Chicken Chips

We were on a Whole Foods trip a while back looking at snacks and happened upon something we had never seen before but sounded interesting -- chicken chips. Something like cracklings came to mind, but we weren't really sure how chicken would turn into the somewhat more uniform and traditional looking chips in the package photo. They were supposed to be chicken mixed with tapioca flour and crisped in coconut oil, which sounded good but we weren't sure how they would taste. They weren't cheap snacks, but they were on sale if we remember correctly, so we figured why not give them a try? A pretty much eats anything and has a list that he can count on one hand of foods he really dislikes and won't choose to eat again, so trying new things is usually not an issue from a potential food waste perspective.

We got the barbecue flavor because that's one of my favorite chip flavors, and then promptly added the bag to our pantry where it sat until its recent best by date. We opened it up, noted that the chips were far from uniform in shape, much thinner in texture than we expected (sort of like a really light and airy Lay's potato chip), and then each grabbed a few to try them out. I don't know how to describe exactly what our expressions were, but we did not like these at all. The taste of the barbecue flavoring was fine, and it tasted like the barbecue seasoning on many other chips, but there was something about the chip itself that was a bit off-putting. There was some really funky and weird aftertaste that in taste form reminded me of the smell of a certain cleaning solution that usually makes me want to vomit. I wasn't expecting this at all, because there are so many reviews talking about how delicious these chips are. Is this like the people who think cilantro tastes like soap, and maybe only some of us get the odd aftertaste? Would they taste different or better if we had eaten them earlier? (Maybe they would be fresher, but they really should have lasted until their best by date.) What was wrong with our bag of chips that all the people raving about deliciousness didn't get?

We tried to eat more of the chips so our money wouldn't go to waste. We really did. I made it through three chips before tossing the rest of my handful, and A put in a valiant effort, eating much more than I did, but in the end, we just could not finish it. I don't doubt that some people genuinely like these though based on the reviews, so it may be that it's just not for us. Since it does seem to have a "unique" flavor, perhaps the best option is to try them from a place with a Trader Joe's-like return policy of taking back things you don't like, just in case you're like us and not like all the other reviewers who were very happy with them. I'd love to figure out what about them caused this reaction in us (so we can make smarter snack decisions in the future), but with so many snacks competing for our attention, we're not going to experiment some more.