Lost in translation

It's taken me a while, but I'm gradually working out a correspondence between british snack foods and america. Contrary to some of the comments posted at snackspot, I do find the variety of snacks available here pretty disappointing. Mostly it's in the crisps department: the basic options here are Lays and Doritos. Doritos should be familiar to UK readers, and Lays seem to be the equivalent of Walker's crisps -- except that the flavours seem to be mostly mild variations on plain (ready salted), rather than any of the exotic Worcester Sauce, Ketchup or Prawn Cocktail variations. Things have improved moderately thanks to the introduction of Pringles. Another part of the problem is that they seem to have great difficulty understanding the notion of a serving of crisps. As everyone knows, crisps should come in units of 28g, and preferably in multi-pack bags of 6 or 12 for about a quid. Here, you pay four dollars and get about a kilo of Dorito-derivative tortilla-style "chips". The problem with this is that if you are not a complete glutton, then you can't get through very much of this before the whole thing has gone off, and you have to throw the remainder away.

Again, there are a few glimmers of hope, in the form of multibags of Doritos (although the bags seem just that little bit too small), and Pringles, which are resealable and so seem to keep for much longer. But this is missing the point. Where are the frazzles? The Monster munch? Nik Naks? Those salt and vinegar spirals that it's almost impossible to find anymore>?

It's almost enough to make me want to use one of those online food ordering things where you end up paying about a pound a packet just for privelege of some decent snacks. I'm telling you, the minute they make Mountain Dew available in the UK with the full caffeine blast, I'm going back to the homeland.

Anyway, I almost forgot why I started this, which is to complain how inferior the US version of the UK versions are. This mostly applies to chocolate. I pretty quickly picked up that 3 Musketeers is about the same as a UK Milky Way, while a US Milky Way is what we would call a mars bar. Apparently, there is also a mars bar around here somewhere, but I've never seen one. These are OK, but they again fall down on the whole size and price issue. In the UK, you can get a 4 or 5 back of decent size mars bars for around a quid (when they are on offer). Here, you pay a few dollars for 10 'fun size' mars bar equivalents, which you need to eat two at a time to feel remotely satisfied, and even then you feel cheated.

Mounds are like little bounties, but aren't as good. Twix also come in stupidly small sizes, and one finger at a time, which is missing the point. They have Kit-kats here as well, but I haven't eaten any, since I am still Boycotting Nestle Products. I did once try a Nestle Crunch here, which is a chocolate / rice crispie style product, kind of like a lion bar, only flat. That would have been OK, but I won't eat them either now. But the thing that really made my blood boil was "Whoppers". I bought a pack of these yesterday. They are "malted milk ball", covered in chocolate. Aha! I thought to myself -- these must be maltesers! So I bought a pack (nice packaging -- they are in what's basically a tetrapak which opens really easily because it does't have to be waterproof) expecting some melt in the mouth excitement. Well, was a I disappointed. They are almost the same thing, but they don't melt at in the same way -- you end up sucking them too hard and hurt your mouth. The honeycomb like structure is replaced by a much crunchier (almost like a Crunchy) interior, and then after most of it has gone you are left with a nasty gritty taste that sticks to your teeth. Nice one, Hershey foods -- you have taken a product of wonder and delight, and tainted it for ever. Thanks.