It wouldn’t have been right to make a Pizza Issue without talking about pizza’s ugly step-sister: frozen pizza, and her even uglier step-sisters: pizza bagels, pizza rolls and pizza pockets. So let’s open up the freezer, chip away the ice and pull out some of the most infamous pizza knock-offs in the history of pizza.
1. Bagel Bites
Nickname: Pepperoni Pucks
Tastes Like: A piece of rubber, sprinkled with rubber cheese and covered in rubber meat, lightly toasted.
Jingle: “Pizza in the mornin’, pizza in the evenin’, pizza at suppertime! When pizza’s on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime!”
Jingle Translation: You’re a horrible mother.
Fun Fact: If you eat an entire box of mini-bagels, you turn into a mini-bagel-taur; a half man, half bagel beast.
Best When Eaten: At your 12-year-old’s birthday party, right before he tells you he wants to live with dad.
2. Hot Pockets
Nickname: The Two-Minute Warning
Tastes Like: Someone killed a goat, burned all of its hair, filled it with sauce and pepperoni and served it in a microwaveable cardboard sleeve that may or may not be a direct cause of cancer.
Jingle: “When it’s late at night, and you want a tasty bite, what are you going to pick? Hot Pockets!”
Jingle Translation: Go to bed dad, you’re drunk.
Fun Fact: Gluten is allergic to Hot Pockets.
Best When Eaten: In the kitchen at 2:00 a.m. in your boxes and a “Kiss the Cook” apron.
3. Totino’s Pizza Rolls
Nickname: Dr. Kevorkian’s Pizza Rolls
Tastes like: A garbage truck and a tire fire had a baby.
Tagline: “It’s how kids help themselves”
Tagline Translation: It’s how kids become targets for online bullying.
Fun Fact: Totino’s is the leading cause of adult diapers.
Best When Eaten: At an old folks home when there’s nothing more the doctors can do.
4. Red Baron Pizza
Nickname: The Colonoscopizza
Tastes like: A porta potty on the final day of Bonnaroo.
Tagline: “Love at first bite.”
Tagline Translation: It Will Leave You Baron.
Fun Fact: Every Red Baron Pizza comes with one standard topping: regret.
Best When Eaten: Within two miles of an ER.
5. Stouffer’s French Bread Pizzas
Nickname: Le Poisoning de Food
Tastes like: Pepé Le Pew laid down on some flatbread and died. Three days ago.
Jingle: “Help yourself, help yourself, help yourself to Stouffer’s pizza.”
Jingle Translation: Seriously, you need help.
Fun Fact: Stouffer’s is neither French, nor bread, nor pizza. Discuss.
Best When Eaten: On Groundhog’s Day. Because that’s what it tastes like; ground…hog.
6. Tombstone
Nickname: Tombstone
Tastes like: An actual Tombstone, minus the flavor.
Jingle: “What do you want on your Tombstone?”
Jingle Translation: Rest in pizza.
Fun Fact: You’re probably dead already.
Best When Eaten: Inside the trunk of a hot car.
