The crisp revolution...

I remember a time when crisps came in one flavour – plain. Of course they weren’t called plain because they had no need of a name as they were the only crisps available. They came with a little blue packet of salt that you shook onto your crisps which were often soggy as they came in paper packets. This was before ‘Ready Salted Crisps’ came along and when they arrived they caused something of a sensation.

Golden Wonder were first to introduce a flavoured crisp with cheese and onion in the 1960s. I remember it well and suddenly cheese and onion were the only crisps worth eating. At around this time the packaging improved too and suddenly crisps were both crisp and flavoured!

It was a crisp revolution at thruppence (1.25 pence) a bag.

Suddenly the floodgates were opened and every Smith, Walker, and Golden Wonder began to search for the perfect flavour for their crisps. They tried just about everything and each were greeted by 'oohs' and 'ahhs' by me and my schoolboy chums. The smokiness of smokey bacon was a revelation, my first taste of seafood was a prawn cocktail crisp, and when Smith's came out with salt and vinegar I thought that I tasted it all.

How wrong I was.

With only a handful of flavours the crisp industry had a 'gentleman's' agreement that ready-salted crisps were sold in dark blue packets, salt and vinegar in light blue packets, and cheese and onion in green. This all changed though when Walkers decided to throw the cat flavour among the pigeons flavour in the 80s and changed the colour of their packets to blue for cheese and onion and green for salt and vinegar. It still confuses me to this day – cheese and onion is definitely green.

I went off salt and vinegar pretty quickly and can't stand them to this day.

During the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up, the crisp market became increasingly competitive and the flavours more and more exotic including tomato ketchup, Worcester sauce, Branston pickle and sausage, even hedgehog – yes hedgehog.

Today crisps come in just about every flavour available and handmade kettle chips are all the rage. Lamb and mint sauce, maple-smoked barbecue, blue stilton, port and cranberry, sage and thyme, organic, beetroot, carrot, parsnip – you name you can get it.

Here’s just a few on the list. Feel free to pick your favourite:

Cheese & Onion

Roast Chicken

Prawn Cocktail

Ready Salted

Salt & Vinegar

Pickled Onion

Smoky Bacon

Tomato Ketchup

Worcester Sauce

Cheddar Cheese & Bacon

Sour Cream & Chive

Ranch Raccoon

Sizzling Steak Fajita

Pulled Pork in a Sticky BBQ sauce

Cheesy Beans on Toast

Chip Shop Chicken Curry

Hot Dog with Tomato Ketchup

Baked Bean  

Baked Ham & Mustard

Barbecue

BBQ Rib

Beef & Onion

Cheese

Cheese & Branston Pickle

Cheese & Chive

Chicken Tikka

Ham & Mustard

Jamaican Jerky Chicken

Lamb Curry

Lamb & Mint Sauce

Marmite

Ploughmans

Roast Gammon

Roast Turkey & Stuffing

Spicy Chilli

Spicy Mango Chutney

Spring Onion

Steak & Onion

Toasted Cheese

Pizza

Vanilla essence

Sour Cream & Spring Onion

Lincolnshire Sausage & Brown Sauce

Birmingham Chicken Balti

I won’t go on, but I could.