Hula Hoops Original Potato Rings

We created our international snack blog nearly a year ago in hopes to locate the best snacks from around the world.  We have sampled chips, chocolate, cookies, cakes, gum, and candy from a total of 27 individual countries.  Starting at the first of the year we are transitioning our snack website into a store offering these discovered treats for sale in the US and shipped around the world.  We of course will continue our blog and our search for snacks but will also host an international snack store.  Each month we will release a new country’s snacks and restock the previous countries.  We will launch with a wide selection of snacks from England.  Leading up to our launch we are reviewing a different British Snacks each day.  Today we are looking a crisp manufactured by KP Snacks.

"It certainly is fun to play with and packs a powerful crunch once you do decide to eat it."

KP, which initially stood for Kenyon Produce, is a very old snack company from England.  Way back in 1891 this confectionery group started out selling candy, jam, and pickles.  They then switched to producing nuts and became a large supplier to movie theaters.  Eventually United Biscuits, who also owner the Jaffa Cakes we reviewed yesterday, purchased KP.  Just recently United Biscuits sold KP Snacks to their current owner, Internsack.  Our featured snack from KP today is the Hula Hoops Original Potato Rings.

These British potato rings come packaged in a red foil wrapper with a golden ring in the center with the words “Hula Hoop” appearing to be cut out.  The golden ring is a cartoon version of the snack inside.  A banner across the top reads “Now with 25% Extra.”  Also there is a golden color rectangle in the bottom right corner that states there is no artificial flavours or colors, no MSG, and made with 100% sunflower oil.  Enough with how the Hula Hoops Original Potato Rings look, let’s see how they taste!

With such a wide variety of snacks from England and around the world stocked in our warehouse it’s truly hard to get excited about a regular flavored potato crisps.  I’d imagine it’s hard to sell original flavor as well, but KP has come up with a creative presentation for those who do appreciate the simple goodness of regular unflavored potato chips.  Instead of a plain chip, you get a crispy, crunchy, ring or should we say hula-hoop?  It certainly is fun to play with and packs a powerful crunch once you do decide to eat it.  What does this Hula Hoop Potato Ring taste like? Well unfortunately the excitement ends with the shape. It taste’s exactly like you’d expect it to, rather normal.  After the crunch of the ring the thickness leads to being too overpowering as well.  It made me miss a normal thin potato crisp.  That being said, all tasters rated it fairly well and our 11 year old Director of Taste was a very big fan.

We are getting really excited about the launch of our international snack store.  You will be able to buy the Hula Hoops Original Potato Rings and other flavors made by KP Snacks.  Even though we are based in the US we will offer shipping around the world.  So if you are searching for British Snacks you will have a large selection presented to you in the very near future.  To be informed of the addition of other counties to our inventory be sure to leave your details to the right.  See you tomorrow for another British Snack review!

01/01/2014 UPDATE:  Hula Hoops Original are now available for purchase online in our international store.

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