h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

With reference to;

http://www.h2g2.com/A275032

Is this just a UK thing, do visitors to our shores find Walker's refusal to put Salt N Vinegar in blue packets and (vile) cheese and onion in green, confusing and mind numbingly irratating? or am I and Beach U Man, just slighlt mad?

C Hawke

I'm a UKer too, and I find I get confused with Walker's non standard colouring... I agree with you about the vileness of C&O too.

This is commercialism at work. Just think, at least we have Colored Packets! It could be much worse.
-The Eternal Optimist

Aaaaah! But NO!!

Clearly Salt and Vinegar is PINK, while plain is blue, chicken is green, cheese & onion is yellow and BBQ is orange!

Your colours don't make sense...you're confuzzling me....

Oh, yes. Cheese and Onion crisps go in GREEN packets! It's a law of nature. Gary Lineker will live to regret his pact with the Devil.

There's even a TV ad, (voiced by Harry Hill, I think) that starts 'Cheese and Onion in blue packets! Someone tell 'em Cheese and Onion comes in green packets!'

Can't agree with you that C&O is vile, though. They're my favourite flavour (with Ready Salted by way of a change every now and then). I only use Salt and Vinegar as kind of shock troops on my taste buds avery now and then.

I'm in complete agreement with Dinsdale on the C&O thing - love C&O, but they have to be cheesy enough to balance out the onion.

There are two major brands in New Zealand, and they both use the same colour coding. C&O is quite distinctively coded in purple. There is a related flavour however called Green or Spring Onion and that does come in green. However, it should not be confused with NZ S&V which *also* comes in a green packet. S&V can be distinguished from by having a slightly darker green than Green/Spring Onion.

The only bone of contention between the two brands is over the coding of Plain, or as we like to call it, Ready Salted Potato Chips. Bluebird choose a red packet with blue trim, Eta prefer a blue bag with red trim.

I remember green/spring onion flavour, haven't seen them in UK for sometime. I actually liked them. Still hate C&O.

I hope that at least Prawn Cocktail are universily in Pink cross the world. Anyone?

CH

I've heard of them (used to read a lot of British comics growing up) but no similar flavour has emerged here in NZ.

There was a flavour that was seafoody - it was calamari or something. I do remember it tasted pretty awful. Aside from the taste of seafood, they actually tasted lemony, and not in a good way.

The most exotic flavours recently are Sour Cream & Bacon, and The Works (which I guess they make from leftovers at the bottom of the flavour jars). SC&B naturally comes in an orange bag, while Works-flavoured crisps come in a brown bag with a baked potato on the front.

I don't think you're not missing anything.
I reckon Prawn Coctail flavouring is an accidental waste product of some nasty organic chemical process that happens to have a tenous similarity with seafood, at least when smothered with MSG.
(Somewhat like Black Cherry flavouring, which to me has more than a hint of industrial solvent, but no real taste of cherry. However, maybe I'm unusual - though I have a fairly keen sense of smell, I'm unable to smell Durian fruit at all until it gets over-ripe and starts smelling vaguely of sour milk. )

Regarding mixing different flavoured crisps, I think they often taste better together than the original flavours do in isolation.

Whoops - double negative - serves me right for failing to proofread after editing.

It's annoying that Wlakers put salted and tomato ketchup in practically the same colour bags too. I hate salted crisps.

They're C&O are pants.

If their crisps were particularly good, maybe they wouldn't need to spend countless millions on advertising, competitions, the cynical books-for-schools promotion or whatever the latest gimmick is. I bet they even paid some advertising bod for all those deeply sad "Salt 'N' Lineker" style jokey football-related names as well.

I reckon the regional brands are often better quality than the nationally-promoted ones. Give me a pack of Seabrook's crinkle cut any day - at least they actually taste like they're made from potato, and don't break up into pallete-gouging shards when you eat them.

Not that I've actually sampled Walkers' product, but doesn't logic follow if their chips weren't any good, they wouldn't *have* millions to spend on ad campaigns, competitions and spokespersons like your Mr Lineker?

But I digress.

Are canned potato chips available (ie Pringles) in the UK? Can someone tell me one good reason why one would want to buy potato chips just because they're in a can?

Rather like McDonalds, I guess Walker's are consistent and widespread, and I suppose they're adequate, but I don't reckon they're anything to write home about. (It's a little the case with small breweries vs. massive brewing conglomerates - in some ways, smaller outfits need to be better to stay in business.)

Pringles are available in the UK, but at least to me, they seem pretty much like any other reconstituted potato slurry-based snack.

Sorry for this


PRINGLES!!!! the most environmentally unfriendly, energy intensive, over produce crud since frozen bubble and squeek. Let's think of a snack idea, I know let's get loads of spuds, mash them all up and then re-constitute them in identical shapes, place them in a thick cardboard tube with one plastic end and one metal end and charge an outrageous price


On the issue of choice. I have an un-written article (ie an idea in my mind) on to much consyumer choice, do we need 30+ flavours of crisps, 100+ types of mashed up baby food, scores of sanitary products (with and without wings) razors that swivel, with strips , with 2 and three blades, dozens of condom types, with the exception of the crisps all these OTT product ranges are within a small area of my local (massive) Tescos's.

CH

I've never eaten Wa*ker's C&O on principle. Ready Salted are my 2nd favourite flavour.

Tesco's C&O are OK (_and_ they come in the correct colour pack), but they're not a patch on the original Golden Wonder (the apogee of C&O in my opinion).

In fact, Tesco's do a good job all round, with the exception of Roast Beef flavour, which are impossible to make palatable (I believe I may have mentioned this before).

We have yet to hear from any crisp eaters in the States, I'm sure they call them something else, you know thin slices of potato (or for Qualye fans, potatoe) deep fried in loads of oil then sprayed with chemicals to give them flavour. Any takers.

CH

They're chips over there aren't they?

Other things that might cause confusion are Mars bars with peanuts in them and Milky Ways that turn out on eating them to be what we would call Mars Bars

Mars Bars Have caramel and NO nuts, Snickers are Mars Bars with nuts, and Milky Ways are Mars Bars minus the caramel in Australia...
Here packet chips are called chips and so are french-fry type thingies...

Sigh, I still think of them as Marathons, Opal Fruits etc, globalization, who needs it. unless of course it can deliver consitant crisp packet colour coding.

CH