Prawn cocktail should be tangy and sweet and taste inexplicably pink. It’s a flavour that doesn’t exist in nature, created entirely by crisp manufacturers, and beloved precisely because it’s artificial and strange and reminds everyone of childhood.
Sainsbury’s version is recognisably prawn cocktail. The tang is there. The sweetness is there. The pinkness, spiritually speaking, is present.
But everything is muted. Turned down. Made safe. Where other prawn cocktail crisps embrace their artificial weirdness, Sainsbury’s apologises for it. “Yes, this is prawn cocktail,” these crisps seem to say, “but we’re not proud of it.”
The result is nostalgia without joy. The flavour triggers memories without creating new ones. You eat these and remember better prawn cocktail crisps you’ve had, which isn’t the emotional response a brand wants to generate.
Adequate. Sadly, thoroughly adequate.
