M&S Poisonous Scorpions Cheese

Last year Marks & Spencer produced a packet of poisonous scorpion crisps for Halloween. Although they looked really great - very scorpiony and pale green into the bargain - I wasn't mad keen on the pickled onion flavour.

This year another packet of scorpions but now they are cheese flavoured corn snacks very similar to M&S's Full on Flavour Cheese Tasters. No wonder I haven't seen any Cheese Tasters in the shops recently; M&S want me to buy scorpions instead.

And what not? Because apart from the shape these two products are very similar. Cheesy aroma, cheesy taste, good crunch, that terrible way they gum themselves to the roof of your mouth if you aren't careful. What could be better?

There seem to be an enormous number of little children living around here and in a couple of weeks time they'll be dressing up as ghouls and knocking on our door. So I'd better get my act together and buy a load of treats. Cheesy scorpions won't be any good. I'm not handing out 60 or so 100g bags. Besides, if we had any left over we'd be forced to eat them and that would be no good for the diet.

Poisonous scorpions come in a pumpkin orange packet with a chocolate brown Halloween design. Bats, obviously, a haunted-looking house, winter trees and a raven (possibly a crow?) with a large scorpion held in his beak. Very handsome.

Of course, this is a limited edition crispy snack for Halloween. So grab them while you can.

Thanks to the Guardian Weekend Magazine this weekend for alerting me to the fact that scorpions come in all shapes and sizes: Deathstalker, Arizona bark, Fattail, Emperor, Brazilian yellow, and Asian forest. I think these are simply generic scorpions.