Snacks from Pipsnacks

Pipsnacks is a fairly small company that makes slightly better-for-you versions of some of their favorite classic snack foods.  Their first product was their "Pipcorn", but Pipsnacks now makes 5 products lines: cheese balls (in several flavors), "Crunchies" (e.g. crunchy Cheetos), "Dippers" (e.g. corn tortilla scoops), "Twists" (in both sweet and savory flavors like sea salt or cinnamon sugar), and (mini) popcorn.   A slight claim to fame for them is that Oprah picked Pipcorn as one of her Favorite Things three times in a row.

The popcorn was my focus, as, well, I have a serious thing for popcorn (as you may know given its label on my blog).  As a lover of most snacks, I'd love to try the Twists sometime too.  Their products are all gluten-free, if that matters to you (and some are vegan).

Mini Popcorn

The mini popcorn comes from heirloom popcorn kernels, and their defining characteristic, besides being tiny, is being quite crunchy.  The popped pieces are about half the size of regular pieces, and have very minimal hulls, so, fewer hard bits to get stuck in your teeth.

"Movie time. Family time. Mid-afternoon snacking time. Road trip time. Game time. Our mini heirloom popcorn is the snack that just work anytime…and now you don’t have to decide between your cravings. You get your salt. You get your truffle. And you get a sustainably grown, deliciously crunchy heirloom corn snack that is non-GMO, gluten free, and perfectly seasoned – so you get everything you’re craving (and nothing you aren’t). Crunch your way to the bottom of the bag, and then grab another. That’s the beauty of the variety pack."

Their signature mini popcorn is available in only 3 flavors: sea salt, truffle, and spicy cheddar.  No sweet varieties.  You can also buy their kernels unpopped. 

Spicy Cheddar.

"We love how TABASCO® Sauce enhances the flavor of pretty much anything, so we couldn’t help but try it on our popcorn! We were blown away, so we knew we had to make it for everyone to enjoy! It's irresistibly cheesy, crunchy, AND spicy popcorn you have to taste to believe – hope you love it as much as we do!"

I have only ever found one flavor of the Pipcorn in stores, the spicy cheddar, which is a co-branded product with Tabasco.  I don't actually really care for Tabasco, but of course I still tried these.

The form factor really is quite novel.  I knew to expect the pieces to be much smaller than regular popcorn, and obviously even more dramatically smaller than the other trendy oversized mushroom popcorn, but they still did really strike me as petit.  Yet, not unpopped, in fact, they were all perfectly popped, just, tiny.  And yes, I guess, slightly more crunchy.  The small size, while novel, actually took away from the eating experience for me.  They were a bit too tiny to munch on comfortably, if that makes sense.  

The pieces had a slight orange hue to them.  The dominant flavor was the Tabasco, and I barely noted any cheese, even though it is higher in the ingredient list.  The Tabasco really did overwhelm anything else.  The pieces were a bit spicy, but mostly just tasted like red pepper to me, so a bit of a miss flavor wise for my particular tastes.

I was happy to try these, and certainly finished my bag, but I wouldn't get them again.  ***.