‘After several bites, there’s a miniscule hint of spice, like a faint cry for help from a person trapped deep in a well.’
The Ventrilocrisp grows increasingly feral in quarantine, its social cues long forgotten. Outside, it treats strangers with either the warmth of Christmas day (direct eye contact; an eager smile) or with incomprehensible hostility (a scowl; venomous curses when passed at under 2m). There is now no middle ground. Time to test its dying social skills on a new crisp.
Enter the ‘Lonely God Vegetable Flavored Twists’.They are made by a Taiwanese company called ‘Want-Want’. Well, the Ventrilocrisp will be the judge of that. ‘Lonely God’ is simultaneously self-deprecating and self-aggrandising, making the tone difficult to read. (The Ventrilocrisp itself revels in being inscrutable: it uses a bland default computer background at work and has placed ugly ornaments on its desk which give a deliberately misleading impression of its character. More on this another day.) Moreover, it has long been amused by crisps shaped as other foods (c.f. Chipsticks or Onion Rings). But good luck to the unspecified vegetable flavouring: the fusilli shape is established salt and vinegar territory.
The crisp is an abomination. The vegetable flavour comes from the crisp’s similarity in texture (and tenuously in taste) to vegetable crackers. But any semblance of cracker is cruelly drowned out by the crisp’s unbearable sugary sweetness, which suffocates the mouthful. The crisp is a dessert. After several bites, there’s a miniscule hint of spice, like a faint cry for help from a person trapped deep in a well. It’s hard to say whether this is chili, or plain and simple chemical erosion of the tongue. Unfortunately, the blandest crisps in the bag are the most tolerable. The Ventrilocrisp has seen even the most disgusting of crisps out to their conclusion, but this ‘jumbo’ bag may get the better of it. At one point it was actually sick in its own mouth (possibly from poor chewing).
On the packet, a magical angel flies over a turreted kingdom.This is supposedly a messenger of the Lonely God, the crisp’s divine creator. Fie! These crisps are a product of fiery hell. The Ventrilocrisp had intended to re-socialise itself, but it cannot be civil to such a crisp. Send them back to the inferno.
- repurchase? ❎
- recommend to a friend? ❎
- eat this crisp in public? ❎
- consider the price to be right? ❓we don’t know where these crisps came from – they were a Secret Santa gift
- readily accessible? ❎
- need to wash hands after consumption? ❎
The Ventrilocrisp 