Grupa BGK Flips: Chrupki kukurydziane (czekolady)

Product name: Grupa BGK Flips: Chrupki kukurydziane (czekolady)
Purchase details: £0.69 for a 70g bag (Tesco Superstore)
Calories: 142 per 25g serving (398 per bag)
Country of origin: Poland 

There was something about this bright yellow bag of Grupa BGK Flips: Chrupki kukurydziane (czekolady) that filled me with both excitement and fear. It was the cartoon bunny juggling pieces of chocolate against a background of corn puffs that caught my eye. As a kid, I loved sandwiching a piece of chocolate between two crisps and I love the idea of crisp-filled chocolate, but chocolate flavoured crisps? I wasn’t so sure...

Thanks to Google’s translating function, I can tell you that ‘Chrupki kukurydziane’ means ‘corn crisps’ and ‘czekolady’, predictably, is ‘chocolate’. This was reassuring since the English description on the bag simply stated ‘chocolate flavoured corn puffs’! The ingredients mentioned a ‘chocolate flavoured cream’ that contained cocoa powder, and the whole bag consisted of 1% chocolate.

On opening the packet, I was stunned by the appearance which was not what I’d had in mind! The curved crisps were huge. Unfortunately, there was something about their pale brown colour that was flecked with darker speckles that I found really off-putting. This didn’t feel great either – it was a little moist and rubbery. On the plus side, every single piece was intact, and the inner corn puff appearance was nicely familiar. The gentle but deep scent was also pleasant. Whilst not smelling specifically of chocolate, I did associate it with children’s cocoa-containing cereals.

The next thing to surprise me was the texture. Biting through the surface presented the kind of crispiness you’d expect but, past this, the crisps were very soft and squidgy. If I wasn’t certain the bag had been completely sealed, and the puffs were in-date, I would have assumed they were stale. This took a bit of getting used to but there was something quite fun about the way, part way through each crisp, the rest of it pretty much dissolved by itself. (Letting the whole thing melt on the tongue was also an option.)

Now the part I’d been dreading a little bit – the taste! Slightly awkwardly, I wouldn’t say these tasted anything like chocolate. BUT...they were actually pretty nice! They had a delicate, sugary flavour that tasted just like sweet popcorn and I had no problem munching my way through the huge amount provided in the bag (in my defence, they didn’t weigh much!). The crisps also had a corn-like aftertaste which I recognised from sucking the cheesiness of Walkers Wotsits.

So, a bit of a mixed experience for me here. They didn’t look great, they didn’t taste like chocolate, and the texture could definitely have been crispier, but do you know what? I think I’d actually buy these again!

Appearance: 6/10
Aroma: 6.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 6/10
Overall score: 6.38/10