Snack You Silly

Fun Fact: Dispute over whether Bugles are more like the musical instrument or more like tornado funnels still rages on among snack food cognoscenti
Recommended T.O.E.: Beginning of summer or a cold winter day thinking of summer

“Like a triangle on the side of a tornado.”

There’s a lot to be said for a retro snack that dates back four decades or so, has an enticing shape and tastes like it’s vaguely good for you. That corn taste and alluring funnel combine for a treat that seems healthy and is fun to eat. (The newer flavors like sour cream and nacho are not worth any special consideration.)

First test-marketed in the mid 1960s, “Bugles” hit the market when I was ten in 1966. They were accompanied by two other interesting shapes with, as I remember it, similar tastes: the flower-shaped “Daisies” and the tube-shaped “Whistles.” (Daisies and Whistles have long since disappeared to snack food heaven.) For all three, you could change the shape as you ate them, and, in the case of Bugles and Whistles, you could attempt to make noise from them (it never worked). What could be better than a snack that morphed shapes?

My cousin Matt told me recently that the first time he encountered Bugles was at my childhood home where my mother had put out a big bowl, accompanied by frosty glasses of Cott’s Grape Soda (or “Tonic” to you long-time New Englanders). He said it was a major attraction in coming over to my house thereafter.

I’m not sure whether Bugles are more enticing because, despite their wholesome aura, they are in fact fried in coconut oil, and contain far greater amounts of saturated fat than other snackfoods which rely on soy or other vegetable oils. They do contain no hydrogenated oils for those of you who are trying to decide how guilty a pleasure to seek in your snacking. I guess snackfoods lend themselves to all kinds of flimsy rationalizations.

In order to see if they stood the test of time (prior to this review I hadn’t eaten them in years), I scientifically assembled a test panel, consisting of me, my two offspring and my two nephews. My panel ranged in age from seven to ? (savvy readers can figure out my age from info in the second paragraph.) Grape soda was not available, but we did offer liquid from water to milk to lemonade to beer as Bugle chasers.

The younger members of the panel really liked Bugles. The youngest, Zac, described them “like a triangle on the side of a tornado.” He used one to become a unicorn and also pointed out they served well as vampire fangs. His older brother Sam found them “yummy” and said he “wanted more.” He found them “crunchy but easy to chew.”

The seventeen year old female member of the panel initially found the test Bugles “unremarkable,” then later sarcastically declared them to “taste like summer.” One of this website’s founders praised them as a “good, all around family food” based on the panel’s response. I found them to bring back memories of childhood, so assuming you had a good upbringing, who wouldn’t want a snack with that effect?

-Jeff Bernstein

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under 3 Stars, Chips, Guest Writers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.