By Michael Jordan

While most of us play games it is quite the common occurrence that we eat while doing so. Most of what we eat these days is questionable at best and even worse for most gamers. Even with the difficulty of eating normal foods while gaming, many adapt (my weapon of choice is a folded paper plate and a piece of pizza.)

Now after I was trying not to lose my hair from the Metal of Honor beta and all it’s crash-tastic glory, my then delicious piece of pizza became a stain on my favorite shirt that was laying at my feet (yes, I am a slob sometimes….) Well without a doubt I was pissed, it got me thinking back to E3, wasn’t there a snack called Gamer Grub that they where handing out on the show floor?

Now at first, I have to be honest, I did not think much of it before it even entered my mouth. I could not find it at any of the places around me that where advertised. Combined with the stigma of “Gamer“ (A mostly sweaty over weight man-child) with “Grub”(being defined as larva: the larva of various insects, especially beetles, being its primary definition) did not help it’s efforts in my eyes, but remembering my angry fit with the slice of pizza made me buck up more on my search. I am going to tell you now, that I am glad I did.

This reminded me of the Card that I received when I passed by Gamer Grub’s E3 Booth while almost missing my appointment. I decided well it couldn’t hurt to just asked the man directly where to buy it and so I got in contact with Keith Mullin, Founder of Gamer Grub, so that he might be able to point me in the right direction, not only was he nice enough to do so, he also sent me a couple of samples and offered to answer some questions that I had after trying the gamer enthused snack products.

Lets start with the snack. I’ll give a mini description of the two flavors I tried;

Pizza:
I got to say, most snack food companies, when they attempt to create a Pizza flavor, it tastes like there is a party in your mouth and everyone is throwing up. Not so with Gamer Grub to my surprise. The flavor was quit appetizing. But don’t mistake the fact that it tastes good to mean that it tastes like pizza. I actually think its better that they did not go the full on pizza path that most try to do and fail at. This is when it dawned on me, Gamer Grub, and in particular the pizza flavor, is a great substitute for trail mix.

The listed components are Cheese Curls, Tomato Almonds, Sesame Sticks, Pita Chips, Fried Onions, and Pizza Cashews. As you might have noticed there are two types of nuts mixed in there, adding to the trail mix feel and taste, and the bag makes it easy to eat on the go (I myself took it with me to a horse ranch and was able to eat it without any problems or worry about dust in my food).

PB&J:
This was my favorite flavor and I was stunned. I couldn’t even imagine that this flavor would be executed so well. It almost seems like a waste to market this snack to just gamers. This made me fairly sad thinking about it, as with it’s limited marketing comes it’s limited market of where it is sold and I would love to be able to buy this every time I am at the gas station as a quick pick snack.

The components of this mix are Peanut Butter chips, Peanuts, Strawberries, Strawberry Jelly Chips and Sweet bread. I also noticed that it seemed there were little globs of peanut butter in the bag as well, which made it go from good to amazing for a no mess bag snack. I am really surprised and delighted by this. The taste was spot on to a peanut butter and jelly toast sandwich. Everything you would imagine without the glass of milk provide inside the bag, and was great on my three hour morning drive to college.

As to better understand what quickly became an oddity of marketing, for a product I quickly saw many more uses for,wouldI decided to hit up the man himself, Keith Mullin, Founder of Gamer Grub:

Mukyou: What originally made you want to start your own snack food, specifically aimed toward gamers?

Keith: “I basically told the other snacks to Mukoff since I was tired of getting
yellow goop on my keyboard.”

Mukyou: Why did you focus a product to gamers only and not to everyone that might
not be able to get a snack when on a job, like pc techs or people with jobs
that have them using their hands allot when they can’t wash them?

Keith: “I was going through the Unreal maps when I came up with the idea and
found other gamers that had the same problem. Sure, Gamer Grub could have
been named “Digit-snacks” or whatever, but the truth of
being must remain at the core.”

Mukyou: What is your favorite flavor?

Keith: “I really like them all. In the morning I like the sweet flavors and in
the afternoon the savory, like BBQ.”

Mukyou: What where you eating when you choose to open this business.

Keith: “I do not know the specific snack, basically I could not find a snack
that I could eat efficiently while multitasking at my PC. I wanted to find a
better way.”

Mukyou: Where do you want to expand your food reach down the road, I know that when
I was in Japan(2 years), most of their food was made to be eaten on the
go.

Keith: “That really depends on what the gaming community wants, we work through
new concepts constantly.”

Mukyou: Thanks for your time.

Keith: “Thank you for putting this together, great questions. If you have any
others, please let me know.”

I want to thank Keith Mullin for giving his thoughts and willingness to help better understand his product. I would run out and try it yourself if you can find it, I know I will be looking forward to more and hope that stores around me make it easier for me to find. Check out http://gamergrub.com/ for more info and flavor list, as well as some cool extras.