The Heavy Vending Machine: Cram It Up Your Arizona

Though I've already reviewed and long since shat out a "locally" produced fish sandwich, the colorful packaging and gargantuan size of this offering of compressed whitefish and gluten was too much to resist. The BIG AZ line of vending machine foods comes from our old friends at Pierre Foods. I don't know if the AZ is a reference to a large Arizona or supposed to be pronounced "AZZ," as in, "Damn, that girl got some BIG AZ titties! Ima smack 'em with my cod and squirt tartar sauce on 'em." Either way, your "AZ" will be quite large if you make so much as a semi-regular habit of eating these.



The BIG AZ's mammoth sesame seed-covered bun is dwarfed only by the unwieldy, elongated triangle of breaded Alaskan pollock draped in cheese. The shape and arrangement of the patty and cheese, perhaps by no coincidence, is reminiscient of a somberly folded American flag handed to the grieving family of a soldier, who was killed in action by being forced to eat one of these sandwiches by the enemy. Those sick fucking terrorist bastards!



The sandwich's microwave cooking instructions indicated it should be cooked from a thawed state for 2 minutes. If it's frozen, it should be thawed in a refrigerator overnight. So if you are picking these out of the deep freeze and can patiently await the gentle tug of babbling, non-violent diarrhea (this diarrhea is more about protest songs at Occupy Toilet than turning over cars and lighting them on fire), this is the vending machine fish sandwich for you.



Unlike myriad previous microwaved sandwiches, the bread on the BIG AZ didn't turn completely soggy after 2 minutes of irradiation. In fact, the bread was oddly chewy. It wasn't offputting, but not particularly appetizing either. The fish itself, was surprisingly bland, though it didn't suffer from the dry, gritty texture of the last fish sandwich I reviewed here. This one could have been improved by following the example of its predecessor and including a tartar sauce packet. It still would have been a shitty sandwich out of a vending machine, but it would have been enough of a distraction to stop my crying, even if just for a moment.



Product: BIG AZ fish and cheese sandwich
Price Paid: $2.25
Availability: Inside vending machines and dryer lint traps everywhere
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars (.5 given for the patriotic shape of the fish and Lee Greenwood single that played with each bite)
Harassment Factor: 19.7 on the Cain-Berlusconi scale