Arnott’s Shapes Savoury
October 11, 2023 at 14:08 | Posted in biscuits | 1 CommentTags: Arnott's, biscuit, savoury, shapes
I would have assumed I have reviewed these before, but apparently not. Or maybe I have, and can’t find the review. But it’s time to look at Savoury Shapes – one of the quartet of original flavours alongside Pizza, Barbeque and Chicken Crimpy. (and looking for the links, I see I’ve never done Pizza either! Oh noes!)
The premise here is sort of odd. It’s a snack that has no flavour as such, no real distinguishing feature except to say that it is not-sweet. The biscuits are a range of geometric shapes, and not really like the other Shapes – they are thinner, harder and more crunchy. They also do not really have much ‘flavour you can see’ on them. Maybe ‘savoury’ doesn’t really need much flavour.
But what do they taste like? I hear you cry. Well, erm, sort of, erm, savoury. Not lip-smackingly, umami-hitting, tenderise-the-inside-of-your-mouth savoury. More just sort of, erm, not sweet. You know, a bit salty, a bit seasoned. On a biscuit. They really are very unremarkable. Remarkably unremarkable in fact.
I actually don’t think they are that good. I’m going to give them a three out of ten. They are just very very boring.
Arnott’s Shapes Epic Garlic Bread
September 1, 2023 at 16:36 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, garlic bread, shapes, snack
Until today, I did not know that garlic bread could be epic. But apparently it can. And if you google it, you will find many recipes for ‘epic garlic bread’. They vary somewhat, but from what I can gather the difference between regular garlic bread and the epic variety is the addition of cheese. Adding cheese makes it epic, apparently.
Arnott’s, however, do not seem to understand this, as the new ‘Fully Loaded’ Epic Garlic Bread shapes are not cheesy. So there will be some disappointment in the snack aisle. But they do have a saving grace.
Do you remember Shapes Extreme? They were a short-lived but rather brilliant variety of Shapes that I have been hoping will make a come-back. They were different in texture from regular shapes, being lighter and thinner. Well, they are back! Epic Garlic Bread Shapes are the same thinner, crunchier texture as that earlier line. But will the taste live up to the originals?
Well, it’s not bad. It is garlicky, and bready, and herby. When you are eating them, it’s all just a bit of a salty herb confusion, but the aftertaste is very reminiscent of how you feel after eating too much garlic bread. So probably not one to eat just before a date or an important meeting. So pretty good, but not great. I’m going to give them a six out of ten.
Arnott’s Flame Grilled Chicken Shapes
August 25, 2023 at 11:24 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, chicken, extreme, shapes
Another day, another Fully Loaded packet of Shapes to try! I must admit, I was trepidatious after the last ‘Fully Loaded‘ experience. But I put aside my reservations and pressed on, dear reader, as part of my mission to bring you the latest in biscuit-related tomfoolery.
Once again, it’s all superlatives on the box, with lurid graphics, and flavour-o-meters pumped to the max. So I was expecting a huge hit of savoury flavour that might bring to mind a seasoned BBQ chicken. Well, spoiler alert – that’s not exactly what you get.
You see, these biscuits taste a lot of lemon. Imagine a BBQ chicken, not especially well seasoned, that someone had then squeezed about four lemons over. This is what it tastes like. I have no idea why Arnott’s believe that chicken should be served with this much lemon – maybe make a note to not go round for a BBQ at Mr Arnott’s house.
That doesn’t mean the biscuits are unpleasant. They are OK, in a lemony sort of way. And certainly better than the revolting cheese ones. But just a bit unexpected. I’m going to give them a five out of ten.
Arnott’s Bluey Cheese Flavoured Snacks
February 12, 2023 at 15:56 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, bluey, cheese, shapes
Our kids area little bit too old to have watched Bluey. So I have never seen it. But apparently it is a very good show, even reducing adults to tears. Anyway, Arnott’s have jumped on the Bluey bandwagon, and produced a range of snack biscuits bearing the name of the adorable blue heeler. So are they any good? Or will they make you cry?
The box is quite a different design to other Arnott’s lines, although the size, construction, inner bag and weight are exactly the same as for Shapes. So I suppose had the licencing deal fallen through, these could have been launched as ‘Shapes Cheese Delight’ or something. Each biscuit is embossed with an picture of one of the characters from the show, which is most exciting, even if I do not know who they are. But are they a delight?
Well, actually yes, they are! They are extremely moreish. They are softer than regular Shapes, a bit more melt-in-the-mouth, and the cheese flavour is really nice – savoury, with a good balance of salt and unami that charts we very successful course through the cheese flavour continuum. Quite a recovery from their last effort.
I’d go so far to say that these are now one of my favourite ‘Shapes’. Nothing close to the sublime Vegemite ones, of course, but certainly up there with BBQ and Chicken Crimpy. I’m going to give them a nine out of ten.
Arnott’s Fully Loaded Shapes Ultimate Cheese
November 5, 2022 at 10:37 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, cheese, shapes, sick
Phew. It’s been a while, sorry folks. Not quite sure why, no excuses, but hey ho. Looking at my blogroll, that’s the longest ever gap with no posts. Anyway, here we are again, at least for now. And today we have a real treat in store (spoiler: it is not a treat) as we are looking at a new range of Arnott’s Shapes.
Now, I was very excited about this. Remember the ‘Shapes Extreme‘ flavours of a few years ago? Well, I was hoping that this was going to be a reboot of those rather marvellous, but short-lived biscuits. I rushed them home, and opened them for the family to try.
Now, there is a well established continuum for cheese-flavour snacks. It starts at ‘vaguely milky’, goes through ‘creamy’ and ‘kids spreadable’ through to ‘dried parmesan’, ‘salty and very orange’ and finally to ‘tastes a bit like sick’. Where on this line would these new snacks fall, I wondered?
Well, I suppose they live up to their name in one way, as they push the boundaries of this classification system. Who new there was another setting to the right of ‘tastes like sick’? Well ladies and gentlemen, there is, and I can now reveal it to you. It is ‘tastes like fish food‘. These things are revolting. They smell vaguely of fish, and taste like bad fish, and are horrible. It is rare in the Chillikebab household for a pack of snacks to not get finished. But these join a small group of such products* that are just so nasty that we couldn’t even bring ourselves to finish the pack. Come on Arnott’s, what were you thinking?
* if you are interested, the others are:
Cheeseburger shapes
Meat Pie Shapes
Peanut Butter Tim Tams
Arnott’s Shapes Mini Bites Fried Chicken
January 21, 2022 at 19:55 | Posted in biscuits | 2 CommentsTags: Arnott's, biscuit, fried chicken, gravy, scones, shapes
In America, they serve fried chicken with biscuits. I learned this from an American I used to work with. He recounted a story of really wanting fried chicken and biscuits, and how he went to KFC (as it was all he could find), but was flummoxed by the lack of biscuits. I daresay the server was equally flummoxed by the request for biscuits. You want a Scotch Finger with your chicken, sir?
Biscuits, in the southern USA, are not really biscuits at all. They are what we call scones. Now, I eat scones with jam and cream. Eating them with gravy seems very strange. But in a further twist, Arnott’s have created a Fried Chicken biscuit. I can only image the further cultural confusion this will cause for American visitors to our shores.
I also like, by the way, that they are ‘oven baked, not fried, fried chicken’. Not fried fried chicken biscuits. There’s a lot going on here philosophically. Is fried chicken still fried chicken if it is not fried? If a chicken fries in a forest, will anyone bring a biscuit?
Anyway, how well has Arnott’s distilled the taste of fried chicken into these small, light, snackable biscuits? Well, in one way very well. They taste a lot like fried chicken. Slightly peppery, definite breadcrumbs, and what I can only assume is a secret blend of herbs and spices (the ingredients just mysteriously list ‘spices’). But there is a caveat.
They don’t really taste of fried chicken. They taste of fried chicken coating. Now, Chillikebab Jnr #2 is very fond of fried chicken, and I think likes the coating the best. So she gave them the thumbs up. But I was hoping for a bit more of that savoury, meaty taste from the chicken. These are more like those really mean bits of fried chicken you get if you are unlucky – the ones that are all weird bony bits with thick coating and no meat to be seen.
But I do have an amazing idea. How would it be if you crushed these biscuits up, and used them as a coating to make fried chicken? OMG. This is something I am going to have to try. (That would also make them fried not fried fried chicken flavour fried chicken. Oh yeah.)
While we wait for the results of that experiment, I am going to give these a five out of ten. Quite OK, but nothing special.
Arnott’s Shapes Mini Bites Salt and Vinegar
January 15, 2022 at 15:38 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, biscuit, mini bites, salt and vinegar, shapes
Yet more excitement in the snack aisle Despite the well-publicised shortages in supermarkets at the moment due to the pandemic being ‘let rip’ in Sydney, I did find a new flavour of Shapes. Salt and vinegar! I’m quite a fan of salt and vinegar, so rushed them home in excitement.
So what were they like? Actually, well, sort of weird. And disappointing. They were definitely salt and vinegar. That classic flavour, just like you get on chips, and plenty of it. Lovely. And also a biscuit. They are ‘mini bites’, so they are quite moreish, Light, crunchy, slightly sweet, also lovely.
But not together. This is a very unhappy marriage. I mean, you can’t put an astringent salt and vinegar flavour onto a sweet biscuit. It’s like putting lime juice on a chocolate ice-cream. Actually, much worse than that; I remember being partial to these chocolate lime lollies when I was a kid. I’m not sure you can still get them now. Anyway, it’s just weird. Two incompatible flavours fighting it out. Nice idea, Arnott’s, but it’s just not working. I’m going to give these two out of ten.
Arnott’s Shapes Mini Bites Sour Cream and Onion
May 2, 2021 at 14:30 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, biscuit, fish'n'chips, mini bites, onion, shapes, sour cream
There’s a new Shapes variant in town! The whole new range, actually, called ‘Mini Bites’. I was hoping these might be the ‘extreme‘ range from a few years ago making a come back (which I maintain were a great snack with a terrible name), but they are not. They are smaller and much fatter – in fact, they remind me of a snack called ‘Fish’n’chips’ from my childhood in 70’s UK. You can google this if you like, or I can save you the bother and let you know that they have been revived! How exciting. Ho hum. But anyway, we’ve moved on from the 70’s and it’s time to look at this very up-to-the-minute twenty-first century snack.
They are little, quite puffy biscuits that are quite soft. They are small enough that we really need to pop two or three into your mouth at a time, which is kind of fun, and makes them extra addictive, I think. The sour cream and onion flavour is exactly what you would expect – it has a slight tang, a slight sweetness and is very moreish.
And they are quite addictive. Not as bad as the Vegemite shapes, and of course nothing compared to that crack cocaine of biscuits, the Lemon Crisp. But it is hard to stop once you pop, as the slogan of a rival cream cheese and onion snack might say. I ate the entire box in one go, and didn’t share even one of them with Chillikebab Jnr I, even though she is a chip off the old block when it comes to snacks. (Chip. Geddit?).
But are they any good? Well, there is nothing wrong with them, and I did eat a whole box. But, but, but, there’s something not quite right about them. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think it’s to do with the small size and form factor. So, despite not being able to in any way elucidate what the problem is, I am only going to give them a five out of ten. Sometimes that’s how the cookie crumbles…
Arnott’s Double Cheeseburger Shapes
February 7, 2021 at 16:48 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, cheeseburger, Maccas, revolting, shapes
Now, I am not averse to snack food, as you will know. Nor even full on junk food, for that matter. But there is one particular (and popular) fast food option that I Do Not Like At All. This is not a new, bah-humbug old person thing. I’ve never liked it, even since I was a teenager. Flat, pappy, tasteless, soggy burgers with absolutely no redeeming qualities at all. Both the bun and the meat patty, for example, have absolutely no flavour or texture. Now, for me, I feel both of those items are necessary to make themselves heard in a burger. They are, after all, the defining feature of the thing. But in this particular version that I am talking about, they are essentially absent. All that’s left is a lot of rather sweet sauce kind of stuff, and a flaccid gherkin. This gherkin, but the way, is the only aspect of the whole thing that has any taste whatsoever. As I understand it, aficionados of this ‘burger’ ritualistically open the lid and discard it before eating, a silent protest against flavour. I am talking, for those who have not yet twigged, about Maccas. Revolting. Literally any other option is better than Maccas.
But it remains popular, with over a million Australians going into a Maccas every day. I guess, then, when Arnott’s came to do the cheeseburger Shapes thing, they went with the lowest common denominator.
Having got that out of the way, we can now, of course, reveal that these new Double Cheeseburger Shapes are revolting. To be fair, not quite as rank as the meat pie ones, but a close second. Neither of my kids liked them – they ate a bit of one, screwed up their noses and went away looking for water. I had a handful, manfully going through them to see if there were any redeeming features, before throwing them in the bin, mostly uneaten.
So what do they taste like? Well, actually in one way they capture a Maccas cheeseburger rather well. You see, the only thing you can taste is flaccid gherkin. It literally just tastes of gherkin. Poor quality gherkin at that. I feel like Arnott’s have not done their research here. They have created a flavour that is the same as the thing that everyone picks out of their cheeseburger because they don’t like the taste. I don’t feel these are going to do well, chaps. Sorry. I’m going to give them one out of ten. Avoid.
Arnott’s Triple Cheese Toastie Shapes
February 4, 2021 at 17:34 | Posted in biscuits | 1 CommentTags: Arnott's, biscuit, cheese, shapes, triple, vomit
Hold the front page! There are some new Shapes flavours in town! And of course, your intrepid reporter will sample them for you so you know whether to buy them or avoid them. So let’s get into it.
This new flavour is cheese. Triple cheese! Why triple? Well, according to the ingredients, they contain Parmesan, Mozzarella and Cheddar. Three cheeses. Triple, you see. We’ll come back to those three cheeses in due course.
The biscuits are sort of triangular, and with a nice crunch – very standard Shapes territory. They are all the same – there’s no odd ones, or confected controversy.
So what do they taste like? Well, they are sort of cheesy. Jnr Chillikebab the First was confident she could taste three different cheeses. I was less sure. I thought there was a tang of vomit in there. You know, that kind of cheese flavour that tastes like sick. It’s not a lot, but it’s there, and to me, off-putting.
I’m much less confident about the three cheese thing than the junior. Maybe my taste buds are old and worn out. But, it my defence, those three cheeses listed in the ingredients? There’s just 0.3% of those cheeses. That’s about 0.1% per cheese. If a pack weighs 165g, that means just 165mg of each cheese per pack. That’s 1.5mg of each cheese per biscuit. That is homeopathic cheese. I’m frankly sceptical that Junior can actually taste that. Ho hum.
They are OK. But really not that great. I’m going to give them a four out of ten.
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