M&S: Extreme Ridge Ready Salted Potato Crisps

I acquired these with high hopes.

In the effort of ploughing my way through what seems an insurmountable task, I have engaged the whole family in the exercise. And despite my usual Saturday night exercise of ploughing through a whole sharing bag, with maybe the odd crisp finding it’s way into another mouth, I have determined that the best way to make solid progress is to embrace the multipack bag.

Three different crisps in one night, get everyone involved. High hopes…

First thoughts

The packaging is a bit extreme for M&S. Irridescent, gregarious, and promises the kind of what round the face you get from the Walker’s Max range.

It may have been a while since I had a multipack crisp, but surely the serving is a little parsimonious (the above video shows each bag probably gave about 5 full size crips and 10 half broken crisps).

But anyway, on to the tasting….

Where’s the Extreme?

And here begins the disappointment. These are only a salted pack, so extremes in flavour were not anticipdated.

But some kind of extreme in anything would have been nice. They appeared healthily thick to the eye, but the crunch just doesn’t match up to anything you would expect from a ridged crisp.

The colour was slightly paler than expected too, and the texture almost a little crumbly. This salted pack was definitely the least crunchy of the 3 tried, so there’s definitely some variation in quality, maybe this was just a bad batch.

Overall they felt a little undercooked, with not enough oil, almost like one of the M&S lower fat range. Except the fat content doesn’t support that theory.

The only positive? The salt levels were fine for me. Satisyfingly salty without taking it too far.

The verdict: Comparison hurts

So overall this is a big fail for M&S, and does not match up with what I expect from the brand.

And the real problem perhaps is that my go to staple are Aldi Lightly Salted Crinkle Cut Crisps. Thick, crunchy, oily, and actually tasing of potato. So in comparison these can only ever be a pathetic immitation.

🥔 Nutritional Information (per 100g)