I have an issues with the main theme of this bag of chips, the name might actually be a little too simple. Hot and spicy is not really a flavour, but more a way that one might describe a flavour of potato chips. For example one might take a ghost pepper flavoured potato chip and describe it as hot and spicy. Having a description on a bag of chips, forces the person who’s eating them to come up with what’s making these chips hot and spicy. Reading the back of the package, the only flavour that pops up in the ingredients is chili powder.

After eating the first chip however, the description is kind of accurate in that the hot and spicy aspect is front and centre. The thing is, there is another flavour as well, and if I had to give this secondary flavour a description I would say that it’s barbecue. The thing is it’s less about the spices in barbecue sauce and more about the sweet flavour you often find in barbecue potato chips. These chips have a very subtle almost brown sugar flavour, but that disappears very quickly and turns into just hot.

Maybe if you really love spicy for the sake of spicy, you might like these chips. The thing is they’re probably not the spiciest snack out there either. While the spice was plenty for me (probably a little too much) I wasn’t sweating, hiccuping or feeling uncomfortable anywhere but my mouth.

One more thought is about the spice rating on the package. According to the folks at Lay’s this is a 4 out of five in heat/spice. It seems a little weird that a chip that’s literally named “hot and spicy” is not the hottest or spiciest thing ever made (at least by Lay’s).