Frazzles: The Complete Guide

Frazzles are bacon-flavoured corn snacks made by Smiths under PepsiCo. They have been in production since 1975, making them one of the longest-running snacks in the UK. They are suitable for vegetarians but not vegan, and not gluten free. Baked rather than fried.

Fifty years in production is a long time for any snack. Most crisps launched in the mid-1970s are either gone or barely clinging on. Frazzles are not clinging on. They are still in supermarkets, still in corner shops, still in pub snack racks, and still turning up in lunchboxes. The bacon flavour and the rasher shape have not changed. The crimson and yellow packaging has not changed. If anything, Frazzles feel more embedded in British snack culture now than they did ten years ago.

The question people ask most often is whether they are actually vegetarian, given they look and taste like bacon. They are. No meat. Just very convincing flavouring and food colouring. Here is the full story.

What Are Frazzles?

The basics

Frazzles are extruded corn snacks shaped to resemble rashers of streaky bacon. The shape is exact enough that at a glance you could mistake one for a very small, very flat piece of cooked bacon. The red and yellow stripes that run along each piece mimic the fat and meat layers of a bacon rasher, and the slight wave in the shape adds to the effect.

The flavour is smoky, salty, and distinctly bacony. It is achieved entirely through seasoning rather than meat. The characteristic colour comes from paprika extract rather than any meat-derived colouring. This is what makes Frazzles vegetarian despite every visual and flavour cue pointing firmly at pork.

Who makes Frazzles

Frazzles were created by Smiths, the company founded by Frank Smith in 1920 in Cricklewood, north London. Smiths started as a one-person operation making plain crisps and grew into Britain’s dominant crisp brand through the 1930s to 1960s. PepsiCo acquired Smiths and Walkers in 1989. From 2005 onwards, Frazzles were relabelled under the Walkers brand while keeping the Smiths name on the pack. Today they sit under the Smiths/Walkers umbrella within PepsiCo’s UK snack portfolio.

How they are made

Frazzles are baked rather than fried, which makes them slightly lighter than a traditional fried corn snack. The base ingredient is maize. The corn is extruded into the rasher shape, baked, and then seasoned. The stripe effect on each piece was originally produced by a machine designed by Leslie Ivey, a tool maker working at Smiths’ West London factory, who built the first machine capable of drawing the signature stripe onto the snack.

The History of Frazzles

1975: The launch

Frazzles launched in 1975, the same year Smiths Snaps also launched. Both products came from the same company in the same year, which says something about how aggressively Smiths were expanding their snack range in the mid-70s.

The timing put Frazzles on shelves at the same moment that flavoured crisps were becoming genuinely mainstream in the UK. Walkers had launched their first flavoured crisps. Golden Wonder were competing hard. Smiths were fighting back with distinctive new formats rather than trying to out-compete on traditional crisp flavours.

Growth through the 80s and 90s

Frazzles became a staple through the 1980s and 1990s. The small bag format and low price made them a natural fit for the pocket money snack market. The bacon flavour sat in a category that had very few competitors at that price point: Monster Munch Roast Beef and Walkers Roast Chicken were the main alternatives for people who wanted a meat-flavoured snack without actual meat.

2005: The Walkers rebrand

In 2005 Frazzles were relaunched with Walkers branding replacing Smiths as the lead brand on the packaging. The Smiths name was retained alongside Walkers. The recipe remained unchanged. Many long-term fans did not notice the change for some time.

Now

Frazzles are available in multipacks, sharing bags, and single bags. A standard multipack is 6 x 18g bags. A sharing bag of 120g is also available. Ocado confirmed in 2024 that pack sizes were slightly increased, with the standard 18g bag replacing a previous 18g version following a reformulation of bag contents.

Are Frazzles Vegetarian?

Yes, and here is why

Despite looking and tasting like bacon, Frazzles contain no meat. The bacon flavour comes from a seasoning blend of salt, wheat flour, hydrolysed vegetable protein, dextrose, yeast powder, flavour enhancers, lactose, sugar, rusk, whey powder, smoke flavouring, and food colourings. The ingredients list confirms no animal flesh of any kind.

PepsiCo confirm Frazzles are suitable for vegetarians, and this is clearly labelled on the packaging. The Are Frazzles Vegetarian post on the site goes into the full ingredient breakdown in detail.

Are Frazzles vegan?

No. Frazzles contain lactose and whey powder, both of which are derived from milk. They are not suitable for vegans or anyone avoiding dairy. The milk content is in the seasoning rather than the base ingredient, but it is present in multiple forms.

Are Frazzles gluten free?

No. Frazzles contain wheat flour and rusk from wheat in the seasoning blend. They also contain barley malt flour. They are not suitable for anyone avoiding gluten. The packaging lists wheat and barley as allergens.

Frazzles Ingredients and Nutrition

Full ingredients

Corn (Maize), Rapeseed Oil, Bacon Flavour Seasoning containing Salt, Wheat Flour (with Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Hydrolysed Vegetable Protein containing Soya, Dextrose, Yeast Powder, Flavour Enhancers (Monosodium Glutamate, Disodium 5-Ribonucleotides), Potassium Chloride, Flavourings containing Soya, Lactose from Milk, Sugar, Yeast Extract containing Barley, Rusk from Wheat, Whey Powder from Milk, Colours (Paprika Extract, Sulphite Ammonia Caramel), Barley Malt Flour, Smoke Flavouring. Colour (Beetroot Red). Free from Artificial Preservatives.

Allergens: wheat, barley, milk, soya. May also contain celery and mustard. Always check the current packaging.

Calories

Each 18g multipack bag contains 97 kcal. The 120g sharing bag contains around 647 kcal total. Frazzles are baked rather than fried, which contributes to a slightly lower fat content than equivalent fried snacks.

Nutrition per 100g (approximate)

Energy: around 538 kcal. Fat: around 24g. Carbohydrates: around 65g. Protein: around 8g. Salt: around 2.7g. Always refer to current packaging for exact figures.

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Where to Buy Frazzles

In supermarkets

Frazzles multipacks and sharing bags are stocked in Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, and Co-op. They are one of the more widely available snacks in the UK market and rarely difficult to find.

Online in bulk

Search for Frazzles on Amazon for multipacks and cases. Boxes of 30 individual bags come up regularly and work out significantly cheaper per bag than buying multipacks in supermarkets. You can also find Frazzles on eBay where bulk cases occasionally appear at good prices.

Other Smiths snacks worth trying

Frazzles sit alongside Chipsticks, Scampi Fries, and Bacon Fries in the Smiths retro snack range. All four are still in production and share the same heritage. If you are a Frazzles fan, Scampi Fries in particular are worth trying as they use a similar extruded format with a completely different flavour.