You'd better stop or you might pop! (Pringles Sour Cream & Onion)

Member Name: paranormalhandy

Product:	Pringles Sour Cream & Onion
Date:	03/05/09 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They are flavour bombs

Disadvantages: You can put on weight, and retain salt and fluids, just by looking at them.

Once Pringles arrived in Britain, complete with a fully-fledged hype machine, back around 1991, it was all over for homegrown stacked crisps in oversized Smarties tubes (I can't remember what they were called, but every supermarket at one time had its own-brand variation on the formula, which they certainly wouldn't bother with now). In comparison to "ordinary" crisps, even the large kettle kind, no social gathering now seems complete without a tube of Pringles. Quite why a few packets of prawn cocktail should seem childish, while a vertical tube which makes a popping noise when opened should not, is just one of the unwritten laws in the Land of Snobby Snacks. It's the same reason why people are happy to be seen eating Green & Black's but feel more embarrassed about a Snickers.

Pringles are available in various flavours, but none are as satisfying and tasty are sour cream and onion. There is something within the sharp tang and sour aftertaste that mixes well with the crumbly, salty covering on each individual crisp. I recall a friend of mine once saying it was mostly MSG, although I'm not sure if that's true. Pringles certainly have the same more-ish quality of some Chinese food, with a texture and satisfying crunch that is unobtainable in any other crisp or chip. And quite simply - there is no finer Pringle than the one in the lime green tube (dark green cheese and onion, by comparison, is quite uncouth).

A few caveats, of course, particularly with regards to health : since I started at Weightwatchers two months ago I have never eaten a single one (I suppose this review is in memoriam). It's a bit of a cliche to say that Pringles, like Chocolate Hobnobs, are impossible to be eaten sensibly (i.e., only taking a few from the packet and re-sealing). But in a blitz of salt, potato starch and feelings of shame, you can quite easily go from the moment of opening that full tube (which pops aromatically just like a jar of new coffee) to scrabbling around the bottom picking out the echoey last crumbs, in just under fifteen minutes.

As a treat once in a blue moon, or as an accessory to the Yuletide party season, they are definitely recommended. But if you want to remain healthy (or more crucially, GET healthy) you're probably better with a nice bowl of fruit ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Oh, and you can always temporarily kid yourself by buying Rice Infusions instead, but even they are hardly health food!

Summary: Lovely crisps ... too lovely ...