We put the ultimate of all convenience-store snacks—the chip—to a taste test showdown. And here are the results.

28. Lay’s Honey Butter

In Lay’s defence, salty, buttery honey is a flavor combination that no one else has ever dared before—especially not delivered in potato chip form. Sadly though, their bravery has not been rewarded; these taste like the chips that still haven’t been finished by the end of the movie. Pure filth. 
 

27. Lay’s Popcorn Caramel

In Lay’s defence… no, we’re not even going to go there this time. There’s no defending this abomination to the good name of the potato chip. Let popcorn be popcorn and chips be chips. The end. 
 

26. Lay’s Classic Shushi/Goong

You would only ever buy these because you’d never bought them before. If the terrible smell of feet and fish doesn’t put you off, then the lime-skin after-taste will. The only reward this chip gives us is bad breath.
 

25. Jaxx Mix Cheesy Sausage Pizza 

Cheese: good. Sausage: good. Jaxx Mix Cheesy Sausage Pizza flavor: very, very not good. Thanks for the keychain, but we’d rather our B25 back. 
 

24. Jaxx Mix Nori Seaweed

You’d think from the amount of nori crumbs flaking off these things and all over your clothes that they’d actually taste of nori. You’d be wrong. The disconcerting smoothness of this piped potato mush is its final nail in the coffin. An also-ran chip.
 

23. Cornae Cheese

We had more fun putting these onto our fingertips and doing witch impressions than we did eating them. Milky cheese? No thanks. We do at least dig the psychedelic cheese vortex packaging, and the fact that Cornae self-describes its product as “Useful Food.” Nice. 
 

22. Glendee Potato Stick Cheese

Pah! Call that cheese flavor? We’ve tasted stronger cheese lurking between the two halves of a McDonald’s burger, which, incidentally, is exactly where it tastes like these greasy shards of potato wrongness were cooked. Packaging them like Mama noodles does nothing to hide the fact that Glendee is pedaling some seriously inferior potato product. 
 

21. Cheetos 

The chewy, cheese-less, mouth-cutting taste of disappointment. It’s like someone tried to describe Cheetos to the Thai development team without letting them ever actually try a Cheeto for themselves. 
 

20. Mister Potato Original 

You’d think that potato actually tasting like potato would be a good thing. You’d be wrong. These spongy Pringle-rip-offs taste way too much like something that was dug out of the ground for our liking. 
 

19. Testo Fit Seafood

This is the seafood chip of a company with a warped idea of what seafood tastes like. There’s a whole lot of natural imagery going on on the packet—sunny fields, hunky potato-picking farmers—but none of it seems to have translated to the product inside. What the word “fit” is doing any where near these things is anyone’s guess. 
 

18. Jaxx Original

Ever wondered what it’d be like to eat buttered polystyrene packing peanuts? Us neither. But Jaxx kindly provided the answer with this shocker of a potato snack. There’s enough MSG dusted on there to save them from total disaster, but definitely not one we’ll be craving any time soon. 
 

17. Perfecto Fun Fries Hot & Spicy

Another product from the cup-noodle school of potato-chip packaging, these ones stick it to Glendee with a powerful chili kick and crunchy texture. Shame they’re still a whole lot worse than, say, a normal potato chip in a normal packet. 
 

16. Mister Potato Sour Cream & Onion

Asia’s answer to the Pringle is exactly that: a Pringle. With barely anything in it between prices, we really can’t see why you’d go for the fake and not the original, especially since the original was never all that good to begin with. Now, show us an Asian Quaver and we might be getting somewhere...
 

15. Twisties Chocolate

These are like a parent’s worst nightmare: a hybrid of salty corn chips and sugary chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal. To top it off, they’re also pumped full of chocolate spread so sickly it would make the Nutella boys shudder. Needless to say, they taste pretty good.
 

14. 7-Eleven Brand Corn Snack Cheese

Look like orange turds, taste spectacular. This is as close as you’ll find in 7-Eleven to that potent, fake-cheese-coated hit of the stuff lurking on Villa’s fancy-pants imported chips aisle. If you don’t like these then you’re dead inside. 
 

13. Paprika Potato Snack

Halal approved; BK approved. These pasta-mimicking crackers might resemble demented fingers, but the paprika punch gives them the depth of flavor your average 7-Eleven snack can only dream of. 
 

12. Testo Fit Chocolate

Someone in Testo’s product dev department mated a crinkle-cut potato chip with an ice-cream waffle cone to form whatever this is. We’re amazed it ever made it past the drawing board but also kind of glad it did. 
 

11. 7-Eleven Brand Corn Snack Milk

Smells like cereal, tastes like milky cheese! These are the chips you look at and never buy because, well, why would you? Take the plunge, we say. These knobbly wheels of well-flavored corn starch pack a funky punch. 
 

10. Pringles Sourcream & Onion 

Just about the only product in this list it would be acceptable to rock up to a dinner party with and not feel like a total ass. Sadly, Thailand’s Pringles are a shadow of the tongue-shaped potato wafers the rest of the world knows and loves.
 

9. Lay’s Stax Sour Cream & Onion

Lay’s must have thought long and hard about how to do their own Pringle without just copying Pringle. The result are these smooth potato discs exactly the same as Pringles, only packaged horizontally and with some down-with-the-kids, radical branding—kind of like the Pepsi Max of the potato snack world. Slightly thicker and packed with more flavor than your standard Pringle, for B20 we’d buy it again, and again, and again. Dude. 
 

8. Lay’s Nori Seaweed 

Kind of like salt and vinegar chips, minus the salt. And vinegar. But we like them. 
 

7. Lay’s Rock Original

Lay’s are Lay’s. You’d feel safe buying these in front of a new date to chill watching TV. Sure, we’d rather be eating Twisties Extreme Cheese corn puffs, too, but that’s hard to admit in front of someone you want to have sex with. Our tip: go for the ridged version for an extra dose of lip-crinkling, salty goodness.
 

6. Twisties Extreme Cheese

The crisp everyone secretly wants to be eating—a corny win with a cheesiness that lives up to its name. Like all corn chips, you get the added benefit of picking them from your teeth with your tongue for long after the pack is finished. 
 

5. Potae Potato Snack 

We love these—the kind of chip you want to stuff endlessly into your mouth and then salivate into a salty, potato-based paste. Or is that just us?
 

4. Manora Fried Shrimp Chips

Even though the packet looks like a page from a 1970s cookbook—all dreary-looking vegetables and washed-out colors—the product inside is a top-drawer cracker-style corn disc. Spicy, peppery, prawny and with a healthy dusting of MSG, these are the embodiment of deep-fried complex-carb perfection. 
 

3. Testo Fit Potato

In a battle of the big guns—the ultimate lightly-salted smackdown—Testo comes out swinging over Lay’s with a thicker, more robust ridged chip that for once fully justifies the pictures of green fields and hunky potato farmers on the packet. We want more. 
 

2.  Sun Bite Rice Original

Foregoing the chip-making standards of pulped corn or shaved potato, this Thai original looks to rice instead—and succeeds. We could happily open a bag, stick on an episode of Game of Thrones, and slam the whole lot before the title credits had even finished.

1. Corn Puff Natural Corn Chips

A taste so dripping in artificial, salty goodness makes these a no-brain winner. Couple that with nostalgic memories of playground snack time and you have Bangkok's ultimate chip.
 

 

Advertisement

Leave a Comment