Review: Charles Chips

When Eick sent out a request for someone to review these guys I jumped at the chance. As a kid every house had a Charles Chips can on the counter, regardless of whether it had been re-purposed as a cookie jar, mail holder or kitchen utensil bin, a can was in the house. To be completely honest I don’t eat a ton of chips anymore and had not realized that they were not around.

To give you a feel for how prevalent, and how cool getting chip delivery was, my wife unearthed a picture of herself, along with some neighborhood kids, waiting for the truck to arrive and bring cans of golden potato deliciousness.

This sight was not uncommon at all in my neighborhood either. The whole idea of non frozen snacks being delivered was just cool. OK, nostalgia time over, let’s talk  about tasting today’s product.

I received three varieties: Original, Sour Cream and Onion, and Barbeque..

While I was disappointed I didn’t get some kind of collectible tin,  I was willing to carry on and eat chips anyway. I opened all three and dropped them in a basket for a visual inspection. They are similar in thickness and cut to something like a lays or a kettle chip. No ridges, scoops or shaping was evident.

Neither of the flavored chips looked to be over coated which is a positive to me. I like to taste potatoes in my chip.Digging in to the original, that is what I got. Solid potato flavor, nice level of salt and a good crunch. Pretty much the prototypical potato chip. The sour cream and onion were a bit under flavored if you only took one chip at a time. The onion was at the right level but the tang of the sour cream wasn’t quite what I wanted. The barbecue was excellent, sweet and smokey with just a hint of spice. All the while you could taste potato on all three styles. In the end I really enjoyed them as a chip and a trip down memory lane.