Dupe Detective: Do Trader Joe's Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches Best Uncrustables?

Welcome to Dupe Detective, a new column where I'll be reviewing a name brand food product's competitor product to find out how well it compares to, or even beats, the original. 

The peanut butter and jelly sandwich may already be a pretty perfect treat in its most basic form, but there are still plenty of ways to iterate on that perfection. It's possible to grill your next peanut butter and jelly sandwich, for instance, for a crispier, gooier take on the timeless classic. It's even possible to elevate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with cottage cheese for some added protein. Of course, the most iconic twist on the PB&J available in grocery stores is the Smuckers brand's Uncrustables, packing its proprietary peanut butter and jelly into crustless, pillowy pockets of bread.

For this edition of Dupe Detective, I picked up a box of Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches from Trader Joe's and compared them to Smuckers' classic Strawberry Jam Uncrustables. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich may be a perfect idea, but not all PB&Js are created equal — something as simple as a creamier peanut butter or a fruitier jelly can make or break a PB&J recipe. So, how does the Trader Joe's Uncrustables dupe stack up against its name-brand inspiration? I snagged two of the sandwiches to see just how alike these school lunch box staples really are.

The Trader Joe's Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches have a decently high ceiling. With all of their ingredients correctly apportioned, a sugary strawberry jam is accented by a mildly salty peanut butter, surrounded by gummy bread. My biggest issue with my Trader Joe's product, however, was that I was getting bites with all of those ingredients in that ideal ratio only some of the time.

Just as often as I enjoyed my Trader Joe's Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches at their best, I had to push through bites that consisted predominately of just bread and peanut butter. Lacking jam, I picked up a kind of stale vibe from the peanut butter, whereas the bread became excessively chewy. Those bites weren't bad to the point of inedibility or anything, but they weren't ideal, and there were multiple. Spreading the jelly throughout each Crustless Sandwich rather than concentrating a bit of jelly in the center would have solved this issue, but I found a lack of jelly in all the Crustless Sandwiches I ate, indicating a design flaw rather than an occasional misfire.

Trader Joe's only sells its Crustless Peanut Butter & Jam Sandwiches in a Strawberry flavor — in other words, Crustless Peanut Butter & Grape Jam Sandwiches are among the things you won't find at Trader Joe's. So, I only compared the Crustless Sandwiches to Strawberry Uncrustables. The first difference I noticed between the two products was that the bread on my Uncrustables sandwich was thinner and softer, eliminating the possibility of excessively chewy bites. Meanwhile, there was considerably more strawberry jam in my Uncrustables than my Crustless Sandwiches, so my biggest gripe with the Trader Joe's sandwiches was not an issue in my Smuckers sandwiches.

The flavor of the Smuckers jam was, in fact, strikingly different from the Trader Joe's jam, tasting more of strawberry and less sugary. I also isolated a bit of peanut butter, and found it closer in flavor to ground peanuts than the peanut butter in my Crustless Sandwiches. While I don't think Smuckers is using particularly natural ingredients, its formula nevertheless resulted in something that tasted more like peanuts and fruit than its Trader Joe's dupe. There's a reason NFL teams eat thousands of Uncrustables a week.

It didn't take much deliberating for me to decide I preferred my name-brand Smuckers Uncrustables to the Trader Joe's Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches. To be clear, I didn't think my Crustless Sandwiches were bad by any means, but they were simply outclassed.

The best thing about my Crustless Sandwiches was their jam. It may not have tasted like real strawberry, but it was sweet and indulgent. However, it was a lack of that indulgent jam, in addition to inferior bread and slightly stale-tasting peanut butter that hampered my enjoyment of the Trader Joe's dupe. Plus, even if the Trader Joe's version is a little cheaper, it only comes in one quantity, whereas Uncrustables are available in a few different sizes and flavors. The convenience of a premade peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a great way to save time at home, making field trip lunches easier, for instance. If a Trader Joe's is, say, quite a bit closer than another grocery store, its Crustless Sandwiches will suffice. But if Uncrustables are a feasible option, they're handily superior to their Trader Joe's dupe.

Trader Joe's intentionally keeps its prices low, and my Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches were indeed cheaper than my Smuckers Strawberry Jam Uncrustables — the former totaled $3.79 for a four-pack, whereas the latter were $4.79 for four. Meanwhile, also available are 15-packs of Uncrustables for $14.99. Those are more in line with Trader Joe's price per unit, albeit still slightly more expensive.

Nutritionally, one Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwich includes 9 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of which is saturated fat, 85 milligrams of sodium, 25 grams of carbs, 2 grams of fiber, 8 grams of sugar, and 7 grams of protein. One Uncrustable, by comparison, includes 9 grams of fat, 2 grams of which is saturated fat, 220 milligrams of sodium, 28 grams of carbs, 2 grams of fiber, 10 grams of sugar, and 6 grams of protein. It's fair to say, then, that Trader Joe's is the slightly healthier option based on its sodium content.

I picked up my Trader Joe's Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches and Smuckers Strawberry Jam Uncrustables in one shopping trip. I tried one of each sandwich as soon as I got home. Technically, since I went to Trader Joe's first, my Crustless Sandwiches had more time to defrost, but I didn't find that to affect my assessments — in fact, I found the Crustless Sandwiches tougher than Uncrustables, despite that extra defrosting time. I ate those first sandwiches as scientifically as possible, noting down my thoughts while doing so.

Then, I had two more of each kind of sandwich over the course of the next few days, keeping my initial assessments in mind to make sure they remained accurate. Those came straight out of the fridge, so there was no discrepancy in temperature. My opinions on each product are based entirely on this experience, and not any past thoughts on either item.