One of my favourite crisp flavours of all time were the Jacket Potato & Butter ones sold at Marks & Spencers. They had a rich full potato flavour and lovely creamy buttery aftertaste. They just tasted quite luxurious and I have mourned them since they were discontinued a few years ago. As a Seabrook’s fan I was rather pleased to see that amongst their new range with “90% less salt” they had included some jacket potato flavour crisps one of which were these “Jacket Potato with Creamy Butter” variety.
I hurriedly opened the packet and dived in. I couldn’t believe what I was eating. These have to be the strangest concoction of a flavouring that I have ever had the misfortune to try. I eat a lot of weird crisps, but these really do take the biscuit. My mouth was filled with a shocking sugary sweetness and vague after taste of savoury butter. It is not often I can’t eat a whole bag of crisps but I really had to force myself to try a couple more for the sake of writing this review. They were just so sweet and sickly. I checked the contents label and sugar was indeed the third largest listed on the ingredients following potato and sunflower oil.
I do know that jacket potatoes have a slight sweetness but they don’t taste FULL of sugar. Also dearest Seabrook just because you are removing the salt I don’t feel it is necessarily a good idea to look for some other white granular condiment to replace it with even if it does look similar. Taste wise sugar and salt are worlds apart.
I like nearly all Seabrook crisp varieties, and as a fan of the brand I do I feel sad not to like these. I just can’t work out what happened. I tested them out at work (as I clearly wasn’t going to be able to eat any more of the pack) and not one person liked them. That is a sample of eight other people who all agreed they were overly sweet, sickly and one of them even had to reach for a drink to wash their mouth out. One further sampler refused to try one as they had bought a multipack themselves and thought they were so bad they were planning to try and give the contents away as they couldn’t not face eating any more. How did these get past the Seabrook taste testers?
Not only is the flavour sugared beyond reason, I have to add a final note about the packaging. It took me a while to work it out, but by all means have a go yourself. BOTH of the following two tables appear on the back of the pack, which is a bit confusing if you are trying to work out your calorie intake…
This pack of crisp is from a multipack, there are also two further flavours of Jacket Potato With Caramelised Onions and Jacket Potato With Tomato and Garlic which I have yet to try. I will test them, but after this effort I’m not really looking forward to them.
53 comments:
If the bottom one is the crisps that's quite a bit of fat in them.
isnt one for the flavouring and one for the crisps?
Dreich - yep - they aren't low calorie either!
Anon - yep, but its not like you shake the flavouring off or have it separately so why do they bother with two tables?
i have emailed seabrook to ask why there is two charts, i only brought because of the first chart.When i noticed the second chart i was annoyed.
i tried anyway, the caramelised onion flavour, which were disgusting, horrible after taste also
Everyone who I showed the pack too though it was confusing - but more than that the crisps were far too sweet!
So what IS the mystery of the 2 charts?? I came across your blog as I was looking for precisely that explanation. Is one really a "flavouring" chart? I didn't find the taste so horrible though (I tried the "mediterranean herb" variety). As regards the sugar, I checked it against the Sunbites crisps (which I happened to have at home), and it turns out Sunbites have MORE sugar content!
I have had the sunbite crisps - and they do manage to taste very much like tomato, rather than sweet - even if the sugar content is comparable.
The Seabrook Jacket Potato With Creamy Butter crisp just taste odd, and sugary.
I'm pretty sure one of the charts is just the flavouring... it would explain why it is only 16 cals per bag. I haven't had that officially confirmed though - its just the most reasonable explanation I could come up with.
I bought two multi packs when I saw them... they just sounded so good. Total mistake :-(
On a calorie counting diet, I thought I'd got a bargain. They were far to sweet so I checked the bag and by chance I looked at the second chart; 'WHAT!!?.... 176 calories per bag. A closer look, and even some of the comparisons per bag against 100g don't add up.
It just seems really confusing, I don't think I've ever seen two tables on one bag of crisps before. :-/
Here's their response to a comment on their FB page on the confusing charts: "There are two Typical Nutritional Value declarations on the Goodbye salt Hello flavour packaging to ensure that Seabrook is totally transparent in the claims it has made, so consumers can distinguish between a) the flavouring alone and b) the potato crisp including the flavouring. We do appreciate that this can cause confusion so we are currently updating the packaging to amend this."
Seabrook used to be the best crisps, and the reason for that was simple: plenty of sunflower oil, tasty sea salt and the yummy umami smack of monosodium glutamate. And now, because they pioneered sea salt and sunflower oil, and are finally cracking into the southern market, it seems they've gone hell bent on trying to promote how healthy and natural they are like they were suddenly some kind of ethically aware, organic badger protectors.
Suddenly the MSG came out, now in this range the fricking salt is coming out (to be replaced with sugar? Eh?)
Seabrook have started to come off the rails (and lets remember, these were the best crisps ever made), it all started to go wrong the day they caved in and went for foil packets I reckon.
ps Seabrook, I actually add MSG (from chinese supermarket) back into your crisps.
Nesrin - thanks for updating us. I'm really pleased to hear Seabrookes are sorting out the packaging, I've had quite a few emails too with people moaning about it.
VoiceOfReason - I've read quite a bit about MSG and as far as I can see there was no evidence that it is bad for you, but I know companies are still keen on taking it out as consumers don't like the concept of it.
Do you like the Seabrooks regular range, the ones which still have the salt? Or have they changed too much for you too?
One question to seabrooks... did anyone taste test these crisps before they went into the shops?
As a family of Seabrooks crisps lovers we were really excited about trying these new flavours, so we opened all three flavours at once to try. Mistake! These are the most awful crisps we have ever tried, sickly, buttery and herby. The multipack will be in the post returned to Seabrook ASAP.
Gillian - I know exactly what you mean.
Seabrooks latest new flavour is Desi Curry, which hopefully is back on track.
I have to say I love these crisps. Bit weird yeah but overall, awesome. Found them in the Co-op last week.
Ugh! I actually thought the sugar addition must have been a production error. Wish I hadn't bought two multipacks. Shame - the underlying flavours are good and they're nice & crispy but to my taste pretty much inedible with the sugar. Needed a glass of wine to take away the taste!!!!
Goodbye Salt, Hello Sugar. Why didn't I check the ingredients list more carefully? Or read this blog! These are disgusting, and not at all healthier. Give me back the sea salt - even just lightly.
I emailed Seabrooks thinking some polite but constructive feedback wouldn't go amiss. Got a one line answer along the lines of 'thanks I'll pass your comments on to the directors' No greeting line, no sign off, just that!
These are the worst crisps I have ever tried. I actually felt physically sick from the rancid butter taste. shocking, totally shocking. Nice blog post!
Joe - I guess someone has to like them, but I fear you are in a minority!
I don't know why they would add so much sugar, they just taste odd to me.
Glad people are enjoying the blog post though x
As lovers of Seabrook, me and my workmate thought we'd treat ourselves to the fancy looking Seabrook multipack on the supermarket shelf.
I've learnt to ignore any conspicuous "low this, low that" markings, and the fact it lives in the crisp aisle is enough for me to know their true aim is to give me a coronary one day.
This lunchtime my colleague grabbed a packet of lovely looking jacket potato & creamy butter and me a caramelised onion. Upon first bite my colleague let out a cry of disgust and likened the taste offence to the popular antibiotic Amoxicillin. I could only assume this was not good. She waved the bag toward me to confirm the rankness of the crisp and that it was not her tastebuds betraying her. The bag went on a trip around the office and it was confirmed that the Seabrook tasting department had royally cocked up in passing a crisp that manages to taste nothing like what it's made of and actually like mould. Crinkle cut, deep fried mould.
The caramelised onion was mouth numbingly saccharine too.
Disgusting crisps - both me & DH disliked them. Bought a multipack, what a waste of money!
I googled "seabrook crisps are disgusting" and came across your blog.
I managed to eat the caramelised onion flavour. I was expecting a sweetness, they were a bit sweeter than I expected but they were okay. The creamy butter however was disgusting. I had one and struggled. I had another and I had to spit it out. These had a sour taste. I didn't choose to buy these btw, my brother bought a multipack on offer and didn't eat them all (I wonder why?!) I think there's still one more flavour to try!
The buttery ones are so SWEET - no idea what they were thinking!
I've just managed 4 crisps and i can't go on. What a let down.
I must be the only person who likes the Creamy Butter flavour. I eat three packs a day.
Could not eat more than 2 crisps, horrid taste. This product should be removed immediately from the shelves.
Seabrook's JACKET POTATO CREAMY BUTTER FLAVOUR . Absolutely foul ! Less salt should not mean more sugar .. even a family of four of us couldn't manage more than half a packet between us . What were you thinking of Seabrook ?
I have to say - the majority of people don't seem to like these at all... but I do keep finding the odd person that loves them! These really are Marmite.
let's not beat about the bush (seabrook)these are the worst crisps ever, my two dogs won't even touch them. Seabrook crisp lover.
have just tried the caramelized onion and have to say they are truely revolting. A bag got passed around the ward on a night shift and not one of the 8 staff on duty had a good word to say for them....BRING BACK THE SALT I SAY!!
The Creamy Butter crisps taste like the butter has gone off, never tasted anything so offensive in my life and the Caramelised Onion one's taste like the onions have been fried in the off butter, daren't taste the other flavour in the multi pack. Definately going in the bin waste of money!!!!!
It was like eating a spoonful of butter. Both my husband and I felt sick. Shared them around the office and not one person liked them. Once you got over the sensation of having a mouth full of butter they did actually taste like a buttery jacket potato.
Sorry Seabrook but you have gone from my favourite Crisp brand ever to the worst with these flavour's. Whoever allowed these to go to market needs to go the same way as the Coca cola executive who changed the formula a few years ago. As somebody else said earlier 'what were you thinking of' when you went to market with these disgusting products?
We wish I had seen this blog before purchasing a multipack of the Caramelised Onion Flavour! They were absolutely vile and after a quick taste test around the office, confirmed that we weren't alone in thinking these crisps are rancid. We also noticed that the negative comments regarding these crisps go back to the beginning of the year and still Seabrook continue to sell them?? Disgraceful!!! The audacity they have to say "hello flavour" on the packaging! Wrong!! FELEN
I usually love Seabrook's crisps, but I just had to say these are totally disgusting! They also leave a lingering sickly smell on your fingers and a bad taste in your mouth.
Bloody YUKK!
Real shame, hope Seabrook get to see these comments and do something about them.
On the bright side their new 2Chilli crisps are out of this world :-)
A colleague handed me a bag of these Jacket potato and butter crisps to try because he said they were really bad. I ate one and then had to promptly spit it out because it was just outrageously disgusting!!!! I was left gagging for a good ten minutes. Just unbelievably bad. We then rang customer services at Seabrook to voice our disgust. Felt sorry for the woman as she had to just say they weren't her favourite but that some people really liked them.... Crazy.
Tried one of the assorted multipacks - Conclusion:
Nice packaging, shame about everything else - Yuk!
for some reason..i am on my second bag of the creamy butter ones today, granted a few weeks a go when i put the first ever creamy butter crisp in my mouth i thought the taste was odd but the more i'm eating them the more i'm totally hooked! I must have macho tastebuds :) My boyfriend hates them, he also hates marmite,but I eat a ton of marmite. I wonder if all marmite fans like these too?
I'm afraid I have to ruin your theory - I love Marmite but didn't like these... they obviously appeal to some though, but not the majority it seems.
known in the factory as no salt no flavour avoid this crap like the plague other flavours are brilliant
flavour is like sherbet!!!!!!!!!
Bought these at Tesco's Uhhhhh! Horrid rancid taste. Sent packets back to Seabrooks-just got a brush off with no refund. Found out that the CEO is called Ken Crispen-Brook. Sent him a poem (wife say's I've got to get out more!) and a bit of a rant about these crisps and their customer service. Nothing heard, wish now I'd taken them back to Tesco's.
I was so disappointed with these crisps..they should be called "Goodbye salt Hello sugar"!
I think anon you summarised it perfectly: "Goodbye salt Hello sugar"!
John B - do share the poem with us!!!
Just tried these crisps at a house party. Nice packaging, strange nutritional values that dont add up. So much for worrying about vomming due to alcohol, these were gross, couldn't manage two.
I am honestly surprised HArdly anyone I know who has tried them has said anything positive about them. :-(
Now their Desi Curry and 2Chilli flavour may be some of the greatest crisps known to man!
Both the butter and caramelised flavours are disgusting. I have thrown out the whole multipack.
Utterly, utterly, utterly disgusting, what were they thinking ? Remember somebody thought to promote this as an improvement ???? If you got a reply from Seabrooks regarding this, then you were lucky !
Whats the matter with you all. These creamy butter crisps are THE best tasting crisps I have ever tasted. I`m 67 years old and have eaten crisps most of those years and these are without doubt the best. I now find that I cannot buy them anywhere, probably due to all you moaning buggers saying they make you sick.GET A LIFE and eat SEABROOKS. THE finest crisps ever.
I loveeee them they are the only crisps I eat I want some I need a box full as I love them soooo much =]
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