Kev's Snack Reviews

So as well as the Brussels Sprouts crisps I reviewed the other day, there were two other flavours in the "Christmas Dinner for Sprout Lovers" multipack from Walkers: Pigs in Blankets and Turkey & Stuffing. Both tasty, festive and pretty normal considering! The multipacks are £1 in Sainsbury's, and there's also another Christmas Dinner edition for " Sprout Haters " - with Glazed Ham, Cheese and Cranberry and also Turkey and Stuffing, available from Ocado. The cheese and cranberry ones sound like something I'd try! Back to today's flavours then; the Pigs in Blankets is pretty much smoky bacon, but perhaps with a stronger bacon flavour than the regular variety. It was hard to tell, but they're certainly very tasty and a welcome change after the vegetable-centric (that gets it's green from chlorphyl) Sprout Crisps! As someone mentioned in the comments of the last review, though...the bacon flavour does tend to repeat on you afterwards....

It's that time of year when all the new products are being launched - hurrah! Let's celebrate with another Spotted In Shops post... First up is the above bar of Bournville Orange Dark Chocolate which I spotted in Iceland Foods. It costs £1, is Dairy Free and has a "New Old!" label on...because this isn't the first time Cadbury have made this bar. It was around many years ago (2009!) along with an Old Jamaica Bournville , just before Cadbury were taken over by Kraft.  Other new developments from Cadbury are their Darkmilk range; a rich and creamy chocolate with a higher percentage of cocoa than Dairy Milk (but still containing milk, obviously). Currently available for £1 from Tesco in an Original variety... Plus Roasted Almond. Does this sound like your kind of thing? Let me know in the comments! A rather strange product Cadbury have launched is this Sweet Shop style bag of chocolates, that includes Dairy Milk, Caramel, Fudge and E...

Today I'm back with yet another Spotted In Shops - this time focusing on the new Walkers Crisps "Flavours of the decade" range. I saw these in Sainsbury's Express, however they will no doubt be available in other stores soon. This range marks Walkers' 70th Anniversary and the flavours are inspired by every decade they've been making crisps. Interesting fact: Walkers were founded in Leicester in 1948 by Englishman Henry Walker. Walkers Crisps Coronation Chicken - 1950's The classic curry sandwich filling in crisp form? Yes please! Walkers Crisps Roast Lamb & Mint - 1960's I'm not sure I fancy these... Walkers Crisps Cheese Fondue - 1970's A variety based on melted cheese... Walkers Crisps Chicken Tikka Masala - 1980's Chicken Tikka...now this sounds like my kind of crisp! Walkers Crisps BBQ Rib - 1990's One for the 90's kids! Walkers Crisps Sweet Chilli - 2000's I don't recall this particular vari...

I always love finding a new Walkers crisp flavour, they tend to push the boat out in terms of unusual varieties - who can forget ones from last year such as Cheese, Cucumber & Heinz Salad Cream , Bacon & Heinz Tomato Ketchup and Sausage & HP Brown Sauce Crisps? This year they've gone for something more "on trend", in their "Walkers Max Deep Ridged" range. It is of course BBQ Pulled Pork, which unfortunately isn't suitable for vegetarians - sorry folks! The crisps are certainly deep ridged alright, and mighty huge...check out the length of the one above! Luckily they delivered as much on flavour as they did in size: they have a strong, smoky BBQ pork flavour, slightly sweet and very meaty. They're very moreish, athough I felt happily satisfied from just the one bag. They're a bit pricey at £1.05 per 50g bag at WH Smiths, but that's more down to WH Smiths always overcharging for stuff. I expect these will be a lot cheaper...

My last review of Walkers new sandwich-inspired is finally here...and I've saved the "best" til last, it's Bacon & Tomato Ketchup! Now some people prefer Brown Sauce with a bacon butty...but Walkers don't care about that and went with tomato ketchup aka Red Sauce. These are vegetarian, strangely enough, but not vegan as they contain dairy. They're in most supermarkets for around 50p or so right now and you can win £10,000 in their online competition. On eating them I first could taste the traditional bacon flavour, they were pretty much like regular Bacon flavour Walkers crisps...but then there's the sweeter tomato flavour in the aftertaste, and it's quite strong. It's a bit too sweet actually and kind of detracts from the bacon. I enjoyed these but they're not one of the best of the new flavours. Overall, these are okay but they're not as good as regular bacon flavour walkers crisps. They're a nice novelty for the time ...

Walkers recently unleashed a new range of sandwich inspired crisps upon the public...and I've alreday tried the unusual but tasty Cucumber, Cheese and Salad Cream variety as well as Ham and Mustard. This time around I just had to go for Chicken and Mayo, as I've always loved Walkers Chicken flavour crisps since I was a kid. I was curious what the addition of mayonaise flavouring would bring to the mix... Well, turns out it doesn't add much flavour-wise to these crisps. They taste pretty similar to regular Walkers Chicken flavour crisps, but perhaps with a creamier, sweeter edge. It's not particularly obvious but I suppose I can see how it's suppsoed to be chicken and mayonnaise flavour. They're nice, but nothing that stands out amongst the other flavours in the range. Stay tuned for my review of the Sausage and Brown Sauce variety...I may even give the Bacon & Ketchup ones a go too! 7.5 out of 10.

Bugles have been around for a while now, sold by different companies in different countries, it seems. They used to be sold by Golden Wonder in the UK in the early 2000's, but disappeared off shelves when the company went bust. However it seems that Walkers now have rights to the brand and have re-launched them with flavours such as Cheese, BBQ and Sour Cream & Black Pepper. I found a large bag of the latter in Asda for £1 recently, and they also had the Cheese variety, plus a multipack of the BBQ ones in a smaller pack format. These are basically horn shaped crunchy corn snacks with a sour cream and pepper coating, and they're verrrrrrry moreish! When I opened the pack I wasn't expecting a lot, but once I started eating I found I couldn't stop, they're so addictive. They're light, crunchy, and with just the right amount of sour cream and pepper flavouring to make them tasty, but without the usual nasty additives like yeast extract or MSG, that corn ...

Winner of the most pointless new product of the year goes to...Walkers Crisps Tear 'N Share! Yes, Walkers have done what so many companies do when sales fall and have repackaged an existing product in a new format for a different "occasion", so they can slap a "new" label on it.  These Walkers Tear N Share are in a bag that also supposedly doubles up as a bowl, and contain Walkers Thicker Cut crisps. When I opened the bag I was puzzled as to what was so different, it didn't look like much of a "bowl" to me, just a regular old bag of crisps!  Apparently, according to the wrapper I'd opened it wrong, so I opened it from the other side to see if it looked any more like a bowl. No luck!: It was a bit easier to keep it upright though, if you should choose to share these crisps with friends. Because maybe your friends are too stupid to hold a "regular" bag of crisps without dropping them!  The crisps tasted like...

A few new snacks I've seen in shops recently... Kinder Bueno DARK (Limited Edition) These new dark chocolate Kinder Bueno's seem to be a very limited edition - I've only seen them in one Spar store so far. If you've tried one do let me know your thoughts in the comments... Walkers Mixups Snacks Mix: Walkers are taking a leaf out of Cadbury's book and combining several different snacks in one bag for their new "Mixups" range. This cheese variety contains Wotsits, Doritos, Monster Munch and French Fries. Spotted at Asda. There's also a Spicy variety... Plus a Crisps Mix , with both Cheese and Worcester Sauce Walkers crisps... Plus  Cheese & Bacon flavour... Hula Hoops Puft Cheese: Also new in the savoury snacks category are Hoola Hoops Puft, which are a "light and crispy" take on the famous hoop-shaped snacks. I'm not sure about the name... Of course, they wouldn't be complete without a Salt ...