Metcalfe's Skinny: Topcorn (sweet cinnamon spice)

Product name: Metcalfe’s Skinny: Topcorn (sweet cinnamon spice)
Purchase details: £1.58 for a 75g bag (Asda)
Calories: 117 per 25g serving (351 per bag)
Country of origin: UK

Metcalfe’s Skinny is a brand of popcorn (or ‘Topcorn’) I’d never tried before but that I wanted to give a go. I much prefer sweet popcorn to savoury so it was this sweet cinnamon spice flavour from ‘the lovelier, lighter snack tribe’ that I decided to try.

This sharing bag (which I dutifully kept to myself!) featured a floral design and nice image of falling popcorn that promised to be light but filling. Confusingly, only 51% of the product was ‘popped butterfly popcorn’ so the ‘delicious natural flavourings’ obviously took up a lot of space! These consisted of sugar, cinnamon and full cream.

The Topcorn itself looked very much like the Tyrrell's Proper Popcorn: Sticky toffee pudding due to its pale colour, being coated in a powder rather than a glaze, and having a papery feel. There was also an element of cardboard to the scent but the hint of cinnamon still made the aroma a pleasant one.

In terms of the flavour, there was certainly no denying that it was sweet and tasted of cinnamon! The base popcorn flavour was like a creamier version of the type you get in the cinema, but this extra flavouring was very tasty indeed...I just would have liked it to be stronger. Generally, even the more thickly-coated pieces weren’t very powerful, although the ones nearer the bottom of the bag were far more delicious than the ones at the top.

 

As suggested by the Topcorn’s appearance, the texture was the same as the Sticky toffee pudding Proper Popcorn, but it wasn’t as powdery. The bag seemed to last for ages as well which was an added bonus.

I may have appreciated a stronger flavour from this sweet cinnamon spice Topcorn but it did have a nice level of sweetness. There was something really warming about it and I think it would be perfect for settling down to watch a Christmas film with.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10

Tayto Pop Corners: Spicy cheese & tomato

Product name: Tayto Pop Corners: Spicy cheese & tomato
Purchase details: £0.10 for a 28g bag (Home Bargains)
Calories: 127 per bag
Country of origin: Ireland

I visited Home Bargains on my way to work the other morning and spotted these Tayto Pop Corners: Spicy cheese & tomato going cheaply due to being near their best before date. It was the photograph on the front of the red wrapper that grabbed my attention – the product appeared to be some kind of Popchips and Doritos hybrid! There was also a Chilli & lime flavour on offer but, since I’m not that keen on citrus flavours at the best of times and I could still taste the toothpaste in my mouth, I really didn’t fancy trying those!

 

I’d never had anything from the Tayto brand before but these crisps were apparently new. Except they weren’t crisps...they were ‘popcorn snacks’! Made from maize rather than potato, the baked treat contained 57% less fat than standard crisps and contained only natural flavours.

The disadvantage of these triangles coming ‘all the way’ from Ireland was that there weren’t many that had all their corners intact. However, they still looked decent, and had a particularly thick orange coating with flecks of red and green that gave them a pizza feel.

Above anything else, the Pop Corners smelt cheesy, but I also thought I could detect basil. Maybe I was trying to make them into something more sophisticated than they were but it may not have been my imagination – the ingredients did list ‘herbs’ without specifying what those were!

Despite having a vague memory of having tried a tomato-based crisp in my childhood, it’s certainly not a flavour I’ve come across regularly. According to Tayto, though, this flavour combination was a ‘taste explosion’. I wanted to savour this, initially, so I sucked the first Corner I tried. It started off tasting like standard cheese-flavoured crisps but it did then have a kind of pizza aftertaste which, I guess, suggested a tomato hint. On the whole, though, whilst I experienced different levels of flavour when consuming the bag, I didn’t find the tomato itself really featured. Instead, I’d describe the flavour as ‘spicy cheese’, with the spiciness being mild and warming rather than tongue-tingling hot. Interestingly, the powdery residue at the bottom of the bag predominantly tasted like onion, even though I couldn’t pick this element up on the Corners themselves!

I wasn’t quite as convinced by the bumpy and slightly chewy texture which, to my memory, was like thinner Snack a Jacks. By the end of the pack, they were beginning to feel a bit dry, and I also found there was a rice cracker taste vying for attention with the actual flavouring.

Whilst I definitely prefer potato-based crisps, these Tayto Pop Corners did have a nice flavour and came in a generous portion size. They were certainly worth the £0.10...and more!

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 6.5/10
Overall score: 7.13/10

Butterkist Toffee

Product name: Butterkist Toffee
Calories: 113 for a 27g bag
Country of origin: UK

Believe it or not, I still haven’t finished my Christmas stock, and this mini bag of Butterkist Toffee was another edible treat I received from Santa.

The packaging’s shade of red and general branding was identical to the Toffee Apple variety I’ve previously reviewed but this was a flavour I was much more familiar with!

Made by Tangerine Confectionery Ltd, I was impressed by the whopping 80% toffee coating on this popcorn – there was me thinking that 65% was decent on the Toffee Apple! This lovely, thick and buttery-looking coating looked delicious and made the white centres look particularly fresh.

When it came to the aroma, whilst there was a slight hint of popcorn, this wasn’t of a cinema standard. However, it did have a general carbohydrate smell that was quite like crackers.

The thick toffee coating allowed for a fantastic crunch, although I did find that, even with this handily-portioned bag, chewing did become slightly hard work after a while. However, I loved how even the pieces with a thinner coating still had a noticeably caramelised flavour, and I enjoyed the slight salty hints that seemed to be mixed with the sweetness.

I didn’t expect anything less than a tasty little treat from this Butterkist product and that’s exactly what I got...with the added bonus of a familiarity that made me feel like I was at the pictures!

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.38/10

Butterkist Toffee Apple

Product name: Butterkist Toffee Apple
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 150g bag (Poundland)
Calories: 100 per 25g serving
Country of origin: UK 

There are two words that, when combined, almost guarantee that I will buy a product: ‘limited edition’. From memory, I bought this bag of Butterkist Toffee Apple popcorn near Bonfire Night – a time when a toffee apple variety makes particular sense. Having never had a fruity popcorn before, I just had to try it, even though I’d not had a real toffee apple since I was about six years old! 

 

Once again made by Tangerine Confectionery Ltd, this ‘deliciously sweet and satisfying’ product came in a bag that was very similar in design to the Caramel version I reviewed in November. The main differences were simply the burgundy panel being a little larger and the background being more of an amber shade than a yellow one. (I also realised very last-minute that the red section is meant to look like an apple!)

This popcorn, like Butterkist Caramel, was largely made up of its coating, with a whopping 65% of the product being ‘apple flavour toffee’. As a result, it was identical in both appearance and texture.

Although there was a very slight cinema-style popcorn aroma, this wasn’t nearly as strong or sweet for the Toffee Apple variety, and there was also a whiff of another, almost burnt, element mixed in. If I thought about it hard enough, I could associate this scent with tangy apple – it wasn’t instantly recognisable but it was present nonetheless.

Although I wasn’t overly impressed by the popcorn’s smell, I really enjoyed its taste. It had a subtle but sweet apple flavour that was surprisingly realistic and also quite refreshing – it left a nice aftertaste too. Again, I found it almost hinted at banana at times but, overall, there was enough of an apple flavour to make this a unique product, but not so much that it became unpleasant or sickly. Despite still containing it, this was completely different to standard toffee popcorn, although the pieces that had a thicker coating did have a slightly darker sweetness to them.

I felt that this Butterkist Toffee Apple provided the usual great texture of coated popcorn but with a unique twist on a proven flavour combination. What a shame this isn’t available all the time! 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 8/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.38/10