August 17, 2003
Walkers Sensations Oriental Crackers
Some of the cheapest entertainment we've found in London has been stopping in shops to just look at the products which aren't available in America. (The cheapest entertainment in England so far has been playing "nobody's really named that in your country, really?" with some of V.'s cousin's colleagues in Brighton.) Walkers is, I'm fairly sure, simply the British arm of Frito-Lay, so there's no real reason their "Walkers Sensations Oriental Crackers" couldn't be a successs in the United States; we're not talking prawn or mint and lamb crisps here. The flavor we tried, "Tangy Malaysian Chutney", was even fairly familiar, a bit like a slight variation on barbecue potato chips. (The flavor is somewhere between BBQ and sweet-and-sour sauce, in fact.) And the crackers themselves were quite good: puffed casavva chips that I'd have felt perfectly happy spooning tamarind sauce onto in a restaurant. They kind of dissolve on your tongue. The chief inspiration may in fact be the Aero chocolate bar, another good British snack food idea that hasn't made it back across the Atlantic. I won't be smuggling a carton of these home, but I'd happily pick them up at the next chemist's shop we visit in London.
Aero bars are widely available in Canada. We can smuggle you some, if necessary, through the Trans North America British-style Candy Pipeline.
I confess that my tastes are much trashier than Aero bars. I like Violet Crumbles (and Crunchies), which are nauseatingly sweet.
While in England, we explained to a ten year old that American candy was different and largely inferior to British candy. She began asking us what we had, and was appalled at one omission. "How can you have ice cream if you don't have any Flake?" It is a great trans-Atlantic mystery.