Pepperidge Farm Finz! ® Cheddar

Finz! ® are tiny baked crackers made in Connecticut, USA. The snack that smiles back ® and also the snack that blasts other snacks out of the water.

Wow! Or not.

These are quite tiny fish-shaped cheesy biscuits. The cheesiness is nice and it is unusual to find a cheesy snack which actually tastes of cheese. Well, they ought to taste of both cheddar and blue cheese as they are both on the list of ingredients. And there's onion and garlic and stuff in the flavouring too.

However, the biscuit part lets the side down I think. It's very dry. Almost like pastry and it seems that the flavour is all on the outside. So you can lick it off. And then throw the taste free biscuit away. No! I shouldn't recommend any such thing. It's a disappointment. I thought these would be rather fun and it turns out they're a little bit dull.

It's true though; most most of the little fish do have a great big smile. And a little eye. The fish on the packaging (he's called Finn ®) wears dark glasses and smiles cheerfully out at us, his adoring public. And the name Finz! ® uses a little fish as the dot on the i. So a lot of thought has gone into this product.

The blurb on the side says "We're bakers but we're parents too. That's why we bake these crackers the way we do... never fried and with plenty of smiles." I'm not fully convinced that smiling while you cook makes a better product but I had thought (before reading the blurb) that perhaps these might be the sort of thing parents buy for their children - as opposed to the sort of crispy snack that children choose for themselves.

I think these would work very well if you had 5 or 6 different sorts of crispy snack on offer at a party. But I wouldn't be able to wolf down a whole packet. Haven't managed to finish the packet a week after I opened it.

Having taken a look at the Pepperidge Farm website my worry about Goldfish Crackers has been solved. I knew about Goldfish because of a joke on The West Wing when Danny wants to give CJ a present and someone says that CJ loves goldfish so he buys her a glass bowl with a goldfish swimming in it. And of course what CJ loves is the crispy snack. Ha ha ha. The goldfish bowl subsequently became a subtle plot device with all sorts of little models for the fish to swim around but that's another story and anyway you can read all about the adventures of Gail the fish here but I am sure there are many other sites with similar information.

But I've never seen the Goldfish crispy snack on sale in this country. I'm pretty sure not. Although I did spot them in Verbier once. Anyway, I was puzzled that Finz! ® seemed to be just like I thought Goldfish would be. And lo! having looked at the website I find they are Goldfish, but in disguise. I wonder why they've changed the name to sell them in the UK?