Well, here we are again. It's as good as being a snow day here at work, so you get this for your lunch-time reading enjoyment.
Last week, on Friday, I went into the grocery store and found two new bags that caught my eye. The Salt & Vinegar is not a "new" flavor, but if you believe the website this is the first time that Lay's has offered this particular combo.
 |
| This is a strangely attractive bag. Nice blue background, and a magic flask with alchemy ingredients. |
Needless to say, I am a big fan of both salt and sour (being two of the main flavors my tongue can detect) so the prospect of trying them together has me really excited. So, bag one goes into the cart. Then I saw this hanging out on an end-cap, surrounded by "snacks" but not other chips. As if to say, I am better than the mere fried potatoes in this aisle, I am something more. It also says "Limited Edition" on the package, so that means I gotta do this now or the chance my never come again. Right?
 |
| I could have bought a huge bag of chips and a Hershey bar for this. . . |
Now, I have to not only eat my usual pair of roller-dogs for lunch, and drink a ridiculously large (and completely necessary) soda, but also eat TWO bags of chips! However will I manage to stuff all this in my gullet?
 |
| "Contents may have settled" = We lied about how much you're actually going to get. |
Oh, apparently I don't have to make up that much room... At least the chocolate ones will be bulky, right?
 |
| We couldn't be bothered to coat both sides... |
It seems I am being groomed for a lifetime of disappointment. Also, who the hell coats anything with chocolate these days without either doing 1) just one side, or 2) complete shell? Seriously, it's like the neighborhood bake-sale committee needed to fill out the table and so they asked your Aunt, who lives like her idol Joanna Lumley from AbFab, to make something. She got bored with the idea after half a box of wine and just used the chocolate fountain from her 3rd marriage to haphazardly dip some store-brand wavy chips and then throw them on a wire rack to cool.
It's like, what if you had only 2 ingredients to make a dessert on Cutthroat Kitchen, but you already bought enough sabotages that your competition is unable to do anything? You watch the other contestant crumble into a complete train-wreck and all you have to do is bring anything to the table and collect your winnings. It might look like these chips with their half-ass chocolate coating.
I was going to go for a third rambling description of how lazy these are, but I only have a little more effort in me than the people who made the chips.
 |
| Only the finest Idaho Russets for your crisps! |
Back to the salty pirate. Large chips are good, but they need to be more than paper-thin. These chips were new and fresh (and tasty for what they are) but they just shatter in the mouth and are quickly rendered to powder with no fanfare. I really can't overstate how much better a crispy kettle-cooked chip is to these lame-ass old-school flats. Why still make these? Nostalgia? Nostalgia cannot magically make the texture of these chips not suck.
 |
| This looks like the dry dog turd I peeled off the tread of my sneaker. |
Back to Patsy's party chips: This is the chip's good side, do not turn over. This was the moment, I was going to experience chippy bliss in a chocolate overcoat. Or not. The chocolate is barely like magic shell, except it apparently stays solid in the store up to just under body temperature. I now have chocolate marks on my pants from just touching these (or looking at them for more than a few seconds). I think they would liquefy if I just breathed heavily on them. The result is a messy chip covered in crappy chocolate, where the chocolate has robbed the chip of any crispiness it may once have held and replaced it with a dull cardboard rigidity. No crunch, but at least it's not complete mush.
 |
| Lies, all lies... |
Children hate adults because this is what they call magic. My only saving grace is that each of these mediocre snacks was far enough apart on opposite spectrums that sampling back and forth made for an interesting point, counterpoint on my tongue.
 |
| Mistakes were made... |
In the end, I will not buy either of these again by themselves, or together. The chocolate chips are a gimmick that is poorly executed and the S&V are just too insubstantial to bother with when there are better chips out there of the same flavor.
Overall Ratings:
Choco-flops: 2.22/5.0
Salt and whinegar: 2.5/5.0
No comments:
Post a Comment