Space Food Set - Unique Gift Box for Kids Teens Adult - Texas Burger, French Fries, Chicken Nuggets, Lollipop Candy - Astronaut Food Set Birthday Christmas Holidays Lunch Food Gift for Children

Bought this for my Gen X dad who loves NASA and all things related to the sky, space, and universe. He had so much fun trying them he was texting me about it and how cool it was.

I am reviewing the Space Food Set - Unique Gift Box for Kids Teens Adult - Texas Burger, French Fries, Chicken Nuggets, Lollipop Candy - Astronaut Food Set Birthday Christmas Holidays Lunch Food Gift for Children. I've tried some space foods before, so I thought I knew what I was getting. This set appears to be Russian, and isn't quite what I expected.The instructions are clear, but a bit fiddly. The food needs to be heated outdoors, essentially, and I didn't have a great place to set it up. I borrowed a friend's backyard.Once heated, the taste isn't great. These are definitely for the novelty, but they are a fun novelty. This makes a fun gift for a space nerd, but there are other sets that are easier to use.

Son hates it.

OK, let's get this out of the way up front: No one needs this. This is moisture-reduced food in a tube. It's not freeze-dried--there is water in the food (just not as much)--so there's a shelf life of 2 years from the date of manufacture. So you wouldn't buy this to be a prepper and place it in your emergency stash. The point of this kit is "ever wonder what the Soviet astronauts ate back in the day and how they would prepare it?"You get three tubes of food, three matching heating packs, and a lollipop. Each tube of food comes with a heater pack with two compartments. You put the tube in one compartment. You add water to the second compartment--which initiates an exothermic chemical reaction that gives off heat and heats the tube. It takes at least 10 minutes to get the tube nice and hot.This stuff is very expensive, and I wasn't going to waste it just tasting it for a review, so I invited some friends over and we tried it together.First off, I was afraid of what this stuff might look like. Turns out it's pretty benign. It's thick and identifiable as some sort of food source. (See photo).Summary comments on the three tubes included:French Fries: Everyone was most willing to try this one. It was also the most disappoinging. It tastes like very thick mashed potatoes in a tube. Pretty much unexciting. Not terrible, but just very ordinary and not very reminiscent of french fries.Hamburger: It smells like a burger. The primary smells and flavor notes that everyone caught were beef, onion, and mustard. There were other flavor notes, but things like cheese and ketchup kind of got lost. Still, everyone was a bit shocked at how much it smelled like a burger out of the tube, and that it truly did taste like a burger in a tube. No one indicated they'd like to eat a burger like this again, but most everyone agreed that if you were really hungry and this was all there was in the cabinet, it would be easy to deal with. The two dissenters are those who hate onions or mustard.Chicken nuggets. I think everyone was really hesitant to try this one. Chicken in a tube??? But it wasn't bad. It truly did smell and taste like chicken nuggets. In a vote, this was the consensus favorite.There you have it: Better than you could imagine, though the fries are a bust.It was fun for a party. But would I spend north of fifty bucks to do this again? Nope. This was all about the "interesting" part of the experience, not about the "oh yum" part. If these had a massive shelf life I could imagine buying some of them for the emergency box. But they don't, so it's really a matter of a novelty.These are made in Russia, so supply chains being what they are right now, you may want to jump on getting these before they aren't available anymore--if you're interested in trying them.

My Dad is a space nerd and he absolutely loved this as a gag gift for his birthday.I don't think anyone in my family is going to actually ingest any of these tubes of Russian fast food.But they look hella cool on the shelf!

The taste was awful. There than that everything was as described.

This is a super interesting item, which was a lot of fun to use. It is more of an interesting and fun item, and less of a delicious nutritious meal. The products in this box are labeled entirely in Russian, but it does come along with an instruction sheet which is written in English. It appears to be manufactured in Russia, and then packaged into this set here in the United States, where they add the English instructions. The English instructions are clear and easy to follow. It was initially difficult to find the expiration date on the packages, but after translating the Russian print on the tube, it became apparent that the manufacture date is imprinted into the crimp of the end of each tube, which is accessed by unfolding the tube further after removing the sticker there. The tubes we received this month, June 2022, say that they were manufactured in January of this same year. With a two year shelf-life, these are still plenty fresh.This is a fun item to work through with a child, or just as an adult, and part of the fun was translating some of the materials inside, which we did using a Google Lens translator which translated everything we put the camera on, right on the fly, which was neat and fun.Inside we found three food boxes, one with chicken nuggets, one with french fries, and one with Texas burger, in addition to a separate wrapped spaceship shaped lollipop. That lollipop did not come with printed ingredients or other description. Each of the food tube boxes included a packet of deionized water which is used to activate the heating chemicals, which are completely contained in a plastic sleeve into which you insert the food tube. After that you pour the water into another part of that sleeve, and then it heats up. Following those instructions, after adding the water you bend the top over and let it sit for about 6-12 minutes, until it is heated. We let each of these sit for 10 minutes which seems like an appropriate time, as each was appropriately hot afterwards.It was very interesting after adding the water how the plastic sleeve swelled with steam or gas of some sort and got moderately hot, and you could see it swelling, and you could feel the heat, and you can additionally hear it boiling and bubbling inside. We did all of us outside on a tile porch, as we did not know if this might release any gases we shouldn’t be breathing. I know it should not, but it is from Russia and all the print is in Russian, and it made it hard to really know what we were dealing with, including that we aren’t sure what chemicals are inside that is reacting with the deionized water. Everything worked smoothly and never seemed dangerous, though it was startling at first as it swelled up and started bubbling inside.Each of these food tubes was then opened, which included the need to use the pointy end of the plastic cap to puncture the tube open, so I can say that they were all well sealed. The food material inside is then squeezed out. We tried all three of these foods. They all looked rather unappetizing. On the other hand, each tasted like it was meant to. The french fries tasted like potato or french fries, and quite salty, The chicken tasted like chicken, and the burger tasted like a fast food burger. I have uploaded a photo of each of these squirted onto a plate, so you can see what the food looks like for yourself. Each box also included a wet wipe. It is impressive that each of these foods actually tasted like the food they were supposed to taste like, despite the appearance. While we did have a taste of each of these foods, the whole process was more for the entertainment value, and we didn’t end up eating too much of any of these foods. I think this would be super fun to share with someone who is interested in space or who would enjoy the process of heating food with this chemical process activated by adding water, and maybe also the process of translating some of Russian labeling into your own language. This whole adventure did provide us with a good amount of entertainment.