MY CRISPS JOURNEY

10 Packets Of Crisps That Have Stayed With Me . . .

Although a guilty participant myself, like many I realised fairly quickly what the ‘Pick 10 Albums That Stayed With You’ thang on Facebook started becoming — a chance, like all lists, to prove the unimpeachably eclectic taste of the participant rather than actually reveal anything. It was the social-media equivalent of putting all your COOLEST albums at the front of your racks/on your record-player before going out of an evening (in the ridiculous hope that should you pull, whoever you’d managed to get back to yours would see the devestating width, breadth and intrigue of your records and immediately fall hard for you).

Music is way too diffuse and myriad to have these tricks of selective memory perform anything other than that kind of self-promotional role. I found myself eliminating so much, and including stuff I loved but that barely ‘stayed’ with me if only to tick off equality/diversity boxes. Music is so loaded with resonances, political, social, racial, sexual, every choice seemed to say something I didn’t particularly want saying. I adhered to the rule of not saying anything about each album — to say a word would have meant confronting the grisly sound of my own pride and prejudice. And once I was done I started another list, out of boredom essentially, but a list that grew beyond my initial plans and that fostered way more intriguing comment than my music list, even though like music the list’s subject has sired me from toddler to adult, has always been there. Crisps. I’ve done alot of thinking about crisps over the years as I’m sure you have too. Alot. These are 10 crisps that I’ve enjoyed over the years but crucially they’re 10 crisps that afford an aperture into where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going as a crisps-eating nation.

BTW — anyone quibbling that some of these qualify as snacks not crisps can fuck right off. The qualifying variables are that they have to be potato/maize/cereal based and savoury in flavour. With those caveats in place, join me on my crisps journey. What a long, strange, salty trip it’s been.

1. Walkers Snaps: Spicy Tomato Flavour

I think at root, what I miss is mystery. And silence. And being LEFT the FUCK alone.

Nostalgia doesn’t come into it. You can still buy Snaps, and they’re still a jaw-puckering delight to be choffed by the handful or singly melted on the tongue to get those buds flowing especially down the SIDES of your tongue (an essential part of crisp enjoyment). Toasted cheese no-longer available which is a shame but Spicy Tomato was always the first-choice: crucially though in the total lack of marketing that now surrounds Snaps (when was the last time you saw a TV/print ad for ’em — and that dragon has as many claymation possibilities as the Chewits Godzilla), in their status as Walkers’ dirty cheapskate secret, they remind us queerly of a preternet idyll of blissful ignorance and faint corporate indifference. Remember a time when we weren’t cosseted by corporations? When the sheer fact they had the magical ability to make things we couldn’t make was enough? When the manufacturing process was still disguised, hidden, and crucially the companies’ interest in us punters was negligible, distant, occassionally broached with the odd competition or promo-campaign but nothing more? When corporations didn’t have to pretend they were our friend, father, mother, babysitter, partner, ‘bro’ (insert vomit emoji)? When they got on with making things, and then thinking of funny ways of getting us to buy them? Sure it was capitalism, but at least it didn’t feel like violation.

Yeah well grow up fuckface, those times are over. Corporations want in on your life, and they want to talk to you like a friend, drown your relationship with them — previously purely commercial and wordless — with an endlessly cloying intimacy, a nannyish care, a ‘dialogue’ in which exclamation marks and a conversational punniness worthy of a microbrewery-chalkboard will abound, all nudges in the ribs and arms round the shoulder and high-fives. Corporations want to let you know how much they love you and so they’re buying up whole areas of life that previously were owned by human beings. Family is now owned by McCains. Love by Tesco. Affection by Marks & Spencer. Pleasure by Sainsburys. Across food-retail, nothing is allowed to happen between consumers and producers now where it isn’t implicitly understood that we are lucky for their benificence, and they are happy, no PROUD, to pirhouette and produce for us products that serve less as givers of pleasure, more as an ongoing index of our national anxieties and aspirations. Unknowable industrial complexity is relegated in preference of a ‘Market St’ vibe — artisinal, touchy-feely, friendly, the blue-striped aproned Butcher/Baker proffering his wares with a proud grin, and hopefully a Yorkshire accent to prove his earthy earnestness. Crucially we’re all in this together, the corporation and us the Great Shittish Public united in a cup-cake-baking, tea-drinking, keeping-calm-and-carrying-on (F.O.A.D) community event of shared consumerism. To the point where stepping in a shop, where buying a bag of crisps, can feel like lofting a broom in a post-riot precinct as Boris Johnson applauds you.

Gloriously, crisps, still, despite corporations’ best efforts, contravene this. Still maintain their steely resistance to notions of togetherness, sharing, and mutual fun. Forget the images of friends on sofas, sticking their hands in each others bags (seriously, try this when I’m eating Snaps and my heart will quietly condemn you to hell while my arm karate-chops you in the windpipe). Crisps are eaten alone. It is down to you and the bag in your hand. You have chosen that bag and you won’t have chosen it as a half-thought, it will be either a vital component of your lunch, or the sole governor of your five senses for its five-minute duration. In the moment you choose you are thinking not of the slogan, or the advert, but your own senses and what you like.

If you are thinking of what’s healthy you should be ashamed of yourself.

Crisps are things where, yes, family can be important, but only in a sense of sacrifice. The dad grimly eating the S&V French Fries no-one else likes, taking a hit for the team. The kids happy with their Pom-Bears while the grown-ups wistfully wonder about future years of increased flavour/texture-robustness, fondly recalling a time when only Skips or Quavers (I can’t go near Quavers m’self, not since my youngest chundered a massive bag all over the back-seat of the car — sometimes I can still smell the rennet) were all their teething toddlers could manage. The teenager, suddenly coming to with an entire 6 pack of Pickled Onion space-raiders finished on their lap, almost devoured in a blur of stoned need. Crisps are about pleasure, place, and time and they are a solitary joy. They are rarely, unless the bag is torn open and ‘bowled’ at a pub, (and I’d argue Pork Scratchings are really the sharing snack that fosters a sense of community around the pub-table) for sharing. At crisps’ heart there remains a mystery, far more so than with chocolate. Chocolate, even as a child, is fathomable in terms of its creation. You can picture it, you had seen footage. Crisp manufacturing was something you never saw. Trying to make your own crisps at home, because everyone tried, you realised quickly there were processes beyond you, special moments of alchemical wonder you would never be able to recreate. You couldn’t picture the making of Snaps, still can’t. These things arrive in your day perfectly formed, wonky oblongs of delight that in an even cheaper variant might be mistaken for packing material, oblongs which yield no revelation on inspection, only on consumption. Walkers keep making them even though their existence is at utter odds with other current crisps trends. A tangy reminder that, like rock’n’roll, in an experimental and innovative sense all the moves had been made by the start of the 80s and all we’d see since would be refinement and pastiche — the dead giveaway that something has been colonised by the bourgouise.

2.Smiths Salt & Vinegar Twists

Salt and vinegar is a tricky flavour to get right, and frequently tips into a punitive abrasiveness that for some is bracing, for me problematic. S&V Discos and Square Crisps are right on the edge of pleasure for me — just a touch too harsh. For crisp sandwiches obviously Walkers are king but for sheer sharp piquancy combined with a heavy starch hit I still think Smiths Twists are unbeatable.Were unbeatable I should say — as we’ll see, the vagaries of the marketplace have made much of my crisps journey derelicted and forgotten. Bobby’s, Bromsgrove’s own brave keepers of the Proper Snacks flame, do their own version but the precise S&V flavour Smiths got was unique, now lost (although S&V Chipsticks — inferior as they are to their rarely-seen Ready Salted sibling get damn close). The crucial thing with twists was the combination of taste and texture — looking at the spiralling surface-area of a twist, you know in its fusilli-esque endlessly curving planes that every inch of your tongue would get a serious coating of vinegary goodness. And they’d tear the roof of your mouth apart. A Salt & Vinegar touchstone for the ages.

3. Wotsit Wafflers

An undervalued variable in a crisps’ success (and one never considered by the posh-crisps poltroons currently dwindling all our futures) is clagginess, the ‘seconds’ you get from stuff getting stuck to your teeth.I would say that king of this was the original Beef Monster-Munch — even with the relaunch in the foil-bags (that any true crisps-lover should resent, so much clagginess lost in the name of ‘freshness’) — they’ve retained their ability to adhere to your molars. Posh cheese-ball snacks (supermarket own-brand usually) also retain this esprit-de-clag. Cheese balls were expensive though — in the wilderness years where Monster Munch were not available PRIME CLAGGAGE could be given you by these, a briefly-available Wotsits-spinoff that sadly have now gone the way of so many of my crisp-loves.

Yes, I know you can get Bacon-flavoured ones at Poudland right now. I bought a 6 pack three years ago but the disappointment was immediate and heartbreaking — not only had the new foil bags removed the clagginess but the bacon flavour was weak and more importantly seemed an act of cruel hope-dashing given how much the Cheese variety was preferred and missed. The picture above is genuinely the biggest image of these lost artery-cloggers that is available on the whole internet, which goes to show that without care, many legendary crisps are in danger of entirely slipping into the abyss of forgotten snacks. I don’t want this to sound like a totally retrograde scream into the abyss though — one of my current favourite crisps/snacks — Bobby’s Cheese Curls — provide both clagginess and cheesiness in abundance, in a way that almost makes them compete with these defenestrated beauties. However, even when eating Bobby’s I know I’m simply chasing memories of a past high, a high only Wotsit Wafflers could bring to a zenith. As ever I’m left thinking — WHY DON’T I BULK BUY when these things are out? Curses.

4. Golden Wonder Cheese & Onion

You may find my crisps-journey short of ‘classics’ in terms of Walkers crisps for instance. This is not mere contrarian perversity — it’s because most Walkers flavours, bar the notable and unimpeachable exceptions of Ready Salted, Roast Chicken and Prawn Cocktail — are actually done better by others. Canadian Ham Seabrooks and GoldenWonder Smoky Bacon are better than Walkers Smoky Bacon. Asda Beef & Onion in their wondrously crisp (and thick) Meaty Variety packs are far superior to Walkers Beef & Onion — which have never recovered from the fatal rebrand as Steak & Onion as far as I’m concerned. Although it pains me to say it, because at uni I basically LIVED off Walkers Cheese-N-Onion (a family-bag a day one golden summer), Golden Wonder Cheese & Onion are superior in sharpness and fromagey flavour-fulness to their Walkers equivalent.

I realize this might shock some people — I don’t seek to offend but I do wish my crisps-journey to be an honest one, even if it does ruffle the feathers of the so-called city fathers. This is crisps we’re talking about. Prevarication or timidity is simply not an option. Even though the re-introduction of Ringos has been a bitter disappointment (something has been lost, I don’t know what but they’re simply not the same texturally or taste-wise) the survival of Golden Wonder in recent years has been a joy in bringing these sandwich-saving supremos back to our shelves.

5. Red Mill Quarterbacks

Value is a really important factor when it comes to crisps because so often the cheapest packets afford the most flavour — king of this is of course Space Raiders, in Pickled Onion (but particularly Beef) flavour, perhaps the only crisps you can still get that still afford you those little nuggets of hardened powder at the end of the bag, like uber-hardened cores of maximal saltiness.

However, there’s another key thing re: value and that’s the TIMING — what cheap crisps were available at a time in your life when money was short and life was carefree: there’s something about a bag of crisps bought with your last 10p in your pocket while walking home pissed out of your face at 9 in the morning that makes it far more relishable and joy-bringing than some posh payday-bought bag of ‘cracked-pepper’ bullshit (the posh-crisps aisle symbolises for me everything that’s gone wrong with this once great nation).

For that 10p thrill, where even if you’ve hunted down the back of the sofa for the pennies you still feel like you’re getting a MEAL IN A BAG I have to say Quarterbacks were king. Yes, even more than Transform-A-Snax, even more than Potato Puffs, even more than Tangy Toms, even more than Oinks ffs. Cheeseburger flavour is a minefield (although admirably aimed at by Bobby’s Burger Bites — the whole Bobby’s range really is a model for future-crisp endeavours for the people) but these little bags of penury-alleviating joy always delivered. You might remember where you were when you did your first E but I bet you DEFINITELY remember where you were when you last had a bag of these. Probably walking home from the shop to your house. You could be done before you got home. And no-one need know. Or try and nick one. Bonus.

6. KP CRISPY BACON WHEAT CRUNCHIES

As a meal-substitute these are as filling as a bag of Beef Hula Hoops (high praise indeed), as a snack they’re a wild-card. The ‘wheat’ game is a thorny one, always in danger of making a snack feel like an effort or chore, always perilously close to rabbit-food but Crispy Bacon Wheat Crunchies have always got it spot on by realising that with wheat/cereal-based snacks you have to absolutely DRENCH it in flavour to overcome the underlying graininess, as well as getting the texture and shape spot on. Wheat Crunchies’ cylindrical pipes are there to be pressed against both sides of the tongue until they melt and rupture, the flotsammed shards then ground with the teeth until your mouth becomes entirely infused with the bacon-ness. Even more than Frazzles, even more than Smiths Bacon Fries, Crispy Bacon Wheat Crunchies maximise the sensuality of fake-bacon to a smoky zenith. Try and imagine a world without them. You can’t can you? It wouldn’t be a world worth living in.

7. Nibb-It Potato Wheelz

I’m wary of pushing anything that might be ‘marketable’ to the ever-watching hordes of satanic minions involved in advertising, always keen to take those chimerical elements of our youth and slap barcodes on ’em: to whit — Hula Hoops have now noticed that a crucial part of the enjoyment of their product is in the wearing of them as rings on the finger, coupled with the twin-joys of tiny bite-feels on the fingers and the salty digit-lickage that ensues. The much-underrated Transform-A-Snax have made their playability-with a distinct USP but with all crisps, as with all chocolate bars, there are different ways of eating them, whether it’s letting them melt on the tongue, crunching through them, picking them individually out the bag or ‘drinking’ them like a glutton. This is an ongoing area of innovation — my stepkids were the first to show me how they could build ‘Wotsit-snakes’ by adhering individual Wotsits to each other with naught but their own saliva, something I’d been previously unaware of and remain utterly repulsed by.

Perhaps the most underrated example of ‘play-crisps’ however was Nibbit Potato Wheelz. Oft-forgot (although who could forget the charming nibbly squirrel on the pack?) but always a joy because each wheel really afforded you so many different ways of eating it -either choffing them by the handful, or biting off the ‘rim’ first to give you a spoked hub, or then biting off each spoke to leave you with a tiny forlorn hoop. It’s oft-said that in simpler times, we made our own entertainment when we could to alleviate the boredom: Nibbit’s Potato Wheelz could last you a whole tedious afternoon of snacking creativity. My personal fave was the ‘Mexican’ flavour (orange bag) although the onion&vinegar (blue bag) were also lovely.As I recall they were also exclusively only available in two places — Kwik Save and the VG. M&S do a similar range now but I’m not going to even dare to try ’em because I know they’ll merely be a sadly unsatisfying reminder of safer, happier times, and the ‘Finest/Choice/Special/Twice-Cooked’ hellish hierarchical rebranding that now passes for crisp-based creativity.

Never go back, folks, never go back.

8. Bobby’s BBQ Snax Mix

As we approach endgame on my crisps journey I’m mindful that I don’t want this to come across as a melancholic look-back — there’s plenty going on in the wonderful world of crisps RIGHT NOW that needs applauding. As with music, the best stuff is to be found away from the majors — forget the big brands and the supermarkets because like everyone else they’re only interested in appealing to an ABC1 market. What you’ll see in the crisps-market over coming years is an increasingly desperate attempt to gentrify crisps and make them acceptable/palatable to middle-class tastes. So ingredients will diversify and start reading like fucking restaurant menus. Notions like ‘deli-fresh’ and ‘locally-sourced’ will start coming in more and more. To the point where buying a bag of crisps becomes akin to choosing to listen to Jamie Cullum.

I resist this movement, I refuse it with every cholesterol-saturated fibre of my being. Whether ‘cracked-black-pepper’ or ‘malted cider vinegar’ this endless enposhification of crisps is the work of people who’ve never loved crisps, have always looked down on crisps, people who now wish to colonize the honest joy of crisps with their smug one-upmanship and artisinal-bullshit. Fuck those people. They’ve taken music from us. We cannot let them take our crisps. I would be utterly hopeless about the future of crisps if it wasn’t for those few brave companies keeping cheap-quality crisps alive namely Seabrooks, Red Mill and perhaps the greatest of modern manufacturers — Bobby’s. I’ve already mentioned the greatness of their cheese curls — crisps SO GOOD I actually have a list in my emergency mental rolodex of all the shops in Cov that sell them in a five-mile radius (shout-out for their onion-rings too AND their Beef Grills — v.close to old Smiths Griddles) but these Snax-mix, particularly in the big quid bag are fucking fantastic. Great shapes, textures (immeasurably superior to Walkers’ attempt at something similar with their ‘Mix Ups’ range) and the only BBQ flavour I can stand (not TOO sweet, and a nice amount of tang).

Bobby’s don’t condescend to us, don’t try and jack stupid ‘foodie’ flavours into their range and note one other thing, they don’t say these big bags are ‘for sharing’, they just say ‘BIG BAG’. GOD BLESS YOU BOBBY’S. YOU GIVE AN OLD CRISPS-FAN HOPE.

9. Walkers Cheese & Onion

I’m not deliberately trying to be anti-canonical in my choices but just as I wouldn’t necessarily choose a Beatles album in my top 10 I don’t feel duty bound to choose a bag of Walkers. However, if I’m being honest, which I have to be because only honesty will gain us liberation, there is one bag of Walkers that I’d be foolish to leave out, that has genuinely accompanied me through good times and bad, that has always been there for me (even though, as I’ve already pointed out, Golden Wonder did ’em better). Some of you will be disappointed by this choice, arguing for the buttery warmth of Ready Salted or the punchier S&V/Prawn Cocktail (esp in sandwiches). I have to say though that if I’m being honest, and you took a survey of the hundreds, nay thousands of bags of crisps I’ve actually eaten in my life, the type that would crop up the most would be these. They are comforting, an old friend, I love ’em still. Although Walkers have an annoying habit of fucking around and doing stupid flavours (btw Lamb & Mint has NO BUSINESS being a crisps flavour) they’ve never fucked with their classics even if they have fallen into 3 annoying habits of modern crisp packaging:

(a) ‘sourcing’ everything eg “with Somerset Cheddar” FUCK OFF I DON’T CARE WHERE IT COMES FROM AND I LIKE MY CRISPS WITHOUT THE EXTRA TINGE OF CRAVENNESS THANKS.

(b) Telling me the bag is ‘Foil — For Freshness’. These are crisps. Crisps ffs. So long as they’re not past their sell-by that’s all that matters. Also I couldn’t give a fuck if things are ‘hand-cooked’. TBH I’d rather they were ‘robot-cooked’.

© ‘Unmistakably Cheese & Onion’ — WHY the need for ‘unmistakably’? Why the Union Jack pattern on the potatoes? Fucking Brexit steampunk moustache-twiddling WANKERS.

I hope the sensible, traditional side of Walkers wins out over their waywardly wacky ‘contemporary’ side, I really really do. For me, for you, and for our children. Because when they got it right, they gave us crisps for the ages, crisps that can span a lifetime.

10. Cofresh Jalapeno Grills

And now the screaming starts. Look, I know what I’ve left out. I know that there’s no mention in this piece of . . .

Nik-Naks — who improbably managed to top their own Scampi-&-Lemon innovation with Rib & Saucy at the precise moment they changed the recipe of the former to Scampi-&-TooMuchFucking Lemon

Scampi Fries — from the mainly pub-bought Smiths range that also included the magnificent Bacon Fries and the underrated Cheese Moments

Roysters — which whether in T-Bone Steak or the rarely-sighted Southern Fried Chicken flavour have remained a bubbly treat for over 20 years

McCoys — the original ‘posh’-crisp and perhaps the only one I’d salvage if only for the C&O and Flame-Grilled-Steak varieties (see also Paprika Max)

Twiglets — I frigging LOVE Twiglets

Burtons — who have cheekily returned to the crisps/biscuit tightrope with the ICONIC (only time I’m EVER going to use that word) Fish N Chips (but why no Chicken N Chips y’fuckers?)

Brannigans — whose incorporation of mustard into their flavour-range provided choice moments of nose-razing pungency that remain unforgettable . . .

I could go on. And on. And on. There’s no Hula-Hoops, Skips, Discos, Chipsticks, Potato Puffs, Potato Sticks (check the Beef flavoured ones Asda do) or Monster Munch in my list even though they’ve all given me so many moments of pleasure over the years. I feel these crisps, though great, have been repped for already by others.

So why these? A few reasons. In their strangely inverterbrate shape (I can’t be the only one reminded of Trilobites) they afford maximum tongue/surface area taste-osmosis. Their flavour worried me at first — Jalapeno (like Lime) strikes me as something crisps probably shouldn’t fuck with — but it turns out they genuinely do taste of Jalapenos, or rather a likeable simulacrum of Jalapenos. Crucially though, they are the last packet of Crisps I bought. I ate them last night, on my sofa, watching Real Housewives Of New York and I enjoyed every last mildly-spicy mouthful. Cofresh, like Bobby’s are a Midlands firm. Their range of Indian snacks (their ‘snacks from around the world’ usp has a pleasing Phileas Fogg vibe), though better in original brandless-versions from Indian sweet-shops, is good, and reminds me of the massive-bags of Chili crisps me and my wife shared (I know, but they were MASSIVE bags) on the way into town when we were first courting. I can still taste that chili-hit, that adrenaline rush, as I did when I was first in love but vitally these are crisps that are HAPPENING NOW. There are still discoveries to be made and you DON’T have to go over a quid for crisp joy — these are usually on offer for about 50p everywhere and will provide infinitely more delight than anything those twats at Kettle, or Walkers ‘Sensations’ division, or Tyrell are currently cooking up.

Primarily, I’ve chosen these because in a seemingly hopeless age they offer hope, offer a future, suggest that all is not lost in the world of crisps and that crucially you as a consumer are as much part of the coming battle as anyone else. Stop buying posh crisps. Swerve that side of the crisps aisle. Go to the ethnic aisle and get a few bags of these in your basket. Rather than shoring up a fictional past, or positing a future of gentrification, Cofresh suggest diversity, innovation and careful design still have a future in our world of crisps. For that, I thank them. Future generations will thank us if we don’t surrender our snacking to those that would seek to devalue it in a narrowing cesspit of gourmet-flavours and misplaced goals of ‘freshness’. Cofresh Jalapeno Grills deliver those prime essentials of crisps — fat and flavour- in a way that recalls those epochal crisp moments of our yesterdays. They are a reason to keep munching. My crisp journey might be done, but Cofresh Jalapeno Grills point to pathways unexplored, salty, onion-powder-packed pathways you could wander in forever.

Keep eating crisps. Keep ignoring Jamie Oliver. Keep the argument going in the comments. The future starts with your next bag x