Cheese-flavoured snacks are a treacherous business. They can be glorious, or they can taste like the inside of a teenager’s school bag.
Bugles: Cheese plays it fairly safe—but safe doesn’t mean boring. It just means this is the faux-cheese crunch you half-expect, dialled in for comfort rather than surprise.
The shape remains iconic: those crisp, corn-based trumpets that invite immediate finger-play. It’s hard not to crown each digit before munching down, and frankly, that tactile joy is half the Bugle appeal.
Flavour-wise, this is Walkers doing cheese as they’ve done a thousand times before. It leans more toward “cheesy puff” than real cheese board—think school lunchbox cheddar, tangy and a little plasticky, but intentionally so. There’s a puffed maize sweetness underlying it all, and the powder clings to your fingertips like it’s auditioning to be the next crime scene evidence.
It’s not as punchy or weird as Wotsits, nor as full-fat indulgent as a ridged cheese and onion crisp. But it does what it says: Bugles, with cheese. Light, crunchy, hollow, and coated in golden orange seasoning.
If there’s a downside, it’s the richness. Eat too many, and there’s a greasy edge that creeps in.
Ultimately, BBQ Bugles remain the OG, and these a slightly ill-fitting side project. I wouldn’t be too sad if they disappeared from the shelves…
