Review: Smartfood Garlic Tomato Basil Hummus Popped Chips

I mentioned in my last (and also first) Smartfood review that I picked up a bunch of these mini bags of chips in the clearance section of Kroger for half their original price.  That splurge leads me to the source of today's review of these Smartfood Garlic Tomato Basil Hummus Popped Chips.  Typically, these lunch sized bags run at about $1.00 per bag and they are 0.8 ounces and 100 calories.  I know that a lot of people are creeped out by hummus, but I find it tasty (along with the tomato basil flavor combination), so I was more than ready to try these chips out for today's review.

A popped chip is a popped chip is a popped chip.  It's light and airy, so there's no use going into the intimate details.  The only thing of note is that these chips are not corn based, but instead hummus based (garbanzo beans), so that is interesting.  What is worth going into intimate details over is the amount of spice and flavoring that was dusted onto these chips, because it was blatantly obvious as you can see in the photo above.  Within all those spices were tomato powder, toasted garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, thyme, basil and several others.  Also within the chips as more of a coating and not a dusting was a mixing of cheeses that included cheddar, Parmesan and Swiss.  I've got to admit, it's impressive how many flavor components that they packed into these tiny chips in both the visual component and also the aromatic component because when I took a good whiff of these, I was able to smell as much flavor as I've ever smelled in something that is this small.

The flavor portrayed itself in pretty much the same way because it was amazing how much flavor these had in such a small package.  What was even more amazing is that I could almost pinpoint every single one of the flavors that I listed above individually by taste and honestly, my taste buds are not as good as I'd like to think they are, so that just shows how well prepared these chips were.  Of all the flavors, the garlic and onion were the most prevalent and the tomato was a compliment, but I was more than fine with that because that Italian-esque flavor combination is one of my favorites when it comes to savory foods.  The only thing I really couldn't taste was the hummus (garbanzo beans), but if you've had hummus before as I have, that's really not surprising as hummus is typically bland.  They didn't need flavor though because the bite of the onion, garlic, paprika, et al more than made up for this and gave these chips an appealing and flavorful burst.

Buy It or Fly By It?  I think the only borderline negative thing that I said in this review was that the hummus was bland and like I also said, that's what hummus is, so it's actually not a negative.  If I can't think of anything negative to say, that obviously means that a product gets a BUY IT rating.  These chips were everything I hoped they'd be and more, so I may "graduate" myself to a full size bag next time I see these in the store because they would be a more than welcome addition to my pantry and I think they'd do the same thing for yours.

BUY IT!!