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.

Walkers Max Flamin' Hot

For some reason a lot of people are deluded into believing that August is a summer month. Not this year it's not. What with the overcast skies, the dark, the cold, the wind, the rain (sometimes), the mugginess and the heat (sometimes) the weather hasn't been very nice. And we do wish it would make up its mind.

So what better time to try Walkers Max Flamin' Hot? According to the packet these crisps have a "deep ridged taste". Really? They certainly have deep ridges but I'm not sure that qualifies as a taste. But the Flamin' Hot flavour might do us good.

So what did we think? Well, I wasn't super impressed that the aroma on opening the bag was basically green peppers. Which I really don't like. And which do not appear on the list of ingredients.

This is a dark orange crinkle cut crisp with quite a hot flavour - brought about, no doubt, by the addition of Flamin' Hot Seasoning.

The taste is pretty hot. And, despite no green peppers it does have a pretty strong peppery taste. And none of the reluctant taste testers liked the taste much. But almost all of this 50g packet did get eaten. Mostly by the Dutch taste tester who somehow couldn't stop eating them even though she said she didn't like them.

We weren't madly impressed. But this is the first time in a long while I've featured the little guy throwing his rubbish away responsibly. And this is a very fine example.

Thinking about the nastiness of the weather recently reminds me of one of my favourite August holidays. In a haunted Gloucestershire farmhouse and about 40 years ago now. I didn't realise I'd got so old! No heating except the kitchen range (in winter only) and the big fireplace in the sitting room. I went to stay with a school friend while her parents were off somewhere else. And it was SO COLD. We basically only left the house to put the chickens out in the morning and shoo them back home at night. Every so often we bicycled into the local village to buy bread and milk and telephone my mother in far away London (from a public phone box) to let her know I was still alive. I don't even remember a television but we did listen to a lot of records. School friend's older sister had a large collection of vinyl and I learned to love Cat Stevens and Donovan.

But I don't remember having any crisps at all.

Mega Monster Munch Flamin' Hot

I went to the Co-op shop at the local petrol station on my way to work because the weather forecast for lunchtime was horrible and I thought I'd better pick up a sandwich before it started to rain. And along with a not half bad cheese ploughmans I grabbed this tiny (22g) bag of Monster Munch.

It was only when I got to the office that I realised it says "multipack bag, not for resale". So what the Co-op was doing selling me this is anyone's guess. However, they did and here's what we thought.

Mighty bites of Flamin' Hot flavour baked corn snack. Bigger than they used to be. Ah ha? And, vitally important; aimed squarely at children.

Hmn... there are a lot of chemicals in the ingredients. MSG, Disodium 5'ribonucleotide, Citric Acid, Malic Acid, plus Fructose, Lactose and sugar. Not super healthy for a product aimed at the under 10s.

The contents of this bag smelled horrible. But tasted somewhat better than horrible. Although to be honest we were not mad keen. Quite hot and chilli-ish but also curry-ish. The texture is a bit dry. This tiny bag only had a few Mega Monsters in it (the photo shows the entire contents) and it was all morning before the last one was eaten.

Noble friend called them big curry paws and that's about right. One of the archivists tried taste testing and he wasn't mad for this crispy snack either.

Suitable for monsters and vegetarians. And there is a little monster disposing of his rubbish responsibly on the back of the packet. Which is probably the best thing about this snack.