Look, I’m not going to lie to you:  This is going to be short.

I buy these Doritos Collisions bags specifically to make fun of them, in a strategy not too distant from the one I adopt when I go to the video store — I’m looking for a product that, if it sucks, I can enjoy in its horrible mediocrity.  I do not mind admitting that, because I am a mature person who is entirely secure in his childishness.

When I came across Doritos Habanero and Guacamole combination, I thought it would be much the same as my previous experience with Blue Cheese and Hot Wings:  which is to say, entirely crappy.  After all, if the good people at Doritos couldn’t manage to handle two relatively easy flavors like cheese and wing sauce, how were they going to replicate some seriously hot peppers and delicately warm dip?

The answer is, holy hell!  Really really well!

You know me.

You know that if there were even the slightest opportunity for me to make fun of this product — to associate it with Satan, or Ina Garten, or Smirnoff Lemonade — I would, but I simply can’t.  I’m at a loss!  I don’t have anything snarky to say!

Let’s put it this way.  Here’s the package:

What does that promise?  Some chips that taste like habanero peppers, and others that taste like guacamole.  So you can reasonably expect some spicy heat, and then possibly some kind of bland green-ness to balance it out.

And then!

You stick your hand in the bag, noticing the visible difference between the light-green and traditionally orange-red chips, only to find the following:

1. The orange-red ones have a pleasant salty-spiciness that you’d associate with a hotter-than-usual Dorito
2. The bright-green ones actually taste like honest-to-God Guacamole, except spicy because they’ve been all mixed up with the Habanero chips
3. OH MY GOD YOU’VE EATEN HALF THE BAG

It’s just that fast, and it’s just that easy.  Right now I’m staring my bag and wondering how this happened, only dimly realizing that I’ve played exactly into the hands of the product concept.

To me, Collisions isn’t really intended to dazzle and challenge the palette of chip-snackers everywhere.  As much as we’d love to think we’re sophisticates, I rather believe that this is just product demonstration at its finest — if Doritos can find two complementary flavors that work well together, and we decide we’re happy with both of them, then they’re going to sell twice as many bags in the future.

When it doesn’t work, well, you end up with a half a bag of chips that are supposed to taste like blue cheese, but remind you more of fried eggs and bad breath.  But when it does work, well, you get this.

The habanero chips are Doritos but spicy, without actually being painfully hot; the guacamole tastes like it’s supposed to, but instead of dissipating the heat only builds it up.  There’s salt enough to distract you from what’s happening, until you find that your entire mouth is just full of good nacho hot flavors, you have a lot of crumbs on your tee shirt, and you feel both happy and guilty at the same time.

No question about it, THIS SNACK ROCKS.  I actually feel a certain measure of fear that I won’t be able to find them again, and that says quite a bit for someone who’s two weeks from running a marathon.

Something-something healthy-low-fat carb whatever?  I can’t hear you — I have an awesome snack in my ears.

DORITOS COLLISIONS HABANERO & GUACAMOLE ROCKS.