When I was a teenage vegetarian and people asked me what fake bacon tasted like, I’d always say it tasted like Frazzles. Nothing is as fake-bacony as Frazzles – the flavour only enhanced by their rectangular shape and faint pink stripes, made from the same porous crunchy matter as Chipsticks.

Chipsticks were the stuff of early primary school; something smaller about the packaging, something more juvenile in the way they crumbed-up your fingers. The sharp vinegary taste that made you squint long before you graduated to pickled onion Monster Munch. Ten of them, worn like rings, to be gleefully bitten off. Back when your thumbs were still small enough.

But my favourite was always Nik Naks. Lemon n Scampi flavour if you could find it. The vending machine at our local pool always had it – lime green packet glowing from the corner. You seemed to get more Nik Naks per pack than any other crisp. Lasting all the way home in the back of the car. Tasting all the sweeter for the chlorine still clinging to your fingers.

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A version of this post was sent by email on the 10th February 2018 as part of Internet Care Package.

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