Review: Sweet Corn Turtle Chips
Engineering is cool. All those science brains put to work to ensure things don’t fall down. Add the imagination of architects and history has produced some of the world’s wonders: the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, Sydney’s Opera House and the Burj Khalifa—proof positive that mankind keeps pushing the boundaries of possibility.
With this in mind, I ate my first Turtle Chip. These ingenious Korean-sourced corn super-structures made me, like the spritely green chap on the packet, say “wow” when I discovered there really are four layers to each of these delicate taste capsules.
But crisps, like governments, live and die on delivery. Just like Labour, who won power with an action-packed-long-list of promises, delivery of this crisp was left wanting.
Why? First, the choice of sweetcorn (or more correctly, sweet corn) was risky, like imposing Mandelson on our friends over the pond. Whilst Turtle News’ reporting of the crispy layers was fair, the accuracy of the flavour was wildly off. Well, maybe that’s unfair, one half of the headline was bang-on: they are sweet.
Sooooooooo sweet it induced a temporary three-part blood-sugar seizure:
Shock—some things that are so self-evident they don’t need stating. Crisps are savoury. Labour looks after the poor—no matter how many children they have. End of. There is no place for sugar. Sweets are for children. Fried snacks are for adults. Adults eat salt, lots of salt. The INSANITY of adding sugar let alone this much sugar was beyond comprehension.
Disgust—the taste was wretched. I don’t understand how Koreans engage with this concept with any seriousness—think two-child limits. A mixture of sugar bullets and industrially-created artificial sweetcorn flavoured hand axes attacking your tongue with abandon.
Shame—as an ambassador for the crisp vanguard, I felt the movement had been cheated, let down, humiliated. It was snow at Wimbledon; Bublé dropping a drill track; strippers at a funeral.
It was sweet. Sweet like chocolate, sweet like free clothes or a universal winter fuel payment; SuperDooper saccharine.
What about the mouth feel? I must be fair to Orion Holdings, they’ve created a magnificent crisp capsule. Each of the four (four!) layers cracked with precision timing with just the right amount of torsion to create a one-two-three-four step bite action. Your teeth pass through this incredible structure as if descending the crisp stairs from heaven.
Sweetcorn Turtle Chips are a nice idea ruined—an Ed Miliband, perhaps. I strongly urge South Korea to think about the salt-based snack potential of this fantastic construction. If Turtle Chips would focus on delivery, stick to what works and stop trying to be clever, then they will find far more success and support.