Cooee Popcorn and Cookies pack a seriously powerful (and tasty!) punch
When I was growing up, there were two types of popcorn you could have: the type you’d get at the movies – fairly basic with its buttery and salty flavour, occasionally – only just ocassionally – copied well enough at home on the stove top (remember those big puffy aluminum balloon type things that would burst with popcorn going everywhere?). Oh, and a special brand called Lollygobble Bliss Bombs which, surprisingly, are still around today.
Aside from the odd sugary hit, popcorn was pretty much generic in flavour and so generic, we’d even start to forsake it at the cinema, that and the huge price tag on a bucket of popcorn at the movies, kind of saw it falling out of favour – let alone flavour. Full of preservatives and colour and flavourings but still around today.
Fast forward a couple of decades and popcorn is more popular a snack food than it ever was. You get it in all manner of flavours – from the sticky and the gooey to the artisanal and the gourmet.
A fresh brand we’ve only recently come across is Cooee Popcorn – once which has the comfort-snack appeal of popcorn but with uniquely Australian native-botanical flavours, all delivered by an Indigenous-owned brand committed to inclusion and culture. Put simply, this isn’t just popcorn – its nature and culture in a snack food.
Founded by Wiradjuri entrepreneur Terri-Ann Daniel, the mission Cooee Native Superfoods mission is to showcase native Australian botanicals – like wattleseed, Kakadu plum, finger lime – while creating healthy snack foods, all natural in their content and free from allergens.
We tried three distinctive flavours. First up, the Sweet & Sour popcorn flavoured with delicious Davidson Plum and naturally sweetened using Strawberry Gum. You can taste the bursts of berry and plum with every crunchy bite. So delicious, you’ll probably try to avoid sharing it once you’ve snuck a packet into the movies!
Next up is Sweet & Salty, again with added Strawberry Gum to lift your snack game, and just the right mix of sugar and salt to satisfy the greater area of your taste buds. And last up is Creamy Caramel, whose name pretty much tells you what it is – golden caramel in every bite but also with a hint of Aussie outback wattleseed for extra texture and crunch.
After being hooked on these three flavours, were were ecstatic to learn that Cooee also create an extensive range of cookies, again using all-natural Australian bush ingredients. There’s a Vanilla Cream with Fingerlime, a biccie with Chai and Kakadu Plum, a Choc Chip and Wattleseed cookie, and so many more. The cookies are available in packs of two – perfect for taking to work and nibbling on throughout the day.
Cooee Cookies: Sticky chai and Kakadu Plum add flavour and nutritious to traditional style biccies!
One ingredient we must say we’ve never heard of were ‘muntries’, which features in a couple of their cookies. After a little research, it turns out the Muntrie fruit was a vital part of the diet of the Ngarrindjeri people of the Coorong (southeast South Australia). They’re an old favourite in the historical Indigenous diet and were often traded between tribes, and the fruit was often dried and baked into cakes. Muntries are a powerhouse of nutritional benefits, containing high levels of antioxidants, Vitamin C, calcium, iron, potassium and magnesium. Phew! With all that goodness, it’s no surprise to learn that muntries have acted as an excellent wound healer.
A focus on natural ingredients, pictured are Cooee’s triple choc muntries: dirty sweet but a heck of a lot better for you than their faux-ingredient counterparts.
All Cooee Cookies are free from gluten, dairy, nuts, soy and eggs, offering inclusive options for people with allergies and dietary sensitivities. And that’s a real coup!
Also, Cooee Cookies has announced a landmark distribution partnership with Health Food Symmetry (HFS), creator of PhytoBiome – the world’s first sugarcane-derived, whole-plant prebiotic. The collaboration marks a new era in Australia’s functional food industry where Cooee Cookies will create a new range of its cookies integrating the PhytoBiome product, enabling consumers to access better gut health nutrition through everyday snacking.
All of this makes us realise that munching cookies and snacking on popcorn isn’t too bad a pastime, after all. In fact these foods are probably the healthiest think we’ve tried since, well, lots.
Shop for Cooee Native Superfoods here.
Artist Ben Frost is moving house, so stacks of his fantastic artworks are going on sale at the end of this month
Born mid-’70s at the peak of punk, and living his teen years by the end of the commercial-laden ’80s, it’s no wonder visual artist Ben Frost injects so much disposable pop culture into his artworks. The only thing is, his unique pieces are for keeps!
Frost has a trademark knack for satirising consumer culture – in an even funnier way than, say, Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein used to. Some of Frost’s works actually appear on product packaging itself – redesigns of prescription drug packets, stencil works on empty McDonald’s fries cartons, and so on.
The Australian artist has exhibited in London, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Berlin, and Miami, and has collaborated with fashion labels including Moschino and Carolina Herrera. He also has a strong online presence, with particular dedication to his digital flagship store benfrostisdead.com.
Up until now, Ben has called Melbourne home (though he is originally from Brisbane). Other quarters are now calling, so instead of bringing all of his works – large and small – across with him to his new dwellings, he is giving the rest of us the gift of the great discount.The Moving Sale will run from 10am-4pm on Saturday 29 November and the artist has promised that certain works will be available online so that us interstate fans can shop like mad. Keep an eye out for updates on Ben’s Instagram page here.
Cream will definitely be locking this date into the diary.
Note: The artworks shown are not necessarily representative of what will be on sale but, heck, everything this guy puts to canvas, pill package, or even throw pillow is worth having a look at.
Guinness World Records 2026 packs plenty of pop culture punch: we’ve got 15 copies to give away!
⬆️CLICK THE PIC FOR A GOOD CAUSE
The song Driftin’ is a cover of a classic 1970s disco track covered by Cream’s founding editor Antonino Tati. It’s only a dollar to download the track through Bandcamp, and all proceeds are going to the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation (BGF) for their work in assisting Australians affected by HIV. Cream will be contributing toward the donation, too. Listen out for lots of cheeky innuendo and a special appearance by soul singer Barry White!
#ANTONINOTATI #benFrost #benFrostArtworkSale #benFrostIsDead #benFrostNovemberSale #benFrostSale #bestAustralianMagazines #bestAustralianPopCultureMagazine #CREAMMAGAZINE #popArt #POPCULTURE #popShop
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