Golden Krispy’s Sun Chips Paprika

They’re called Sun Chips, use a yellow-orange color scheme, are identified as a multigrain snack, and boast of having 30% less fat than potato chips.  Why am I bothering to review this everyday American product?  Well, because these ‘Sun Chips’ are made by the Tunisian Golden Krispy company in the town of Zaghoun, and they have about as much in common with Sun Chips as MTV does with the music industry.  (Wait, did that just make sense?  Yes, it did.)

These are not the crunchy rumpled multigrain crisps you are used to, but actually little cheeseball-like confections that appear to be made of puffed corn, but are actually composed of potatoes and corn.  So, multigrain, but not necessarily in the healthy ‘I’m good for your digestion’ way.  Still, there’s nothing objectionable about the format- they are relatively soft textured and the size of playing marbles (that is, a little larger than a Coco Puff), a pleasant light orange in color with the occasional speck of black pepper, and melt swiftly in the mouth.  The pebbles are lacking in density, but at least they aren’t rough or brittle on the outside.

The seasoning certainly isn’t very paprika-ish, although faint overtones of the Hungarian spice can be detected amidst the broadly sweet flavoring, with the occasional seasoned-salt surge and perhaps even a slightly sour element that elicits saliva from the tongue.  The flavoring on each individual puff tends to make a pleasant first impression on the tongue, but like a visit from your favorite mistress, doesn’t last as long as you would like, so I ended up gobbling three or four at once to saturate my mouth with the tasties.  Overall, a slightly higher seasoning content would have been better, but this shortcoming proved far from fatal.

Although Golden Krispy’s product has nothing to do with everybody’s favorite multigrain chips, they are still pretty fun to munch and deliver a seasoning that’s fairly compelling with its blend of sweet and salty, even if it seems a little off topic.  I’m vaguely curious if Golden Krispy actually has some licensing arrangement with Sun Chips to take advantage of their brand name (certainly the marketing is remarkably parallel), but I don’t want to give the game away if they don’t!  If I ever end up going to Tunisia myself, I’m definitely going to seek a LARGE bag of these so I can mindlessly munch away at them as I bake away under the sun of one of the world’s latest revolutionary states and trust that the the masses will even everything out.

Stars: 2/4

Spiciness: None

Pros:

- Reasonably amusing sweet-and-salty flavoring

- Fun to pop three or four in your mouth like coco pebbles

Cons:

- Not particularly Paprika-like, or spicy

- The individual balls could use more seasoning

- The chips are a little thin in texture