Hereford roast beef and caramelised onion, it said on the packet. And they were nice, too. But it doesn't matter how much you dress them up, they're still beef and onion crisps. The same goes for Cumberland sausage and red onion marmalade - pure and simply sausage and onion. Or what about cheddar cheese and white onion, sea salt and cider vinegar, Arctic prawn & Marie-Rose sauce? Just cheese n' onion, salt 'n' vinegar and prawn cocktail. There's nothing natural or more interesting about them. They just have a more glamorous name.
You can over-describe all you like, but the fact is - and correct me if I'm wrong - is that the actual base flavours of crisps haven't changed at all in years. The basic flavours are still there. They may be stronger or with less E numbers, but salt and vinegar is salt and vinegar, no matter how much you gentrify it.
Where did all this fancy descriptive stuff spring from? Was it to capture a market that demanded things to be more exciting, or was it a manufacturer who decided his product was a cut above? Even those really nice Burt's crisps that actually use real bacon in their smokey bacon still taste like your bog standard Golden Wonder version.
My favourite used to be Smith's Savoury Vinegar. No one seems to remember them but me. They were 2 1/2p from the school shop. This is 1972, though. They seemed to vanish as quicky as they appeared, but there were tasty. Salt & Vinegar without the salt.
Smith's were king of crisps back then. We always had Bovril crisps after swimming (see posts passim). Golden Wonder had some perhaps more exotic flavours (sausage and onion was a post-paper round Cup-a-Soup-dipping favourite) and we'd never even heard of Walkers. When did they appear? Mid-Eighties?
Of course there are some flavours that are actually all new and exciting, like the builders' breakfast ones in the new Walkers competition range. The duck ones are quite authentic too. And some of the Walkers Sensations Thai and chilli ones are okay too. But there's so much choice. Too much choice can be a bad thing. But they can churn out Vietnamese Blu-tac curry or Black Forest chinchilla to their heart's content if they just revive savoury vinegar for one more day.
