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.)

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.

Well and Truly Crunchy Really Cheesy Corn Based Snacks

Where did I pick up this packet of Well & Truly crispy snacks? Oh yes, I remember, a swanky deli in Hampstead.

I had high hopes.

But. Just like one of those people on Escape to the Country who quite liked the house, there’s always a but. And I think mine is that I really prefer the cheap, the ordinary, the mass produced when it comes to crispy snacks. OK that’s excluding the fabulous ROKA Cheese Crispies which have never been cheap and I’ve loved them since I was 4 (You can see my thoughts on Cheese Crispies in the sidebar).

All natural ingredients, gluten free, 40% less fat than average cheese crisps says the packet. #haveitall. Better in every sense. We’re about positivity, not prohibition! Say no to sad snacks. Choose real snack satisfaction. Big on flavour. Colossal on crunch. Less fat. Vegetarian. No added sugar. GM free. And other positive stuff.

Except this isn’t a very cheesy snack. The crunch isn’t particularly crunchy and the cheesy flavour isn’t particularly cheesy. And the reluctant taste testers were no more impressed than I was.

Here’s the thing. The packaging comes across all English looking, but this crispy snack is made in Italy. Which could be the problem. Because almost all Italian crisps and crispy snacks we’ve tried had a whole lot less flavour than British snacks and crisps. I don't know why but it is so.

U Tortillas Roll's Goût Fromage

Ah yes, sorry French crisp fans, this is a very good example of weird French punctuation. In English I imagine we would say Tortilla Rolls. Which is what we have here.

The reluctant taste testers have tried similar crispy snacks from Marks & Spencer in Maple Bacon
flavour, and also Cinnamon Sugar. But that was back in 2016.

I think the basic tortilla here is slightly thicker than in the M&S versions which were very brittle. This is more like an actual tortilla chip. And in fact there were several flat chips in the packet that had escaped the rolling procedure.

New Forest taste tester agreed with me that while a perfectly fine snack, this would probably benefit from a dip. She thought salsa or guacamole, I thought sour cream. But either would be tasty.

Managerial taste tester said he couldn’t make up his mind if he liked it or not; and had another just in case he did. And perhaps another.

As so often, I took a few home for the Chef to try and he seems to have been quite taken with these crispy rolls.

The packet says Tex Mex but I can’t vouch for the accuryof that claim.

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.

Osem Popco Butterscotch Corn Snack

This is popcorn. So why call it a corn snack? That seems odd.

Tech taste tester told me he doesn't do popcorn (fair enough) and not many of the reluctant taste testers seemed mad keen but the Chef has happily snacked down most of this 75g packet without complaint. Trust me: he complains if he feels the need.

I couldn't quite grasp why I didn't really like this crispy snack. The popcorn itself is perfectly fine. Nothing odd there at all; and some popcorn can be really bad. I think it must be the butterscotch. I was expecting toffee. No matter that the label says "butterscotch" in fairly large letters I still expected toffee flavour.

If I had been expecting butterscotch I think I'd have been happy. Expectations are weird aren't they?

Kosher for passover.

The Food Doctor Popped Crisp Thins Sour Cream & Basil

I had to go to the Royal Free the other day for a blood test. The blood nurse at my surgery is on maternity leave and goodness knows when she'll be back so no-one not at death's door (not me any more) gets to have a blood test close to home.

Anyway, I wandered into the handy hospital shop to see how healthy or otherwise the snacks on offer might be. Some of them definitely not (because they're on offer in any handy shop), but these might be different.

These crisps are owned by a company based in (I hesitate to say made in) Harley Street in London. Those of you not from the UK may not be aware that Harley Street (not far from Oxford Street and at 90 degrees to Baker Street of Sherlock Holmes fame) is where all the expensive private doctors hang out here in London.

So obviously some doctor with an interest in the power of nutrition has started a crispy snack business. What a good idea. They are on a mission to make balanced, healthy and wholesome foods that'll do your mind and body good it says on the packet. This crispy snack is nutritionist approved... a dose of goodness in every bag.

Except... are they tasty? Would I buy these crisps again?

Well, erm, no. No I wouldn’t. The crunch is OK but it’s soya and corn not my favourite, potato, and the taste is... sort of more like a pasta sauce than a crispy snack. Or so some of the reluctant taste testers thought.

It’s a shame though, because I’m guessing most of us would be happy to eat healthy crispy snacks if only they were as tasty as a normal (unhealthy) snack. But let’s be honest. None of the the healthy snacks the reluctant taste testers and I have tried are anything like as nice, as tasty as the traditional unhealthy varieties. Part of the problem is that baked snacks are almost never as tasty as fried, and messing about with traditional much loved flavours is never a good thing.

A good try. But not for us.

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.

Funyuns Onion Flavoured Rings

Here's another little packet of crisps you can't really buy in the UK. Another corn snack, this time supposed to be ring shaped, although (and possibly because they're imported from the United States and then posted to me) there were quite a lot of breakages so only 2 actual rings.

Of course that doesn't affect the flavour but I always feel it's a shame when the shape you expect doesn't materialise.

I can exclusively reveal that this is quite a light onion flavoured snack. Quite lightly onion flavoured. Gently tasty and (hurrah!) with no after taste. Noble Friend was very enthusiastic and I think all the other taste testers quite enjoyed them too.

Osem Apropo Sour Cream Flavour Corn Snack

So thanks to the wonderful resource that is google translate (although obviously it's not totally reliable) and a handy blog post I discovered from Daniela at  Isreveiw1, I have been able to translate something about this crispy snack in the privacy of my own home. The Isreview1 blog is about a different flavour bugle shaped snack from Osem, in fact Daniela seems to have reviewed two other flavours, but it shoved me in what I think it is the right direction. So that was a great help.

Thanks very much to Daniela although she doesn't seem to have posted anything since 2014 so perhaps she won't notice. (And how annoying! I see LinkWithin works on Isreview1 but has completely stopped working on this blog and I have no idea why.)

Anyway, I deduce that this crispy snack is made by Osem but as almost the whole of the text on this packet in in the hebrew alphabet (plus a little in arabic script) it was quite hard to tell.

And thanks to google translate (and Daniela)  I know it is a maize snack. It's hard for the non-reader of Hebew to be sure because the typeface on the packet is different from that offered by google. But luckily the Osem website comes in an English version. A savoury cone-shaped snack it says. Apropos has a delicate taste and a crispy texture and contains no cholesterol or preservatives. Thanks to its unique shape it has become the number one entertainment snack in Israel, alongside dips and spreads, but is also popular as a personal snack.

OK. What's a personal snack I wonder?

And the reluctant taste testers tested the crispiness so I can confirm that crispy is correct. And it's probably a corn snack although you can't really tell from the taste. But I'm really not at all certain what the flavour is meant to be. It looks as though it should be sour cream (see the packet) but you can't taste sour cream. And why doesn't the website have anything to say about the flavour? It really doesn't. Not helpful.

Noble Friend opined that this crispy snack tasted a little bit sweet, a little bit salty and a little bit nothing at all. But nonetheless a little bit tasty and moreish. (A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll perhaps?) But I could see what she meant. The Chef thought it tasted of nothing at all. But both of them ate quite a few.

So oddly tasteless in a strange way but quite a success.

Oh, and today is the 80th birthday of television. So let's all celebrate that amazing fact. And the first TV show was broadcast not 5 miles (not exactly sure how far it is, but not very far) from where the Chef and I live, at a place called Alexandra Palace. All us locals call it Ally Pally. Amazing eh?

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.

Smiths Frazzles Crispy Bacon

Wow these are salty!

I love salt, I really do, but this maize-based crispy snack is the saltiest thing I have tried for a long long time.

What we have here is a crispy crunchy corn snack made to look like strips of streaky bacon. Except that the ones in the packet look a lot less like streaky bacon than the ones on the packet: there's a lot less pinky brown stripiness in real life (which in real life is beetroot red in places not pinky brown at all). But they do feature a pretty good bacon-style crinkle.

The packet tells me Frazzles have been around since 1975. And I don't imagine they have changed very much; they do have a 1970s feel about them. The bag is only 43g which has got to be a good thing. Even a massive fan of should not be eating very many of these at a time. Don't run away with the idea that I dislike them. But I wouldn't want a packet every day. Or every week really.

The Smiths brand is of course owned by Walkers (so the packet features a little guy throwing his rubbish away responsibly). Walkers are owned by Frito-Lay, who are in turn owned by PepsiCo Inc. There are a number of bacon-alike crispy snacks out there but I'm lead to believe that Frazzles are the original.

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.

Mega Monster Munch Roast Beef Flavour

Oh boy! Massive hunks of roast beef flavour baked corn snack. Yes, this 85g bag of crunchy corn snackiness is fairly mega. However, it is not made of roast beef. No: these monstrous snacks are suitable for monsters and vegetarians. I've got to say though, that if I were a vegetarian I would probably not be tempted by a crispy snack allegedly flavoured with roast beef.

However, to be honest they don't really taste of roast beef and no wonder considering the flavour is made up of wheat rusk, hydrolysed soya protein. lactose, "flavourings" (whatever that means) and flavour enhancers.

The flavour is sort of beef in a spicy sauce. Or possibly Oxo. The reluctant taste testers ate quite a lot of these but were baffled to learn they weren't eating curry flavour crispy snacks. Or as one of them put it, you know, that curry sauce you get abroad that isn't really very like curry at all.

Each individual monster foot-shaped snack has quite a lot of crunchy flavour dust which comes off on your fingers and transfers the taste to your fingers too. OK if you are a 10 year old boy but not so good for a grown-up food writer (that's me).

Quite tasty (I liked them better than the Pickled Onion version) but oh so completely not a real food. Yes, yes, I know they're made with maize and wheat flour and stuff but this is a majorly processed food.

Obviously this is another snack aimed at 10 year olds. Or possibly even younger children. I am quite horrified how many children in pushchairs seem to be eating crisps while they are wheeled along. I think if you are old enough for crisps you are old enough to walk. Not to mention when I was a child crispy snacks were a huge treat, for weekends or parties only.

I know. It seems like double standards to complain about children eating crisps as I eat so many. But actually I don't. I try hard never to finish a packet on my own and always share when I can. And anyway, I know that crispy snacks are bad for me and try to eat healthy food like salads when I sit down to dinner. What are the children in the pushchairs given for their dinners I wonder? Maybe they're not even eating dinner but grazing on junk food all day long.

This bag is quite large but in fact contains a relatively small number of Monster Munches simply because each individual Munch is so big. If I put one in my mouth that's it. I can't speak. No room for more than one. They are massive.

Monster Munch is of course owned by Walkers, and the Walkers design team is running true to form; the little man who disposes of his rubbish responsibly has been transformed into a roast beef monster. And the sell by date says monsters are here forever; this snack is best before... A little bit too cute perhaps. But as I said before, these are obviously aimed at 10 year old boys (and girls) and not grown up food writers.

Golden Wonder Transform-a-Snack Spicy

Oh my goodness! Who knew you could get transformer style crisps and build your own vehicle from the crispy parts? Apparently not me.

Transform-a-Snack comes in Spicy, Cheese & Onion, Beef, Spicy BBQ, Pickled Onion and Flamin' Hot flavours. I've never seen them for sale (where would you sell such an amazing crispy snack? sadly, it seems, not around here) so I've got all this info from the Golden Wonder website. Slightly disappointed to find that the transformers are all the same. OK, this is obvious from a business point of view; to make different shapes for each flavour would be prohibitively expensive, but it is a shame you don't get to make a different vehicle in Spicy flavour from, say, Flamin' Hot.

This packet was part of my exciting birthday present from the Family Vegetarian and the Graffiti Artist. I gather that the Graffiti Artist is a big fan of Transform-a-Snacks so I look forward to trying them.

Here we have the two shapes. The body with front and rear axels, and the wheels. And here we have the vehicle created by me. How fun is this?

I'm not sure what Spicy Transform-a-Snacks actually taste of but (according to the packaging) "they're on another planet". Most of the flavouring listed on the packet appears to be garlic but there's more to the taste than that.

The colouring of paprika and nutmeg seem to contribute quite a bit. It's an interesting spicy mix. Quite unusual. And the crunch of corn and potato together is rather good. The texture of each piece is bubbly, with that good crunch, perhaps a little oily and with a dusting of crunchy bits.

"Bringing you the biggest flavours in the universe, Transform-a-Snacks are baked not fried for a crunch that's out of this world" says the packaging.  I'd be interested to see what the other flavours are like so I can "transform my taste buds". If I ever find a shop that sells them....

Weird but in a really good way. The Chef and I liked these and finished the packet enthusiastically.

Space Raiders Spicy

Time to try another flavour from Space Raiders.  And another bag of crisps aimed at 8 year olds from the newsagent run by the amazingly cheerful man. Not much stock in just now: they're about to redecorate.

This time it's Spicy. Much to my surprise I really enjoyed the Pickled Onion flavour but the Spicy isn't quite so good. Very tasty, with a faint aroma of curry, good crunch, nice texture; nothing the matter with it at all and I was pushed not to eat them all at once. OK, I admit it, extremely tasty. Just not quite so good as the Pickled Onion.

I only noticed these "cosmic" corn snacks were faintly orangey brown when I read on the packet they are coloured with paprika extract and spice. What spice I don't know, and why paprika does not in this case qualify as a spice I don't know either. The flavour comes from soy sauce, curry powder, dried tomato, barley malt extract and barley malt vinegar.

Not much else to say really.
Good taste.
Not expensive (only 20p in case you missed the giant red strap across the top of the packet). Suitable for vegetarians.
Baked not fried.
Comes with advice on keeping fit; although the advice prints out at 10mm x 40mm (so very very small) it is a link to real website. Erm... but the health advice comes direct to you from United Biscuits who, guess what? make biscuits and snacks.
                                 

Oh well. You can't have everything.

18 January 2022 Update 

I just discovered there is a link to this page on Wikipedia! How surprising is that? Perhaps I am an internationally renowned food writer after all. Perhaps not.

M&S Poisonous Scorpions Pickled Onion

Here we have a delightful Halloween offering from the crisp development team at Marks & Spencer.

And what a top job they've done on this reconstituted maize snack aimed squarely at the pre-teen market. Scorpion shapes! Of course you'd associate scorpions with Halloween. Or would you? I'm pretty sure I don't but I suppose I would find it very scary if a scorpion suddenly appeared in my kitchen.

They have the scorpions just right. Lovely big claws, good strong tail shape, generally extremely scorpiony. I was very impressed how few in the packet were broken. And a ghostly shade of pale green (chlorophyll) to set them off - you get more green by artificial light for some reason but sadly they don't glow in the dark (think of the potential E numbers though). Lovely!

Unfortunately the pickled onion flavour is not so good. The initial smell is pickled onion but it's more of a vinegar flavour than anything else and a little harsh. If you want a proper pickled onion snack try Space Raiders Pickled Onion. Now they were good. Or of course you could try actual pickled onions.

The texture too is not  the best. I found these quite dry, and almost papery. And chewy rather than crunchy.

So not the best pickled onion flavoured corn snack in the world but having said that I ate quite a lot of these. I'd have finished the packet all on my own but I thought perhaps I'd better not.

Top marks for the shape.

Suitable for vegetarians and (weirdly) made in Denmark.
Impressively lurid packaging eh?