Remember the old Saturday Night Live skit about the dessert topping that's also a floor wax? The folks at Hunt-Wesson must have had that in mind when they came up with Orville Redenbacher's Popping & Topping, a flavored oil that at the very least gets points for product versatility.

As its name implies, Popping & Topping has dual uses: You can use it to pop up some popcorn, and you can also use it on the popcorn. Either way, you'll get an infusion of Popping & Topping's buttery flavor, although this may be a dubious benefit at best, since the flavor in question is that singularly synthetic taste that we're all familiar with from buying popcorn at the movies. In fact, just the smell of Popping & Topping is enough to instantly remind you of a movie snack-bar counter. One whiff and you'll find yourself involuntarily saying, "Yeah, and lemme have a large Diet Coke, too -- not too much ice."

Clearly, this product cries out for a taste test, so I invited a few friends over and prepared four batches of popcorn for them: one popped in regular oil and topped with butter; another popped in regular oil and topped with Popping & Topping; another popped in Popping & Topping and topped with butter; and one popped in and topped with Popping & Topping. Here's how each batch fared:

- Oil/butter: Everyone agreed that this one tasted the most natural. "But that's the problem," said one taster. "It's too natural -- I want a little of that phony-butter taste." Surprisingly, this batch also seemed to have the worst texture -- a bit chewy and stale-seeming, as if it had been popped several days earlier, even though we sampled it just a few minutes after it was made. Apparently, the oil and/or the butter had saturated the popped kernals

- Oil/P&T: Much better texture than the oil/butter batch -- the popcorn was crispy and light, suggesting that Popping & Topping sits on the popcorn, while butter soaks into the popcorn. The flavor, however, was rather nondescript, prompting one taster to inquire, "Is there an extra-salty version of Popping & Topping available?" (Memo to Hunt-Wesson: Please do not take that comment seriously.)

- P&T/butter: Here we have the consensus winner. Decent texture, good flavor, nice aroma -- superior popcorn. As one taster observed, "It's buttery without being too buttery." Which leads us to...

- P&T/P&T: Disgusting. The smell alone was gag-inducing, and the taste was so overwhelmingly synthetic that the popcorn seemed like little more than a conduit for the Popping & Topping. All of which led one taster to pick up the container of P&T and opine, "Why bother making the popcorn when you can just drink this stuff straight from the bottle? They should just include a straw in the package." (Memo to Hunt-Wesson: Even more strongly than before, please do not take that last comment seriously.)

So the bottom line appears to be that Popping & Topping makes a decent popping oil, but it can't compete with real butter in the topping department. This would seem to put a dent in the product's multi-use versatility, but don't worry -- I have a hunch it works great as a floor wax.

(Hunt-Wesson, PO Box 4800, Fullerton, CA 92834)