Walkers Sarah's Hot Dog With Tomato Ketchup

Product name: Walkers Sarah’s Hot Dog With Tomato Ketchup
Purchase details: £1.00 for a multipack of six bags (Poundland)
Calories: 131 per 25g bag
Country of origin: UK

I’m very late to the party with these Walkers crisps from the Do Us A Flavour range. For those who don’t know, the company’s been running a competition where members of the public could create their own concoctions that had to incorporate one of a variety of pre-selected ingredients. Six finalists were chosen, their creations were put on sale, and the general public have been able to vote for the winner since then.

I’ve never bothered with these kinds of things before but a couple of the flavours did catch my eye so I decided to be economical and buy the variety packs, even though that meant I’d have to sample the ones I didn’t like the sound of as well! With only two weeks left to go until voting closes, I thought it was about time I tried them out, starting with ‘selection 1’.

I could have taken or left this bag of Sarah’s Hot Dog With Tomato Ketchup. I like ketchup (and I’m sure I tried the crisp form years ago), and I like ‘proper’ sausages, but I don’t like frankfurters, so it was always going to be down to the balance for me.

The red wrapper could easily have been mistaken for Ready Salted but, instead, it represented the key ingredient of Vale of Evesham tomatoes which were present in extract form. The crisps looked no different from most and were quite thin and transparent in places. Their golden and slightly greasy appearance looked strangely appealing!

Having not long finished my bag of Extra Crunchy: Sticky BBQ rib, I found the scent on offer here was very similar. Its flavour, though, was very different. The initial flavour was of sweet tomato ketchup, but a frankfurter flavour was tagged onto the end of this, despite the crisps being vegetarian! I can’t deny that I’d been sceptical about the chances of these crisps actually tasting like hot dogs but they genuinely did taste of both ketchup and sausage...it was just a shame that the latter was the l kind that I don’t enjoy.

As expected, the snack was nice and crispy, and I did like the tang of the ketchup despite the artificial-tasting meat. I also found that, if I ate them quickly, the sausage aspect was less noticeable anyway. Maybe I should try the Walkers Tomato Ketchup again!

In the meantime, I need to get through my remaining Do Us A Flavour varieties, and I’m looking forward to seeing if the others are as realistic.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 6/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.13/10