Three Little Pigs

Three Little Pigs Kansas City Championship BBQ Seasoning is as a standard Kansas City-style BBQ rub as you'll find. 

The rub is a complex mix of sweet and spice and its flavor profile is extraordinarily flexible on all types of meats.

There may only be 5 reviews on this site, but I've used and tested more than I can count.
(Some aren't worthy of the words. Some were great but I can't find anymore.)

Three Little Pigs is probably one of my favorite commercially available rubs. 

It's important to note here that there are several variations of Three Little Pigs. I'm specifically reviewing "Kansas City Championship."

One of the things I like most about this rub is that it plays extraordinarily well with others; meaning you can layer it with other rubs and not have them fighting for top billing. 

The rub has a deep smoke flavor that tastes surprisingly natural with subtle hints of pepper and garlic.

I've yet to find a commercial rub that is competition-worthy. This definitely is. 

For whatever reason, mass-produced rubs (even those billed as "competition") tend to taste pretty generic, but every once in a while you find one that tastes authentic. You can tell when ingredients have been added to cut costs or fill a bottle. And you can also tell when a company sticks to their guns and sells what wins Grand Championships. This rub is the latter. 

I would have no reservations competing with this rub.

It is outstanding on pork, specifically ribs and butts. I also like to use it on salmon and mixed in hamburger meat.

I don't find this rub particularly fantastic on beef. It's not bad, but it doesn't stand out quite the way it does on pork.

The flavor of the beef seems to overpower that of the rub. That it mixes well with other rubs comes in handy here. I've found a mixture of Three Little Pigs and Tatonka Dust is great on a brisket. 

MY RATING:

OFFICIAL RUB REVIEW:
This is a textbook KCBS rub and can be used on everything; pork, beef, fish, in chili, on potatoes, in soup. You can't go wrong.

WHY DIDN'T IT GET 5 STARS? Flavor is much too light on large cuts of beef, like brisket and beef ribs.

BANG FOR THE BUCK: A 6.5-ounce bottle is generally between $6 and $7, pretty much the sweet spot for commercial rubs. It's worth every penny.

Tatonka Dust

First of all, this ain't your granddaddy's BBQ rub. The sooner you realize that the better off your experience cooking with it will be. You have to change your expectations.
Tatonka Dust is a unique blend of worcestershire powder, soy sauce powder and a charcoal seasoning base mixed with onion, garlic, peppers, salts and other spices. The unique blend certainly gives it a unique flavor profile (and color).
My preference for BBQ rub is a Kansas City-style. This is certainly not that, and that becomes obvious when you see the black mixture in the bottle.
Depending on where you live, it's not widely available. I ordered mine from the company's website. More on that later.
This rub was highly endorsed by people's whose opinions I respect. I've heard it's great on anything and everything, and while I'm not a fan of "makes everything better" rubs, the chatter on Tatonka Dust was deafening. There's no way I was going to overlook it.
Feedback was most high on beef, so the initial test was on two thick-cut ribeye steaks. A third ribeye was not dusted for head-to-head comparison.
Following a light dusting, 30 minute rest and 20 minutes on the Weber, one thing became apparent; I didn't use enough.
I found Tatonka Dust marginally enhanced the char flavor of the meat, and gave the natural beef flavor a slight boost. Otherwise, it was hard to tell it was even there.
After the test, one of the company's owners told me via Facebook that was exactly what the rub was designed to do.

She suggested that I likely needed a heavier dose (and she was correct) but added the rub was designed to make the meat more flavorful naturally, not necessarily bombard it with seasonings and spices.
I grill over hickory logs and get a lot of char naturally. Also, we have a good butcher in my hometown, so we rarely get a cut of meat that needs the help. Even still, the rub did give the natural flavor a little jolt.
If you grill on propane, get you a bottle of this stuff; the biggest one they make. You'll have everyone convinced your meat is wood-fired. The naturalness of the flavor in this rub is amazing.
If you buy a high quality cut and cook over coals or wood, you might not be overwhelmed by the flavor, and that's by design.

MY RATING:

OFFICIAL RUB REVIEW:
If you're wanting to improve the taste of lower quality cuts of beef, this is a one way ticket to flavor town. If you're looking for something more familiar, a-la KCBS, keep looking.

WHY DIDN'T IT GET 5 STARS? The char and flavors in this rub taste surprisingly natural, but with a little fire control and better meat selection, you should be able to get those yourself. I didn't taste a lot of the other flavors in the rub, or they weren't as obvious as I would have liked.

BANG FOR THE BUCK: A 6-ounce bottle from the website is nearly $11. That's expensive. Add in shipping, and you're around $17. The company does sell it in bigger bottles and bags and the more you buy, the cheaper it gets (per ounce/pound). Still, when you use it, you'll want to use a heavy dose, so it might not go very far. If you live somewhere where you can get your hands on it for $11, it's well worth it.