Lay’s Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper Chips Review

Bacon. Jalapeños. Two of my favorite things in life. When Lay’s announced they’d be selling the Do Us a Flavor finalists, the Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper was not picked and I was pretty devastated (almost as sad as a fat kid stuck at the salad bar). It wasn’t the end of the world but I definitely wanted to try the Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Popper chips and thought my chance at trying them was over when this flavor didn’t make the cut.

Lay’s came to the rescue and decided to launch these chips anyways as a Walmart exclusive. Lay’s to the rescue! Or so I thought…

I dread going to Walmart. Why? Just watch this video. I can almost guarantee you don’t enjoy shopping at Walmart either. Certainly I had to head to Walmart to pick up a bag of these limited-edition chips. I bought them, and left and headed home to eat some chips. That’s pretty much my life. I am infatuated with chips and was excited to try them.

As I open the bag, I wanted to smell them. Straight up, they smelled like dog treats to me. I also smelled cheddar. Some sort of cheesy dog jerky if I had to try to pinpoint it. I did pick up on a faint bacon scent though but definitely not jalapeño popper or peppers.

They kinda look like sour cream & onion chips.

The initial taste test and I was a bit confused. They didn’t immediately taste like either bacon or jalapeño poppers. They just tasted cheesy but it left me wondering where the bacon and jalapeño popper flavors were. A few more chips and I am starting to pick up on the other flavors. Smokey bacon taste started to emerge, then shortly after, the pepper taste began to emerge. I was unable to taste the cream cheese of the ‘jalapeño popper’ flavor (although cream cheese is listed as an ingredient for the seasoning). As I ate more, I realized the jalapeño popper flavor isn’t really there…it’s more like spicy cheddar. There is spiciness to these chips and you feel the burn after eating a few chips — but they didn’t overtake the smokey bacon taste you initially get.

Jalapeño is a bold taste, and these chips are missing that. The flavor is great but definitely not bold. The flavor of these chips overall are not bold and it does take a few chips to fully taste these and to pick up on the bacon and spiciness.

I gotta tell you something — bacon is good for me. We all know the saying that bacon makes everything better and the phrase is true in this case because without the bacon taste, these probably would suck. Are these a must-buy? Not in my opinion.

They aren’t disgusting by any means. I wish Frito-Lay would have made these bolder and got the jalapeño poppers flavor right and I am sure I would have loved them a lot more. They also probably would have been better if they were a made with the Lay’s ‘Kettle Cooked’ chips instead of original Lay’s.