Repulsive, depraved and oddly political: Monster Munch crisps reviewed

Now that I have considered Monster Munch I decide to eat one mindfully. I put it in my mouth, and it is as if I can taste it for the first time. It is repulsive, and I feel cheated.

This is, then, an intervention. My husband wrote in these pages that I am always watching Spooks and eating Monster Munch. It was a giggle that went on for 400 words but is eating Monster Munch really so depraved? Doesn’t Jay Rayner eat Skips in the darkness when he is alone? Didn’t A.A. Gill eat Frazzles? I know I do, but only when I am depressed — which is quite often these days — and then I wish I hadn’t.

I could say I do it for the metaphor. I will do almost anything for metaphor, and the Walkers Monster Munch Pickled Onion — I won’t touch Roast Beef or Flamin’ Hot, I am not a monster — is such a good one, I wonder if it is deliberate. Who doesn’t want to consume a monster? Who doesn’t have one nestling inside them anyway, whispering half-lies under their conscious mind?

The monster is apparently feet, so it is a bag of feet, which doesn’t sound so good: I ate the feet of a monster. This was confirmed by Walkers in the 1970s, in a small footnote to food history I found on the internet, which was confirmed by the bag, or artefact: ‘Miniature Monsters with big crispy heads? Or crunchy claws plucked straight from pickled onion beasts? Nibble the sides or stick your tongue through the hole and let it melt in all its oniony, vinegary glory.’