M&S Vampire Fangs 2020

Obviously the Reluctant Taste Testers and I have tried Vampire Fangs before, but I notice that this year's version is much more realistic in the tooth design than before. If vampire teeth can be realistic. Which obviously they’re not....

But just as tasty as before.

The Chef was swift to appreciate the more realistic toothiness, and shoved a set of “teeth” in his mouth to impersonate a vampire and entertain the Family Vegetarian. Yes, that’s a Friday night family dinner chez nous.

Cliffs of Moher Taste Tester, newly home in London after 6 months in Ireland, snacked down the remains of the packet with enjoyment.

Give them a try. Yum yum! Far too easy to eat... 

(For some reason they used to be called Vampire's Fangs, and are now called Vampire Fangs. Nevermind. The taste is just as good.)

Tiger Sour Cream

This is a brown bag of potato chips with sour cream flavour. Enjoy:-) says the packet.

Tiger, or now they seem to have changed the name to Flying Tiger, sells all sorts of things you didn’t know you needed or maybe didn’t even know existed. I gather it’s a great place for craft supplies or cuddly cacti (yup! Just what you never knew you needed). And apparently sometimes they sell crisps.

Which are very tasty. Tech taste tester was a big fan. He said he really loves sour cream as a crisp flavour. I have to say I didn’t think this crisp tasted of sour cream, it’s more of a very gentle cheese and onion flavour.

Sour cream usually has that strange breathy effect. These crisps don't.

No matter. It’s a very tasty crisp and the reluctant taste testers were pleased to approve. Even Senior taste tester (he’s very picky). A nice crunch too. It’s a good quality crisp.

I bought wooden pig-shaped gift tags as well as a packet of crisps.

M&S Vampire's Fangs

No tricks just treats says the very orange packet of this cheese flavoured corn snack. Orange except for the black bat motif.

The reluctant taste testers and I thought we must have tried this Halloween themed crispy snack before but apparently we tried a salt & vinegar version, and this is cheesy. Just your regular cheesey crispy snack which, as ever with Marks and Spencer, is very tasty indeed. With a great crunch.

Of course, if you eat too many they may stick to the roof of your mouth (in a good way), and likely dye your fingers orange with all that tasty flavour dust. But we can cope with that.

As I recall, the reluctant taste testers and I ate the entire 110g packet in no time at all. Yum yum. Not terribly like teeth though.

As always with this style of crispy snack these are made in Denmark.

M&S Christmas All Butter Rosemary & Sea Salt Straws

This rosemary flavoured (not very strongly flavoured - but in a good way) cheese straw from Marks & Spencer is kind of like a really rich shortbread. It is so extremely buttery that I felt I could only eat about half a straw at a time. They are rather large so you get quite a bit of buttery rosemariness with each straw.

Want to follow the serving suggestion? Take a white table cloth and scatter it liberally with golden glitter (can you imagine? glitter gets just everywhere), then strew the table with bits of yew, with red berries if possible,  and place your plateful of crispy snacks on the glittery cloth. Making sure, obviously, that there is a string of fairy lights in the background (actually not a problem this house because the Chef and I rather like to light the place with fairy lights).

Very tasty, but extremely rich. So you may feel like me that you can only manage about a half of one of these at a time.

M&S Reduced Fat Full on Flavour Sweet & Smokey BBQ

Here's a BBQ flavour crinkle cut crisp (full on flavour and reduced fat to boot) which appeared in the office one day. To my shame I cannot recall who provided it. Well, you know, the reluctant taste testers quite often proffer new acquisitions for all of us to try. Pretty much everyone from Giraffe Fan to Tech taste tester has provided something tasty over the last (not quite) 3 years. I do the writing it's true, but everyone gets to try if they want to.

And in fact I think the reluctant taste testers rather liked this gentle BBQ flavour. Not a BBQ fan myself I thought they were quite nice too.

And if you can find such a good crunch and pleasant taste together in a reduced fat crisp I think you are doing pretty well. A success then.

But I totally forgot to mention this is one of Marks & Spencer's crisps mysteriously made in Denmark.

M&S Full on Flavour Roast Beef & Onion

Yet another different flavour of crisp from those insatiable guys at the Marks & Spencer crisp development unit. Do they ever sleep? On recent evidence it would seem not. Although for some strange reason these crisps are made not in the UK but Denmark.

The reluctant taste testers and I quite liked these beefy crisps for the most part. I think most of this 150g packet got eaten. Quite beefy, quite oniony, and weirdly, suitable for vegetarians. Nice aroma too.

And there's an interesting serving suggestion here. Put the crisps into a bowl. Chop up some parsley, and cut up some onion rings. Toss the parsley and onion rings into the air over the bowl of crisps. I think it would be a mistake to do this, not to mention annoyingly fiddly to tidy up.

Kims Ostepops Original

History Graduate taste tester went to Denmark & Sweden for the weekend, as you do, and brought home this totally amazing packet of cheesy corn puffs.

Når du er sulten for sjov... says the packet: hungry for the fun of it (translates the website).

Little curly bright orange maize snacks with a superb cheesy taste. Extravagantly cheesy. The reluctant taste testers and I were not prepared for just how fabulous this crispy snack was going to be.

Made by Danish firm Kims along the lines of the good old British staple the cheesy Wotsit these corn puffs look pretty much like what we choose to think of as "the original" corn puff. But they don't cover your fingers in bright orange flavour dust that takes days to fade.

Of course, in other parts of the world one might say they are much like Cheetos. But as I haven't had too much exposure to Cheetos I will continue with the Wotsits theme.

And they taste better than Wotsits! Better even, I venture to suggest, than M&S Full on Flavour Cheese Tasters which are pretty good.

Amazing. And wow! And we all liked these a lot. Delicious.
This is intended to be a rave review. I hope you can tell.

I think we are all going to have to visit Denmark to pick up more crispy snacks from Kims.

I'm not wild about the packaging design though.

M&S Vampire's Fangs Salt & Vinegar

This is the 2015 Halloween offering from Marks & Spencer. Corn grits extruded and puffed into Vampire Fangs are a departure from last year's scorpion shapes. And the toothy shape is pretty good. One of the taste testers mistook them for false teeth and was quite put off.

 The crunch is not so light as it should be; it's rather dull and heavy. So all in all not a massive success there. But the salt & vinegar taste is not too strong and the reluctant taste testers and I found that we ate a few more than we meant to.

But after all, this is a snack for Halloween only.

The packaging is actually a much brighter, lighter orange than shown here. So this is yet another example of the scanner doing weird things with colour. But the ravens and the bats and the skulls and the (presumably haunted) house show up pretty well.

Happy Halloween!