Cheetos Ketchup Flavoured

Here’s yet another example of a maize based crispy snack. These ones are shaped like quite chunky chips. But whatever the shape, this style of snack will always gum itself to the roof of your mouth and the sides of your teeth. It’s not an elegant snack, not recommended for a first date.

Now the flavour here is supposed to be ketchup which can be a brilliant flavour, but honestly it’s a little too fugitive in this case.

So it’s a pleasant crispy snack that doesn’t taste of very much. In a good way.

Cheetos Spirals Cheese & Tomato Ketchup

Wow! this is a giant in the world of spiral-shaped snacks.

The packet says chrupki kukurydziane o smaku sreow-ketchupowym which I take it means cheese and ketchup smaku... I mean flavour. Not because I have amazing Polsh reading skills, but because there's a drawing of cheese and ketchup on the packaging.

The texture of these would-be cheesy Wotsits from the Polish branch of Cheetos is basically expanded polystyrene. Which sounds awful but it kind of grows on you. It is a little like biting into one of those packaging peanuts but odd as that may seem, that can grow on you.

Not an especially cheesy crispy snack, and frankly not very tomato ketchupy at all, but I found I was really enjoying this giant spiral snack much more than I expected.

This photo was styled (because, you know, I'm an internationally renowned food photographer) in the same bowl as usual. So you can see what a great big snack this is.

I'd buy this crispy snack again.  Annoyingly although we only taste tested this snack yesterday (as I write) I cannot remember who ate all the spirals. I think it was Slightly Red-Haried Bristolian but I might be wrong.

And just in case this might influence your thoughts, the packet contains a leopard patterned moustache temporary tattoo. Of course it does.

Cheetos Pizzerini

Chrupki kukurydziane o smaku pizzy says the packet. Which reminds me of the Officer Krupke song in West Side Story.

Ahem... anyway, this is an interesting puffed triangle shaped Cheeto. Which is different. And another of these pizza flavour snacks that tastes oddly of cheap child-oriented frozen pizzas. Epic!

And it's one of those crispy snacks that you wonder why you're having another. And another.

It's a bit of a mystery that the local Turkish shop is suddenly stocking a bunch of Polish crispy snacks but that's great for international taste testing do let's take advantage now as I'm unlikely to visit Poland any time soon. I'm sure it's lovely but time is short and Switzerland is nearer.

Cheetos Ketchup

Złap jedna z millionów naklejek na ubrania! says the blurb on the packet. Isn’t that exciting? I expect. I confess I found it very difficult typing Polish but do admit that the new iPad produces almost all the diacritics I needed which is brilliant. And pretty impressive.

I found another packet of Polish crisps in North London. Well, Cheetohs aren’t crisps but you get the picture. Lucky for you lot in internetland that I don’t live in darkest rural something-shire or we might be discussing an endless selection of pork scratchings instead of a weird array of crispy snacks from who knows where. Yes, that does sound hopelessly crountryside-ist I know. But having lived here in North London for a very long time I am conscious that people who live in the countryside are often very short changed on the crispy snack front.

Anyway, another offering from Chester the front man for Cheetos (front-cheetah?). Or possibly trouble maker; again see the packet blurb. Not speaking or reading any Polish I really have no idea why the packet, which features quite a bit of Polish text, suddenly breaks into English to say trouble maker.

1 Kup product promocyjny CHEETOS 

2 Sprawdź  czy wygrateś nakelkę na ubranie!

3 Jeśli wygrateś uźyj naklejki zgodnie z instrukcja i stwórz swój Cheestyle look ™️
By Chester

No I don’t know either. So what do I think? Quite bright orange, quite a soft bite which of course you expect from puffed extruded corn snacks, and I wasn’t convinced by the tomato ketchup flavour. All round not back except... except it really does gum itself to your teeth mid-mouthful. I could do without that, and Tall taste tester wasn’t that impressed either. Noble Friend wasn’t that keen on the ketchup. It’s not as good as Heinz tomato ketchup she said. And taste tester from the New Forest really liked this crispy sticks a lot.

Exciting news. This snack packet appears to be recyclable. At any rate there is a recycling triangle on the back with 90 in it. Whether or not I can find anywhere prepared to accept this class of recycling I don’t know.

And I quite forgot. You get a free temporary tattoo.

Cheetos Twisted Flamin' Hot

I was very excited to find I could buy a packet of Cheetos in this country. Until fairly recently Cheetos was a brand only available elsewhere. I had thought the USA only, but have of course discovered you can buy Cheetos in Spain. And I daresay in other countries too.

Anyway, here we have a packet of Cheetos. Hurrah!

But. But don't they seem pretty much the same as Smith's Twisted Flamin' Hot? Which we tried back in September 2013.

I have to say that looking back I wasn't super impressed. After two and a half years of taste testing I may be looking at this product with different eyes. I now think this is rather a fab crispy snack.

Great big twists of corn puff snack, lovely rich colour, not a bad crunch, and a warm sweet flavour followed by a kick of chilli. Not too terribly flamin' hot.

But still, pretty tasty.

Most of the reluctant taste testers seemed pretty keen, and I'm fairly sure that Extremely Senior Volunteer taste tester was very keen indeed. On the other hand, Extremely Sceptical taste tester said she thought this crispy snack was too big. I quite like the size but of course others are always welcome to their own opinions.

Cheetos Cheese

This packet of Cheetos Cheese came from the world foods section at Tesco. I wasn't sure at first glance whether it was a world food from Ireland or Poland. I mean, at first glance you see Cheetos Cheese, Big Bag, and Hotel Transylvania 2. And this was on the shelf between the Polish and Irish products.

However, on closer inspection, you see w kinach od 9 pazdziernika which, however odd you may find the Irish language, is patently not Irish.

So, here we have a packet of Cheetos from Frito-Lay Poland and imported into the UK by a firm based in Wokingham.

These Cheetos look pretty much how I would expect them to look. And they do taste pretty good with a wonderful light crunch. But I'm not impressed that they are a bit dry. You might say, well all crispy snacks are dry aren't they? Yes, of course. But somehow I felt the after-mouth (if that's a word), and it's not to do with the taste, is a bit dry.

It's also worth pointing out that according to the English language sticky label on the back of the packet there is no actual cheese in the recipe. There is "cheese flavour seasoning" but it contains no cheese. There is monosodium glutamate, disodium gaunylate, and disodium inosinate. Which sounds entirely too much sodium to me. There is milk and whey powder though; which may account for the interesting buttery taste.

It's odd. The packet says cheese so when you crunch in you think you taste cheese. But if you concentrate it's obvious that the taste is in fact butter. Not nasty at all just not what I was expecting.

The Chef, somewhat unhelpfully, says this crispy snack reminds him of something but he can't think what. But he did eat a few and not under duress.

I'm not sure if this packet was issued purely to advertise Hotel Transylvania 2, or as a Halloween tie in. So I thought I'd post them today.

Happy Halloween crisp fans.

PS There's a competition to visit Sony Pictures Animation Studio which (I think) runs until 16 November. So still time to enter if you fancy battling with www.cheetos.pl.

Cheetos Pandilla Sabor a Queso

Yes... well I'm not really quite sure what to say about these sort-of cheesy snacks.

Kind friend Susan brought them back from Mallorca. She bought the maddest looking crisps she could find, and they are pretty mad: reconstituted potato snacks shaped like ghosts and bats. I don't know if they are only produced at this time of year - in plenty of time for Halloween - or if you can buy them all year round.

The packet, which is mostly purple,  shows several ghosts and bats (actually a lot more ghost- and bat-like than the contents of my packet, although that may have suffered from being stuffed into a suitcase and manhandled by British Airways) and also the less than charismatic Chester Cheetah who advertises the Cheetos brand all over the world.

I read online that Chester Cheetah leads the life of a (cartoon) mega star. He strikes me as a combination of the Pink Panther and Leisure Suit Larry desperately aspiring to be James Bond. Chester wears dark glasses all the time. Even the cuddly toy wears dark glasses. Apparently he has featured in a long-running series of TV commercials, and even two video games, and since 2007 has been aimed at adults rather than children. Weird.

You can ring Chester if your crisps are not perfect but interestingly his (cartoon) phone looks really old-fashioned. You'd think he'd have a smart-phone by now. And although the packaging claims to be recyclable Chester is encouraging me to throw it in a bin.

NB Chester and Cheetos are registered trademarks.

On the purple packaging Chester is dangling like a bat, appropriately I suppose, and wearing a sort of white shrug thing round his shoulders. I really can't make out what that is supposed to be, can you?

And on to the crisps... The aroma on opening the bag is rather more smokey bacon than cheesy and the flavour isn't my idea of cheesy. The colour is kind of generic reconstituted potato coloured with paprika orange - the usual sort of thing - a little pale perhaps. And the snacks themselves are not really shaped much like either ghosts or bats. The crunch is fine but the texture is rather dry but at the same time rather greasy. So I am not 100% convinced by this effort from Cheetos.

This particular packet came with an angry bird sticker and a tazo also with an angry bird on it. I have no idea what you do with a tazo. It seems they may be collectible but I can't think why. Do you stick them together to build a... something? Obviously whole swathes of popular culture have passed me by.

Anyhow. Generally not very impressed. And we didn't finish the bag.
There seem to be hundreds of different sorts of Cheetos so I hope the rest are a bit nicer.

I ought to tell you that there is a helpful nutritional pyramid on the back of the packet advising you that snacks should only make up the small pointy bit of the pyramid that is your diet. Below snacks come milk products and meat and fish, then fruit and veg, and right at the bottom carbohydrates (bread, wheat, toast, some small grainy things - rice maybe? - and pasta). You need to take regular exercise and drink lots of water. So, you know, rubbish crisps but good advice.

Update: January 2016
Noble Friend went to the Canary Islands and brought home another packet of these crispy crunchy ghosts. Which, as you see, has a different packet design.

And I think that the reluctant taste testers liked them better second time around. Apparently one of the taste testers thought these were sheep -shaped (!) but otherwise they all seemed pretty happy to tuck in and eat the entire packet. They are quite moreish even though they still don't taste of much.

Interesting how sometimes you like things better the second time. And sometimes you absolutely don't. I have yet to work out how this works. Perhaps it's just a thing and you can't do a scientific survey.