Crusti Croc Chips Paprika

There is an old teacher’s meme that “if only your child put half of the effort into his studies that he puts into (throwing stickballs/drawing comic strips/hiding whoopee cushions under the teacher’s desk/involving himself in extra-curricular sex-ed, etc.) than he would do brilliantly in school.”  For me, it was usually between “writing design documents for unfeasibly complicated computer games” or “reconsidering whether Hitler could have captured Moscow in 1941”.  In this spirit, I can tell the people at Crusti-Croc “If you put half the effort into your flavoring that you put into your food coloring, you might have something awesome.

The battle at the gates of Moscow in 1941 is the closest
real life evercame to the ski-level in Modern Warfare 2,
AKA the third dream in the movie Inception.

            Now, to be fair, Crusti Croc is basically the brand name of a German discount-grocery chain called Lidl (sort of in the vein of Aldis), and so you have to understand that we’re intrinsically going to be talking about a quantity-for-quality trade off with their products.  And in terms of quantity, well they do offer pretty good tonnage for your euro, by European standards at least.

            I will even remark in their favor that the chips are fairly large and nicely bubbly in texture for something so cheap, though they are text-book Lay’s style potato chips in so far as they are thin and underwhelming in terms of crunchiness.  They are rather pretty with all of the orange food dye they’ve been bathed in, like young girls discovering their inner Picasso when they play with mom’s make-up kit, and look like they are going to explode in tasty flavorfulness when they reach your mouth.

When you are kid, MOR KOLARZ = BETTARZ!
Also, you talk like an orc and try
to bite lollipops.Clearly this one
is angling to for a role in a
Kid Cudi music video.

            Unfortunately, the beauty here is only skin-deep, because they remarkably fail to have any flavor whatsoever.  No, seriously.  These are supposed to be Paprika chips, which apparently are the style du jour here, but you will not taste any paprika, and there is nothing even remotely resembling spiciness here.  There is a slight excess of saltiness which becomes apparent after having a few in succession- the balance is off and the saline in your mouth will become unpleasant if you don’t space out the chips.

Really, though, the extent to which they have failed to impart any flavor is truly breathtaking.   There is only one good reason to buy these, and that’s if you want a large quantity of regular chips and don’t care about flavor.  They do have the virtue of being large and bubbly for something so cheap, so if you’re drunk out of your mind, you won’t bite your tongue off trying to nibble them.  Still, how they managed to release something on the market without any tastable seasoning truly boggles the mind.

Stars: 1½

Spiciness: None

Pros:

- Chips are nice and bubbly for a product so inexpensive

- They’re pretty to look at like a vapid teen movie star

Cons:

- NO FLAVORING AT ALL IN EVIDENCE
- Crisps are on the side of average-thin