FritoLay – Grilled Hokkaido Corn

FritoLay in Japan has a number of releases under their umbrella brand instead of under Doritos for corn chips. I’m wondering why that is, but perhaps Doritos is just known for different flavours or concepts, like spicy, every man flavours. Maybe they aren’t sophisticated enough to pull off something as fancy sounding as grilled Hokkaido corn. Either that or they just want to have people think of this flavour as something that isn’t Doritos. Even though I’m sure most people will make the associate naturally.

This is far from my first foray into Hokkaido corn snacks, whether it’s sweet like in chocolate, or savoury like in chips or puffs, these share a very similar flavour profile. It has a very strong, sweet butter corn flavour that reminds me of those sweet corn puffs I had as a kid. They are equally as addictive, as I find myself finishing the entire bag fairly fast. Granted, the bag is only 55g, but it certainly felt a lot less than that. While I’ve not had Hokkaido corn, this is very reminiscent of grilled sweet corn, if you’ve ever had that. Except for the kernels getting stuck between your teeth. If they turned this seasoning into a powder that could be purchased off store shelves, I’d be adding it to everything. This stuff is good.

The texture of these reminds me of Doritos, and yet, they seem almost thinner, or lighter in texture somehow. I can’t tell if the light feeling is from the flavour itself, or the texture. What I can say is that this is a good texture to accompany the flavour. In most other snacks with this same profile, the texture is usually very light and airy. While I can see the merit of that, I prefer my snacks harder and to have a crunch, so this is better. While the chips aren’t super crunchy or hard, it is a good vehicle for the flavour, which in my opinion is what stands out.

Now that I think about it, this flavour is like the combination of corn chips along with corn flavour. It’s a bit of meta flavour. In a good way though, as these are very tasty and the best praise I can give it is that the bag is too small, and they all disappeared way too fast. I would definitely get these again.