Child Of The 1980's

With crisp behemoth Walkers slowly buying up every other major crisp manufacturer they can lay their hands on, it was inevitable there would be some casualties. To be fair to Walkers, now they own Smith’s Crisps they have at least kept the Smith’s name running as a brand (Walker’s Salt ‘n’ Shake would be sacrilege).

Whilst the Smith’s name lives on, we have unfortunately had to say goodbye to the Smith’s Crispy Tube, the tube shaped crisp. These crisps were long, thin tubes of potato, and I’m still not sure how they managed to make them in the first place. There may be other tube like crisps available, such as the ever popular Hula Hoops or Wheat Crunchies, but the Crispy Tube had a very light, delicate texture these other crisps lack.

Crispy Tubes always reminded me of those other Smith’s favourite, the Square Crisp. In fact, perhaps that was how they made them, by taking Square Crisps and rolling them up somehow before cooking them?

Originally only available in ready salted flavour (and they were pretty salty too, as I remember), they were eventually joined by a salt and vinegar variety (which were similarly intense in their vinegariness). As with all crisps back then you got a good helping of crisps in the packet for a reasonable price, not like today where crisps seem to be overpriced for bags of air with a couple of mouthfuls of crisps.

I’ll leave you with the original TV advert for Crispy Tubes, which had a Wimbledon theme, with an umpire and a nasally voiced John McEnroe style tennis player discussing the snacks merits.

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This entry is filed under Sweets and Snacks and was posted on February 19th, 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.