The Real McCoy's Chips Chip Shop Salt & Vinegar

Wow! these are vinegary. So vinegary that the taste gets into your nose.

The text on the packet tells us that shoppers have been flocking to local stores to get their hands on the latest full on Chip Shop experience - in a bag! Well, perhaps. But I'm not certain I'm going to flock anywhere.  This crispy snack is described as crinkled chips but they're not a crinkle cut crisp: they are obviously extruded from some fancy machine.

I quite like the look of the snack, but the flavour not so much. Apparently you can get them in Sea Salt and Curry Sauce flavours. Hmmn.. the Sea Salt might be OK. Not so keen to try the Curry Sauce.

I'm not a regular visitor to chip shops. I had some nice chips from a place in Cirencester a million years ago and was very unwell after eating them so ... well, obviously that doesn't encourage you to go back. Plus I don't eat fish and I wasn't brought up to eat a thing called a saveloy. I'm not even sure we have a local chip shop round here.

I'm not sure I'm going to recommend this crispy snack. Not nasty, but not to my personal taste. If you like the look of it, give it a try. You might think I a quite wrong. Let me know.

Landau Natural Foods Potato Poppers Sweet BBQ

I really have to say that in my opinion this is a horrible packaging design. The snack on the packaging is grey or maybe beige and looks like mushrooms. Or maybe those weird mushroom-shaped meringue thingies you sometimes find.

But what do you find inside the packet? Yes, these little bright orange crispy snack circles. Nothing like the picture on the packet. I know. We are used to the packaging image being somewhat different from the actual snack... but this is ridiculous. 

And the snack itself? Well, I can tell you that Extremely Senior Volunteer taste tester ate quite a lot. I think the reluctant taste testers ate a fair amount, but Tech taste tester who was out of the office that morning on a confidential legal mission only got crumbs. Probably because of Extremely Senior Volunteer's enthusiasm.

Not a bad BBQ flavour and quite sweet but I thought there was an odd acrid aftertaste that spoiled the snack for me.

This is a low fat potato snack with 90% less fat than regular potato chips! Non GMO, all natural and cholesterol free. Potato Poppers are popped not fried. Landau... where good-health meets great taste. Or so the packet tells me.

Lay's Stix Ketchup

I finally discovered the Polish shop in East Finchley recommended by one of the taste testers. And found this great packet (160g) of crispy potato sticks on special. Because they were almost at their sell by date.

What an amazing crunchy crispy snack! The Chef quite likes them (you know he is more restrained than I am) and I like them a lot. These teeny weeny chips have a good crunch and a great taste. Ketchup is a crispy snack flavour that seems to work very well.

Chipsy ziemniaczane o smaku ketchupu says the packet. Well, any fule kno that smaku ketchupu means ketchup flavour, but bear with me while I look up the rest of it on Google Translate as I don't speak much (any) Polish.... OK: potato chips flavoured with ketchup. Voila!

Kind of amazing that a word like ziemniaczane means potato though. Doesn't look very much like to the average English speaker.

And interesting to see that while some European crisps have text in many different languages (including English even if they're not sold here), Polish crisps have no truck with any language other than Polish. Although there is a sticky label with the ingredients in English added by the importer.

Anyway, an ex-taste tester from Poland tells me that people in Poland don't eat crisps (I may have mentioned this before). Obviously these fabulously crispy sticks aren't exactly crisps but... But they are definitely Polish. And if these are genuinely not eaten in Poland, Frito Lay Poland Sp. z.o.o. will be most disappointed.

I took the packet in to work and tried it on the reluctant taste testers. Even the most sceptical tester admitted they were tastier than she had expected. Indeed, pretty much everyone liked the taste a great deal, although we did feel that the teeny weeny chip shape does make them difficult to eat in quantity. But I think we all did our best.

The bag is an odd tall narrow shape with a printed zip showing where the bag should be opened Tutaj otwórz! and the helpful information that opening the "zip" will help you to share the contents. Although opening this zip would, I can't help feeling, cause the contents to spill absolutely everywhere.