Snack Review: Calbee Snapea Crisps

I know, shouldn’t it be ‘snap pea’ or ’snappea’? But that’s not what it says on the bag. The pea has lost a ‘p’ somewhere in the transformation to crisps, it seems.

The other odd thing it says on the bag is “Snack salad.” I don’t know about you, but the first thing that comes to mind when I think ‘snack’ is definitely not ‘salad.’ Those are two words that make about as much sense together as “colorless green ideas.”

But, the thing is, I got this email from my mom the other day:

I am starting to be a little concerned about you
reviewing snacks on “Snackerrific” web site.

Are you eating regular REAL food?

OK, I am not going to go so far as eating a bag of baby carrots or anything like that. But ‘snack salad’ – that’s something a mother could love, right?

The question of course is, is it something ONLY a mother could love? The text on the bag sets our expectations rather high:

Your salad never got such a lift!
The pea has played an important role in dietary life and culture since the dawn of recorded history, and because of its nutritional value it has great potential for our dietary lives in the future.

OK, pea potential! So how do these measure up?

The first surprise is that they don’t look like the picture on the bag. In the picture, each pea-pod shaped crisp has little pea-shaped lumps, and is very green. They’re very much like a real snap pea except that the peas are strangely symmetrical.

The picture led me to expect something much more snap-pea like than is the case. The crisps are pea-pod shaped but I detect no pea-shaped bulges. They also aren’t terribly green. I expected them to be more solid as well, but they’re puffy – sort of like Cheetos but crispier.

As for the flavor: they are made of only green peas, corn oil, rice, and salt. But in a blind taste test, a victim – er, volunteer – who didn’t know what they were supposed to be said that they had ‘a nutty flavor.’ When questioned, he said he detected no peas.

He really liked them. He kept saying “write that they taste like hickory nuts.” (I am reporting this for the sake of domestic harmony, but in the interest of truth in snacking, I feel compelled to point out that I am pretty sure he has no idea what hickory nuts taste like.)

To me, they’re just pretty bland. I really liked the texture, but they didn’t taste like very much. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want my snacks to taste like peas. Maybe the other flavor, Caesar, would be better. I am often quite content with mild flavors, but these guys need something to punch them up.

Well, maybe they will come up with better flavors to add to this nice texture that they’ve got going along with the great potential for our dietary lives in the future. The text on the bag does continue on to promise great things:

We are expecting to see the continuing development of “Snapea Crisps” as a delicate and tasty product which has taken advantage of the pea’s original goodness, and we propose this product as a new type of snack.

They seem to have big plans. Maybe they will involving playing down the “delicate” and working on the “tasty”? We can only hope.

• Snack Salad Website

Buy Snapea Crisps Online:

• at Amazon.com

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