REVIEW: Pepperidge Farm Goldfish – Cheddar Bacon Puffs

Rating: ©©©© chips  (lip-smacking)

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Comments:

From the depths of the salty-snack-sea comes the latest wonderfully cheesy venture from everyone’s favorite little golden gill’d swimmers.  Except for this time around Pepperidge Farm’s Goldfish have decided to do some laps in the deep end of the pool and try their best at backstroking their way into the cheesy puff industry (which is definitely not easy to do)!

We noticed the other day that someone over at the Impulsive Buy made the comment “bacon can be an assertive flavor and, if not treated with care, will stomp all over your sandwich, maple-glazed doughnut, or, in this case, cheese puff.”  Well, we say that there are too many snacks out there who claim to bring the bacon, and just don’t deliver on the promise.  So as far as treating that bacon with care……

“To pork with that!!!”   Give us BACON!!!  Like that silly dog on tv says “Bacon, bacon, bacon!”  Bring on the smoky, salty, piggy flavor!!  Go pork, or go home. Take us to “Porkapalooza” please!

Luckily for us Mr. Golffish Puff has brought that bacon in full force.  Just one glance over to the ingredients list and it is clear that Pepperidge Farm was not messing around with the promise of delivering on that bacon flavor.  Vegetarians beware, these are not for you.  The ingredients include: dehydrated pork stock, natural smoke flavoring, and bacon flavored pork fat!?!  Let’s repeat that: dehydrated pork stock, natural smoke flavoring, and bacon flavored pork fat!!! Need we say more?!?  Even with all of that porky goodness, we actually thought that the bacon presence was not too overbearing, and integrated rather nicely with the salty cheddar cheese seasoning.  If you like bacon flavored snacks, we’re quite certain that you would most likely enjoy these.

The texture of these Goldfish Puffs is reminiscent of some long lost cheese puffed snack that we consumed quite often during our youth.  We’re talking about the classic Planters Cheese Balls!!  Anyone else out there grow up devouring those perfectly pop-able cheese rounds?  If you loved them, you’re going to love these!  The Goldfish Puff’s texture is slightly dense, and crunchy, with a more toothsome mouth-feel than your typical, light and airy, industry cheese puffs (ie. Cheetos, Herr’s, etc.).  These Puffs are a bit more than double the size of the original Goldfish Crackers, and they are perfect for popping one at a time, or even a handful, into your mouths.  Either way, the bag probably won’t last that long.

Not only do these puffs taste great, but it felt like we also got our daily intake of protein from them as well.  We didn’t quite love them as much as the Buffalo Wing flavor, but still a great puff.

For two different perspectives on these new Goldfish Puffs make sure to check out:

The Impulsive Buy

Junk Food Guy (JFG appeared to be as impressed with these as we were!  However, we cannot agree with his comment that these Goldfish Puffs taste anything remotely close to Herr’s Bacon Cheddar Puffs.)

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think. Agree or disagree, let us know.

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RATING: Archer Farms – Sweet & Spicy Barbecue Lattice-Cut Kettle Chips

Rating: ©©©-3/4 chips  (notable)

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Chip Review of the day…..

Lay’s Wavy – Ranch

Rating: ©©-1/4 chips  (tolerable)

Comments:

Can we just say that we are genuinely impressed with, and loving, the newly revamped Lay’s Wavy packaging.  The all smaller case, bold, impactful, ‘wavy’ in retro font, is definitely an eye catcher.  In fact, each time we walk past these chips in our favorite grocery aisle, just for a second, we think that we’ve spotted some ‘brand new’ Lay’s that we weren’t aware of.

Alas, and sadly, they are just the same old, same old; and no amount of packaging makeover was going to compensate for these poorly flavored ranch potato chips.  When we think of ranch seasoning we think of garlic, onion, sour cream and black pepper.  However, we do not think of an overabundance of sour and citrus-y buttermilk, cream and onions, and only a hint of garlic.  The chips were so unexpectedly sour, that we had to check the (lovely designed) bag to make sure that the chips had not passed their expiration date by years, and gone bad.

The large, wide rippled, adequately crunchy, potato chips were certainly respectable, and when seasoned correctly could taste delicious.  Who knows, maybe our hopes were just set too high after we were recently surprised by Wavy Lay’s Hickory BBQ, and extremely impressed by their Roasted Garlic & Sea Salt.  Unfortunately, it appears that this “ranch” flavored “apple” has fallen way too far from the tree!

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree, let us know.

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RATING: Tim’s – Reduced Fat Cracked Peppercorn Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©-1/2 chips  (notable)

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REVIEW: Tyrrell’s – Sweet Chili & Red Pepper Hand Cooked Potato Crisps

Rating: ©©©©-3/4 chips  (lip-smacking)

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Apparently, some time ago, we here at Chip Review already had the pleasure of tasting Tyrrell’s Sweet Chili and Red Pepper Potato Crisps.  The bag above on the left, must be some older rendition that Tyrrell’s released years ago.  While the bag on the right displays one of the Tyrrell’s timeless black and white photos.  Since we cannot find any notes, or rating for these crisps, and none of us can even remember tasting them at all, we will approach and review them as if it was for the very first time.

First, and foremost, we must admit that there was a bit of a disagreement here at Chip Review about who each of the dapper gentlemen were gracing the front of the potato crisp bag.  In the end, after a bit of yelling and stomping, and even name calling, the dust settled and we agreed that the gent on the right must be none other than Sweet Chili himself, and that would make Mr. Red Pepper his sidekick on the left.

As for the potato crisps themselves, well, it did not take more than a couple of handfuls for us to determine that Tyrrell’s had created a uniquely complex, and tasty flavor combination with their Sweet Chili & Red Pepper.  In fact, it was easy for us to declare these as the best Tyrrell’s potato crisps that we had ever tasted!  One miniscule issue we did initially have with the crisps was the flavor name.  To us, it seemed a bit redundant to say both chili and pepper flavored, because quite often these two words are referring to the same thing.  Maybe with a tad more clarification, or description, we would have understood that the pepper in the name was referring to peppercorns and flakes, and the chili was referring to the chili pepper?  Minor qualm, but one that we felt needed addressing.

Getting back to that uniquely complex and tasty flavor combo we mentioned above.  We should just say from the get go, that we are not going to do the description of this flavor the justice that it deserves.  The complexity of this multilfaceted flavor bonanza was quite simply amazing.  From the very get go we tasted the sweet, the spicy chili, and the aromatic and zippy pepper punch.  The flavor seemed to hit each taste bud with every chip.  Beyond the expected seasoning notes, we also tasted loads of garlic, and then lots of other intricate flavors that we could not pinpoint; but one glance to the ingredients list and we saw there there was also anise, ginger, basil and white pepper – WOW!  Can we just point out the spicy spectrum that these chips deliver – they include ginger, garlic, white pepper, jalapeno chili pepper, cayenne pepper, and red pepper.

We’ve commented numerous times on Tyrrell’s potato crisps in the past.  How their crisps are very crunchy, nearly verging on being too hard.  How the crisps are made of whole cross sections of the potato, meaning that the entire edge of the crisp still has the peel intact, and that the majority of the crisps are whole slices (pretty darn unique within the industry if you ask us).  The potato crisps are a perfect match for Tyrrell’s flavor extravaganza.

Lastly, it took us a while to figure it out, but we finally realized that these Sweet Chili and Red Pepper crisps, kind of remind us of a cross between Kettle Brand’s Spicy Thai Potato Chips, and Mackie’s of Scotland Scotch Bonnet Potato Crisps.

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree, let us know.

Chips provided to Chip Review from Tyrrell’s Potato Crisps for review

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RATING: Poore Brothers – Sweet Maui Onion Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

Rating: ©©©-1/2 chips  (notable)

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REVIEW: Herr’s – Fire Roasted Sweet Corn Popcorn

Rating: ©©©-1/2 chips  (notable)

Comments:

A handful of years ago, a couple of us here at Chip Review spent an amazing six month long stint in South America; Chile to be exact.  However, not a day went by while living in the southern hemisphere that we did not dream and long for so many of our delicious U.S. salty snacks.  Not that South America didn’t have their own chips available, it was just that the variety and quality didn’t even come close to comparing to the breadth and excellence that we normally have to choose from in the Midwest.  So, what’s the point you ask?  Long story short, the very day we arrived back into the U.S. of A, just happen to be the day that we tasted, in our humble opinion, the worst potato chips we had ever tasted.

What does all of that have to do with Herr’s Fire Roasted Sweet Corn Popcorn?  Well, ‘those worst potato chips of all-time‘ were none other than Herr’s Fire Roasted Sweet Corn Potato Chips!!  The potato chip version of this exact popcorn.  However, we are professionals here, and we went into this review with an open mind, and mouth, and hoped for the best….

Here’s a thought, ‘who out there enjoys chocolate flavored candy bars?  Or, maybe potato flavored chips??  How about beef flavored steak?!?’  All right, we’re sure you get the picture, and if for some reason you have not caught onto where we are going with this…..then maybe you will be the one amazed by Herr’s wonderfully redundant corn flavored popcorn!  That being said, in the end, the fire roasted sweet corn seasoning, did jive much better with Herr’s popcorn, than with their potato chips.

Immediately upon opening the popcorn bag, memories of the Fire Roasted Sweet Corn potato chips came flooding in.  The sweet scent of corn on the cob, mixed with the unnatural scent of fake butter flavor, reminded us exactly of the the potato chips.  One handful of Herr’s light, full-bodied, air popped and extremely crispy popcorn, and we instantly knew that regardless of their similarities, the two snacks of the same flavor, were radically different.  The liberal dusting of flavor consisted of salty fake butter, a rich creamy corn essence, lots of sweet sugar and a very nice black pepper kick that help cut through all of the other flavors.  We wouldn’t necessarily describe this sweet corn as fire roasted, but more like buttered, with salt and pepper.  Can we just mention again how very good these popcorn kernels are.

how this popcorn has only 2g of fat is beyond us…..

in the end our theory is that the potato chip was never meant to taste of corn; that is what corn is for.  We don’t see any potato flavored corn tortilla chips parading around do we?  We’re not saying that we wouldn’t give those a try either!  In the end Herr’s terrific popcorn may actually just work as the perfectly acceptable snack vehicle for this slightly off-putting and unusual flavor. Now that the experiment has taken place, we can all wash hands, and mouths, of this one, and keep on crunching to the next of bag…..

**Also, we should probably give the Fire Roasted Sweet Corn Potato Chips a taste again, just to be certain that they are as bad as we remember them being.

As always, these are our thoughts, we would love to hear what you think.  Agree or disagree, let us know.

Chips provided to Chip Review by Herr’s Foods, Inc. for review

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