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 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 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.

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 forget. You get a free temporary tattoo.

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.

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.

Hippeas Sweet & Smokin'

What? Tall Elegant taste tester went to the local health food shop and discovered organic chickpea puffs. Which look just like Cheesy Whotsits (Cheetos for those of you outside the UK). They also look very like Bamba Peanut Snacks from Israel or even Cheeky Monkey Peanut Butter Puffs.

I must say that from the look of the snack I was expecting a soft crunch (Wotsits) or a velvety texture (Bamba) but what you actually get is quite a hard crunch. A bit of a surprise.

And the taste is slightly sweet, slightly smokey, a little bit oniony, and also a little bit fugitive. Not a whole lot of taste to test. But quite nice and rather different.

The packet says We don't follow the rest of the snack pack. We go our own way. We think 'tastes good' and 'do good' can be in the same sentence. And we like, totally, love snacks. Join us to change things for the better, one chickpea at a time.
Peas, Love & Giving Back.

For every Hippeas bag sold, we give back. Find out about our social mission online. This company obviously has its heart in the right place, so check out their website and read all about how they support Farm Africa.

And there's an interesting new departure on the little guy throwing his rubbish away responsibly front. The scan got a little bit blurry so you may not be able to see that this guy is not only sporting a CND sign but making a V sign too.

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.

Alka Elephant Squeezed Pretzels with Pizza Taste

I couldn’t work out why I didn’t like this Pizza version of Alka’s Squeezed Pretzel snack as much as the Salt flavour.  

For some reason Pizza flavour doesn’t always work as well as you think it might in a crispy snack. But it wasn’t that. You can see what I mean about Pizza flavour if you look at these Cheetos Pizzarini snacks from Poland.

And somehow I thought these Pretzels tasted quite strongly of celery. But it wasn’t really that either. And naturally the texture and bite were the same as in the Salt version. So it definitely wasn’t that.

In the end Cliffs of Moher Taste Tester put her finger on the problem: there is simply too much taste going on. The more crispy snacks I try, the more I find I prefer simple flavours. And this would-be Pizza flavour is just too complicated for its own good. At least, that’s how I see it.

I think they should have stopped with the plain and simple salted version.

Grizzy and the Lemmings: Crunch Yeah

This top quality (and amazingly violent in a jolly fashion) Canadian animation is about a grizzly bear who moves into a park ranger’s house as soon as the ranger leaves - perhaps he goes home to visit his mum? we never find out - and a slice or gang of out of control lemmings determined to invade his space and destroy his peace. [Numerous online sources assure me that slice really is the word for a group of lemmings but I confess I really find this quite hard to believe.]

Grizzy mostly eats salmon (he also watches what looks like Salmon TV), and a Nutella-style spread called Yummy; sometimes he spreads Yummy on his fish. The lemmings love speed, and anything bouncy (or disco), and will do anything including destroying the entire planet for a jar of Yummy but they are also pretty keen on the would-be Cheesy Wotsit (or Cheeto) crispy snack Grizzy sometimes eats: it’s called Crunch Yeah.

This rather bad snap of Grizzy vaulting upside down to escape some ghastly fate shows a packet of Crunch Yeah tucked into his belt.Which is interesting as Grizzy never normally wears a belt.

If any crispy snack entrepreneur is thinking of launching a new Wotsit style corn puff type of snack I can’t help feeling that “Crunch Yeah” wouldn’t be a bad name. I would probably buy a packet. I think maybe the reluctant taste testers might too. I might suggest calling it Crunch Yeah! though. I feel an exclamation mark might help the marketing.

I have struggled to find a scene to grab a shot of the Crunch Yeah snack but if you know what Wotsits or Cheetos look like you will know just what I’m talking about, and here’s a photo of some M&S Cheese Tasters (very similar in style) just in case you don’t.

Sadly only ever seen on French TV.

Tayto ChicKatees ChicKen (Republic of Ireland)

I know I have discussed this chicken flavour maize puff snack with Cliffs of Moher Taste Tester because I was so stunned to discover a maize puff that didn’t taste of cheese. I distinctly remember standing beside her desk one lunchtime at work and saying, “Chicken? Who on earth thought of that?

Well, apparently Irish crisp giants Tayto thought of chicken flavour, so here we are with a bright blue packet covered in slightly hysterical cartoon chickens. Obviously.

Feelin’ peckish? asks the packet, inside this bag are Mr Tayto’s delicious ChicKatees prime for a kickin’. What are you waiting for? Don’t just sit there reading the back of this packet, dive on in there and show those chickens who’s boss! Why a capital K in the middle of the word I don’t know.

Well, yes. Hmm. It’s a typical maize based snack. Or is it? The traditional Cheesy Wotsits style snack is cheesy. The Danish crispy snack Kims Ostepops which the reluctant taste testers learned to love after a single bite is cheesy. The ever fabulous M&S Cheese Tasters which, obviously is a cheesy snack.

Or, yes OK, the rather different Tesco Sausage Roll flavour... but that was a Christmas special so you could argue it doesn’t really count. Oh, er, and Cheetos Spirals Cheese & Tomato Ketchup from Poland. Oh alright then. I have argued myself out of my own argument. But do admit that chicken flavour is a little out of the ordinary for a maize puff snack.

Slightly unfortunate: it’s not a very chickeny taste. After a bit of practice you can convince yourself it’s a chicken flavour, but it isn’t very strong. I thought the most chickeny bit was the left over flavour dust at the bottom of the packet. Do not neglect the flavour dust.

It’s quite tasty as snacks go though, and the Chef and I had no trouble snacking down this little packet in double quick time.

Penguins of Madagascar: Cheezy Dibbles

 Yes, crispy snack fans, you’re all wondering why I never got around to posting the fabulous-looking Cheezy Dibbles before aren’t you? Dunno really. But Penguins of Madagascar was on TV again this Christmas and once again I spotted this fabulous cheesy snack. So now is the time.

So here’s a tribute to this wonderful-looking crispy snack, a maize puff, covered in yummy cheesy tastiness, probably chock full of E numbers, and looking just like our favourite Cheetos or Cheesy Wotsits, or even the fabulously fictitious Crunch Yeah.

This crispy snack is a favourite with our heroic penguins.

But E numbers have a disastrous effect, not only on small children, but also on penguins as we can see from the scenes in the film where orange flavour-dust stained penguins fail to concentrate on the task ahead. And go a bit loopy.

Probably extremely tasty if only they actually existed. Sadly I don’t think they’re real.

Tesco Cheese Puffs

The reluctant taste testers and I have tried several versions of this popular cheesy snack now, and I was interested to see how Tesco managed it. 

We've tried Essential Waitrose Cheese Puffs which it seems I rather liked. But do beware. For some reason this product contains wheat flour so not suitable for anyone avoiding gluten or (of course) wheat. We've also tried the Marks & Spencer version Full on Flavour Cheese Tasters which are superb. 

And then, of course, there's the original Cheesy Wotsits. Only they aren't original any more. It really isn't the same when a snack you used to love changed from fried to baked. Sigh. Healthier perhaps, but nothing like so tasty as I remember. Sigh again. I'm not even going to think about Cheetos.

But we mustn't forget the fabulous Kims Ostepops brought back from Scandinavia by the late lamented History Graduate taste tester, No, he's not dead (phew!), just moved on to a different job with a well-known film production company.

So what did we think of these Cheese Puffs? Quite nice I thought. Good texture, good lot of flavour dust. Discerning Architectural taste tester told me she didn't like this style of snack because she doesn't like the orange flavour dust on her fingers; Slightly Red Haired Bristolian was astonished. That's the best bit, she said, the ones at the bottom of the packet have more flavour dust and are the best... and then there's the licking of the finger and poking it into the corner of the packet. Fancy not liking that! And what's more Tall Elegant taste tester agreed.

The flavour here is a little bit "dairy" I thought. A bit buttery. But OK none the worse for that really, and after a couple of puffs the flavour is pretty good. Quite tasty altogether. But there are many good contenders in this crispy snack section. If possible I think I would go for the M&S version or the Ostepops if I could. But don't think I'm turning up my nose at the Tesco version.

I brought some home and the Chef seems to have enjoyed them.