04.22.06
Wasa Beef Potato Chips
Straight from Japan via the Big Box of Japanese Snack Foods I bring you Wasa Beef Potato Chips. [insert fanfare F/X here].
Lemmie divert a moment from the review to explain a little about the JSFR rating process. Of course there are the criteria listed in the rating system (which will be linked at the bottom of the page if you can’t remember, don’t know, or must obsessively follow links) by which we decide on a rating, but there are also some things that will fine tune an over all rating. Amusement pretty much always adds some pea points, be it fractional or whole. Odd ingredients have been known to raise the rating, packaging as well has raised the rating and construction of the snack food itself has also resulted in additional pea points.
However, the boo giveth and the boo taketh away. Poor flavor or texture or bad visual representation of a snack food have all been grounds to take away pea points. I’ve also taken pea points away for a snack food that hasn’t lived up to its marketing promise and thus we come full circle.
Wasa beef potato chips are not only not particularly wasa(bi) laden but also not particularly beefy as well. Sadly, they aren’t overly stellar as potato chips either so really, I’m not sure what they have going for them. My Guinea pigs said that they were fairly middle of the road in terms of chips…perhaps somewhere between generic store brand Potato Chipz and Lays (Better Made Potato chips also came to mind). You know, your typical cheap “throw it in with the catered lunchbox” potato chips. Not very auspicious. Hrrrm.
(The sleepy wasabi cow should have been a portent)
After a lack luster start, the chips preceded to put on the wasabi meh, which was described as “a definite taste apart from potato chips, but what we couldn’t say. Exactly”. The Pigs discovered that if you stuffed a bunch of chips in your mouth and crunched them all at once there was a little wasabi zest but not enough to really carry the wasabi fear. One of the Pigs went so far as to say that wasabi peas would laugh at Wasa Beef chips and mock them mercilessly for the chip’s lack of wasabiness.
As for the beef part of Wasa Beef, I guess you could carry that analogy further and say that cows would mock the chips mercilessly for the chip’s lack of beefiness. One Pig said that he could conceivably see that maybe the chips might have been fried in beef tallow while another one said that the flavor was pretty non-existent save for a very slight bouillon-y taste. Or maybe after taste. Or something.
Wasa Beef could have gotten a 2.5 or a 3 if they had started out with a better chip base or maybe had more punch in the wasabi or beef flavor department or all three, but as is I think I’m going to have to go with a very bland and disappointed
Rating of 2 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
