Having grown up in Lineker country (indeed, having played hopelessly against him at schoolboy level), by the age of 10 I could pick out a Walkers Crisp in a blind test at 50 yards (they were that good!).

When I became a sales rep covering Leicestershire (selling another category of product altogether), I was occasionally amused by local cash & carry buyers bemoaning the fact that they were being made to promote 'national' crisps brands like Smiths and Golden Wonder.  At the time, Walkers were distributed only regionally - mainly Central - but in Leicester they were all you could sell.

Of course, Pepsico took over and Walkers marched on to world domination (well, British).  This was obvious and completely natural to me - no other crisps were a patch on Walkers, so why be surprised they became such a dominant brand?

Then of course along came healthy eating, and a panic-stricken stampede by the entire grocery trade down low-fat avenue (and low salt street and low sugar lane and low cal crescent...).  Walkers' contribution to this great migration of ingredients, not so long ago and to great fanfare, was to relaunch with new Sunseed oil - 70% less saturated fat, no less.

70% less taste, no less.  I was gobsmacked.  And hurt!  Why didn't they ask me to be on their research panel?  I'd never have let this stuff get through in a million years.  I once ate 14 bags of Roast Chicken flavour for a bet and won easily.  Surely every cook in the land knows where the taste in food comes from?

Recent raids into the kids' lunchbags have suggested that Walkers have picked up this problem and are doing a bit to bring back the old taste... though they're not quite there yet.  I fully appreciate the size of the dilemma upon whose horns they sit, but maybe just maybe there's a niche-cum-canyon in the market for the old-style product and the majority of the population who don't happen to be obese?