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

Cadbury Crunchums

Product name: Cadbury Crunchums
Purchase details: £0.99 for a 105g bag (Home Bargains)
Calories: 185 per 1/3 of a bag (530 per 100g)
Country of origin: Europe

I’ve been waiting to try these Cadbury Crunchums for a while. Served in a sharing bag, really, they’re ideal for a film night with friends. However, this is the sort of snack I prefer to use up spare calories on by having a few grams here and there.

Crunchums are pieces of maize cereal coated in Cadbury chocolate and on opening the resealable bag, the familiar Cadbury aroma was evident, but I also detected a hint of saltiness.

The image on the front of the packet depicted pieces of cereal that I would describe as ‘pillows’. However, I was surprised to find that the majority of the Crunchums in my packet had holes in the sides. I had thought that this aspect of the product image had been a cross-section, but apparently not. This wasn’t in any way an issue – just not what I had been expecting! Similarly, I thought the pieces would be more uniform in shape, but as the small selection I’ve pictured shows, there was quite a bit of variety.

Visually, the chocolate wasn’t as smooth I’d expect from Cadbury, and was rather dull but, I have to say, I was more interested in what the cereal looked like as it was a concept I couldn’t quite envisage. It turned out to be a yellow colour with a very bubbly texture, not too dissimilar to cornflakes, but with finer bubbles. This lighter shade contrasted well with the milk chocolate.

On tasting the Crunchums, I discovered that I hadn’t imagined the saltiness in the smell – this element was very much present in the maize and particularly noticeable towards the end of each bite when the initial chocolate hit had evaporated. The sweetness of the chocolate worked really well with this salty flavour, and the cool, creamy texture meant that the whole experience was like eating a chocolate-based cereal as the absence of milk wasn’t felt.

As you’d expect from the name ‘Crunchums’, these cereal pillows were very crispy, although it was still possible to let the chocolate melt before reaching the maize centres. However, when eating the product in this way, it was hard not to accidentally crush the cereal in the process of sucking the chocolate off!

On the whole, I feel a bit torn by this Cadbury offering. The Crunchums offered something different to other sharing bags currently available on the UK market, and they were certainly very enjoyable, but I’m afraid they just didn’t excite me as much as they could have done. However, I’d still buy them again. 

Appearance: 6.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 8.5/10
Texture: 8/10
Overall score: 7.63/10