Zweifel Barrys Snack Original Cream

As soon as I read about this crispy snack on the Zweifel website I couldn't wait to try it. It's a bit of a shame then that I'm not really that impressed at the taste. But the shape is great!

Barry, the original mountain rescue dog, was a prototype St Bernard who rescued 40 people on the mountains around the St Bernard Pass between Switzerland and France. You can read the wikipedia page here and see an image of the dog himself. After he died in 1814 his body was stuffed and is still on show in the Natural History Museum in Berne (the capital of Switzerland).

There's a St Bernard Museum in Martigny at the foot of the St Bernard Pass these days and you can read about that here. And you can see the Barrys Snack page on the Zweifel website here. I'm not quite sure what that says because I don't speak much German. I think the page is about collecting stickers but sadly I don't know where you'd get them.

This is another bubbly crispy snack in the style of a Quaver or a Pom Bear. Or, of course, a Dancer (also from Zweifel). And the texture is great. I really like this sort of bubbly crunch.

I'm not so convinced by the "original cream" flavour, but then I never am convinced by cream as a flavour. You never really taste the cream, at any rate not with your taste buds. It's always more of a sensation on the palate than a taste. The taste is OK but not massively exciting. But I don't want to be too harsh. I just.... sort of expected something with a more distinctive taste.

As I said, the shape is great. But the dog does look a little anxious. It's probably rather difficult to model a particular breed of dog convincingly in extruded potato foam but all the St Bernards I have met (I think it's three?) were a lot more boisterous and confident looking than this little crispy snack dog.

Picky? Me? How could you suggest such a thing? Luckily the dog on the packet has plenty of confidence. And a little barrel of brandy around his neck in case of accidents. Hurrah!