This Is The Most Intensely Buttery Microwave Popcorn You Can Buy

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While heading to the movies and ordering a bag of popcorn is fun, there's a certain irony to paying $6 for a small bag when you know you could spend half that for a pack with six small bags at the supermarket. You could even make your own microwave popcorn from scratch with a few simple ingredients. There are dozens of at-home options, but we recently sat down to try 10 of the best microwave popcorn brands for your next movie night and determined that Act II Xtreme Butter was the most buttery of the bunch.

With a retro-designed bag and popcorn so neon yellow it looks like it could glow under UV lights, Act II Xtreme Butter popcorn lives up to its name. The butter is intense, probably a heavier dousing than anything you'd get at a movie theater, but not in an unpleasant way. There's a delicious saltiness to these little kernels, meaning you don't have to risk burning your fingers as you shake the bag to coat it with salt fresh out of the microwave evenly. If you're on the hunt for popcorn that tastes sort of like a potato chip and leaves a finger-licking coat of butter and salt on your hands once the bag is finished, Act II Xtreme Butter will be your new favorite.

Act II's Xtreme Butter flavor might be the most buttery microwavable popcorn of them all, but the brand offers varying levels of butter on its popcorn. There's the Butter Lovers Popcorn, the Movie Theater Butter Popcorn, the Butter Popcorn, the Light Butter Popcorn, and the Homestyle Microwave Popcorn. Act II notoriously creates fun popcorn flavors such as the Hot & Spicy Microwave Popcorn, though we placed the Act II Buttery Kettle Corn as the worst on our ranking of 13 kettle corn flavors. The brand even released a mac and cheese flavored popcorn in 2021, though it didn't seem to last long.

Right before neon scrunchies and jazzercise took the country by storm, microwave ovens became a staple in the kitchen. Golden Valley Microwave Foods hit the scene in 1978 to capitalize on the trend, launching a line of microwaveable foods that eventually included the release of ACT I Microwavable Popcorn in 1981, the first of its kind on the market. At first, the savory popcorn contained actual butter (a dairy product), which meant that it needed to be refrigerated or frozen to stay fresh before microwaving. Although popular, it wasn't convenient, so three short years later, the company introduced ACT II shelf-stable microwave popcorn made with an artificial butter flavor. The product was a success, racking up millions of dollars in sales within a few short years, and was purchased by Conagra Foodservice, Inc. in 1991, where it has remained ever since.