I'm Walkers maxed out on crisps for now (Walkers 'Max' Paprika Crisps)

Member Name: beckyX

Product:	Walkers 'Max' Paprika Crisps
Date:	24/10/09 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Big bag, reasonably tasty

Disadvantages: Bag was too big for me, not very healthy

Sadly, my work's snack machine is starting to become a bit of a regular feature on here, particularly when (like now) they change the contents. Today's lunch was a pack of paprika flavoured Walkers Max, which at 60p were a bit more than I usually spend on a bag of crisps, but the bag was 50g, which is a little under twice the normal 30g size of bag of crisps.

===Packaging===
The size of the bag was a little larger than I am used to (but after all it does have more crisps). The packaging was a garish orange colour, with the word MAX sprawled across it in a black stamp-like font, together with a giant picture of a crisp next to a potato that was positively dwarfed in comparison. The rear of the pack also had a smaller version of this mismatched picture on it. I'm not sure if I was supposed to interpret this picture as "Buy our giant crisps, they're even larger than potatoes", but that's how it came across to me. Also included in the back are nutritional information and ingredients in four different languages.

===The crisps themselves===
These crisps are ridged and not actually as large as is implied on the bag. Fortunately, they are less orange than the pack as well, although not by nearly enough - this really does have paprika in the seasoning and like the real thing, it stains the fingers.

I cook with paprika quite often and know that anything as strongly coloured as paprika crisps tastes seriously smoky to the point where you start coughing. The taste from these crisps was nothing like that - it wasn't anywhere near as strong as the colour suggested though - it was a fairly gentle and almost mellow flavour. It was pleasant enough to the taste, but the topping was clearly not neat paprika. The ingredients claim that one of the flavourings is paprika and the colouring is paprika extract - I suspect that "extract" means that they extracted the flavour and used it elsewhere and just used the colour for these crisps and had a small bit of real paprika for the flavouring. One good thing about the flavour was that it didn't taste too salty.

The crisps were crunchy and quite brittle. The ridges didn't seem to affect the flavour or texture all that much - I'd have been equally happy without them. The 50g bag was extremely filling, but that's just as well because it formed the whole of my lunch. The individual crisps were a little bit larger than normal - I suppose they made them from large potatoes, but not big enough that I thought "wow, I see why they call these crisps MAX". They were rather thicker cut than normal crisps, which leads to a crunchier crisp.

===Nutrition===
The bag contains 262 kcal - 13% of my daily requirement, 1.9g of sugar, 16.3g of fat (23% of my allowed intake!) and 0.3g of sodium. All that in one bag! That makes it the least healthy snack I have reviewed so far. I won't be having these crisps again on these grounds alone!

===Ingredients===
The ingredients panel says that these crisps are made from potatoes, 33% oil and paprika seasoning (a very long list of things that aren't very good for you). Annoyingly, there is no allergy panel on the bag, though one it says one of the flavourings is from barley, which is a common allergen. It does, however say that it has no MSG, no preservatives, no artificial colours (paprika is a vivid natural colouring) and is suitable for vegetarians.

===Summary===
Crisps are not healthy. These are not healthy even compared to regular crisps. I won't be buying these again any time soon unless they make them in smaller sized bags and that doesn't seem very likely given that the brand name is MAX and the large bag is the point of the product. I found them tasty enough, just a bit too much for everyday bag of crisps and not quite large enough for two portions.

Summary: A large bag of crisps for people who want to maximise their snack experience.