Trader Joe's Organic Kosher Dill Pickle Spears

This is a new Trader Joe's product; see the company's description of it here.

This is another instance in which my difficulty is that a new product is going up against an entire lifetime of one specific competing product being ingrained as my Platonic ideal of what it should be. In this case, it's the Vlasic kosher dill pickle spears, which I've been eating since I was a kid. It's probably also important that those are just about the only pickles I ever eat, so I don't have laid down in my brain a broad range of what is acceptable in a pickle. In such situations, I have a hard time being objective, discerning "It's not as good" from "It's not what I'm used to."

The TJ's spears definitely taste fresher. They are crisper. They have more prominent garlic. It's entirely possible that if I had never had a dill pickle before, and came to a comparison test between these and the Vlasic without preconceived notions, I would judge these to be superior.

But I can't do it. A newcomer pickle would have to completely blow me away with its superiority to dislodge my deep prejudice in favor of the familiar, and TJ's couldn't do that.

Will I buy it again? 

I don't think so. But I hasten to add that I can readily see why somebody less tied to one specific pickle product than I am might judge these to be superior.

Nina's View

My boyfriend the philistine. (In fairness, I think if he were to buy and eat these exclusively for six months, he'd never go back to the previous familiar.)

These are really good pickles. They are much better than the flabby, slightly fluorescent yellow-green things you get from Vlasic. Ignore that Groucho-Marx-lookalike stork and his corny patter. TJ's FTW.

I wish they made a hamburger version of these, as I rarely put a spear on my plate. But yeah, I'd buy 'em, and you should, too.