Review: Kellogg's Special K Honey Barbecue Cracker Chips

Once again, I'm the victim of a huge food conglomerate constantly introducing new flavors that need to be reviewed like the others have been.  In this case, it's Kellogg's adding yet another flavor to their Special K Cracker Chips line with this Kellogg's Special K Honey Barbecue Cracker Chips that popped up out of nowhere as I was meandering through my local Marsh grocery store recently.  Honey Barbecue seems like a natural flavor to add to the Cracker Chips line as I would guess it is one of the more popular potato chip flavors out there.  This box set me back $2.49 at the sale price and each box comes in at four ounces with 3.5 servings at 110 calories per serving.  As a frame of reference, Kellogg's considers a serving to be roughly 27 cracker chips, so when you think about it, that's actually quite a bit because each of these chips is roughly a little bigger than a silver dollar.

Having had many of these Cracker Chips before and also using my awesome powers of observation by looking at the front of the box, I knew what these chips would look like coming into this.  It's the standard airy and thin cracker chip with a dusting of the necessary flavor components adhered to the outside.  In this case, those flavor components are honey and barbecue.  The honey was used to bind the flavor powder to the outside of the cracker chips (they weren't sticky at all).  The barbecue flavor powder itself was then made up of chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder, brown sugar, paprika, salt, pepper and some other various ingredients that make up a sweet barbecue sauce.  The powder was spread quite liberally too, so that ample amount of powder produced a smell that was similar to a barbecue sauce or a type of rub that you may put on your meat prior to grilling.  So, in terms of presentation, they've done a good job here.

When I took my first few cracker chips and chewed through them, the primary flavor that I tasted was of course potato as it should be since these are trying to model themselves after potato chips.  What I didn't taste a lot of was the honey barbecue flavor combination.  Don't get me wrong, the flavor was there, but it wasn't particularly strong and allowed itself to be overtaken in a big way by the potato flavor.  I didn't mind that because eating an airy potato chip is fine with me, but I guess I just expected to be overcome by barbecue flavor.  Maybe that's my fault by eating too many Grippos barbecue chips and having that happen to me before, but I definitely was left wanting more.  That said, had my expectations not been so high, I might have found these to be just the right mix of potato and barbecue without being overpowered by barbecue.  As for the barbecue flavor itself, it was primarily chili powder and pepper with a very slight taste of honey and brown sugar.  Again, nothing overwhelmingly powerful, but it was there.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I've got to stop letting my ridiculous expectations getting in the way of my enjoyment of these products when I initially try them because when I put those expectations aside, I usually find what is a pretty solid and tasty product and that's definitely the case with these cracker chips.  It's that solid and enjoyable, although not strong, taste that earns these a BUY IT rating.  It's another good option added to the moderately health Special K Cracker Chips line and if you pick up a box and try these out, I think you'll like them as long as you don't have absurd expectations going in like I did.

BUY IT!!