matter is that this is bad, bad cheese. Low rent cheese. Ghetto cheese. This cheese reminds me of when I was a kid and we’d get food from the government that came in strict black and white packaging.

That sort of cheese. Lovers of Kraft Singles will probably adore this cheese. I found it to be watery, which is disgusting because we want cheese that is melty and gooey, but not actually a liquid. Viscosity is very, very important in melted cheese.

Nestled in that cheese was the meat. The weird, weird, meat. The photo on the box shows lovingly sliced and stacked deli meat. The reality is that the meat comes in ultra-thin, 1/2 inch-wide, 3 inch long strips. Band-Aids of meat, if you will. Really, really flat band-aids. I tried each of the meat-strips separately and have to admit that I could not tell the difference between the turkey and the ham. I’m assuming the ham was the darker meat strip, but I’m not positive on that one.

Encasing the watery cheese and mystery meat was a light, delightfully crisp crust. I really liked the crust. It was pleasantly flaky, plus it has whole grains. I’m sure that I’m supposed to have some understanding of what type of whole grains should be in my diet or how many grams I need a day but really I have no clue.

The amazing thing about this pocket is that the contents did not explode out of the pocket during the cooking process even though I had to cook the item for a considerable length of time due to the puniness of my microwave. This means that if you really want to, you can use the crisping sleeve as a carrying mechanism:

If only they made these for burritos. I’ve since warned my coworkers about the Lean Pockets. I wonder if they’ll still be in the office freezer at the end of this month.

Price: 1 box for $2.50 (sale)
Serving: 1 pocket, 4.5 oz.
Calories: 380
Fat: 30%, 21g
Sodium: 33%, 800mg
Carbohydrates: 44g
Protein: 12g

Hot Pockets says: Provolone, mozzarella, cheddar and Romano cheeses with a zesty pizza sauce wrapped in a crispy crust

Abi says: There are two boxes of Hot Pockets in the fridge at work. They both belong to me. I should know better than to buy them, but they go on sale at Safeway or Giant and I’m trolling the frozen food aisle looking for something cheap when I’m hit by the per pocket price of $1.25.

So I buy a box of two Hot Pockets. This time is was Four Cheese Pizza, with the lure of a ‘Crispy Cheesy Crust!’. Alas, this crusty is neither crispy nor cheesy. The crisping sleeve did not perform. Also, the pocket is decidedly flat, as it would be very, very unhealthy to actually provide as much cheese as is shown on the box.

I give the Four Cheese Pizza Hot Pockets a thumbs down. Though, as a phenomenologist, I am intrigued by other pocket meals and in the future I will probably write about disappointing experiences with Lean Pockets, Hot Pockets Fruit Pastries, Hot Pockets Pot Pie Express, Hot Pockets Subs, Croissant Pockets and Belgian Chef. Belgian Chef is the french toast variety. Yeah, Belgian Chef makes French Toast. I don’t get it either.

Finally, I would like to note that there is a brand called Hot Pockets Pizza Mini’s. With an apostrophe. I have included an image of the logo. Yes, possessive Mini’s. Oh, America. Oh, punctuation.

Price: $3.29 ($2.79 on sale)
Serving: 1 pizza, 4.5 oz.
Calories: 290
Fat: 10%, 7g
Sodium: 29%, 690mg

Lean Pockets says: Low fat mozzarella, low fat cheddar, parmesan and roman cheese with a pepperoni flavored sauce in a crust.

Carolyn says: I got the Four Cheese Pizza on sale – this is normally why I buy Lean Pockets. I had never tried Four Cheese Pizza before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have tried a bunch of other varieties, but we will save those reviews for a later time. The Four Cheese Pizza was good, but I was scared it would be a little bland, so I ventured into our office fridge and pulled out some blue cheese salad dressing for dipping. The pizza lean pockets were good, very cheesy, some even oozing out while it cooked. The label talks about how there is cheese on the crust, which is true. You’d think with all this cheese I wouldn’t need the blue cheese, but I like me some cheese. There was some tomato sauce in the pocket as well, just enough to make it really hot. It was good – Abi told me halfway through that my Lean Pocket that was a Four Cheese Pizza really had pepperoni flakes in it, which I am not sure what that means, but I couldn’t taste any pepperoni. But it does mean if you are a vegetarian, this may not be the snack for you. Overall they were good, but I was hungry about 1.5 hours later. Not the most filling meal.