Smiths Snaps Crisps: The Complete Guide to History and Flavours

Smiths Snaps were an extruded potato snack launched in 1975 under the Smiths brand, sold as a curved rectangle in Spicy Tomato flavour. They were made from potato starch and potato granules at the Newark Road factory in Lincoln, where Smiths had been producing crisps since 1937. PepsiCo confirmed their discontinuation in October 2025, ending a 50-year run. The Smiths brand continues in the UK through Frazzles, Chipsticks, and Scampi Fries.

Smiths Snaps had a devoted following that most crisps never build. They were not complicated: one main flavour, one distinctive shape, one factory. But the combination of the extruded potato base, the curved rectangle format, and that particular spicy tomato seasoning created something that proved almost impossible to replicate once it was gone.

This post covers the full history of Snaps within the Smiths brand, how they were made, what was actually in them, why they sat in a category of their own, and what is still available from Smiths today.

For the announcement of the discontinuation and the immediate alternatives, the Are Smiths Snaps discontinued? post covers that in full.

The Smiths Brand: A Brief History

To understand Snaps, you need to understand where they came from. Smiths is the oldest crisp brand in the UK. Frank Smith and Jim Viney founded the Smiths Potato Crisps Company in Cricklewood, London in 1920, selling plain fried potato slices in greaseproof paper bags with a small blue twist of salt tucked inside so buyers could season their own crisps. That twist of salt arrangement stayed until pre-seasoning became standard, and it gave rise to Walkers Salt ‘n’ Shake decades later.

By 1934, Smiths held around 95 per cent of the British crisp market. That dominance held through the 1950s until Golden Wonder launched Cheese and Onion and changed the flavour landscape entirely. Smiths responded with Salt and Vinegar in 1967, first tested by their north-east England subsidiary Tudor and then launched nationally. That Salt and Vinegar launch started a two-decade flavour war between the two brands that shaped the UK crisp market as we know it.

Smiths was purchased by General Mills in 1966, and then passed through several ownership structures before PepsiCo acquired it as part of their Walkers acquisition in 1989. From that point, Smiths became a sub-brand within the Walkers/PepsiCo portfolio, with production consolidated at Walkers’ UK factories.

The Newark Road factory in Lincoln was the spiritual home of Smiths production in the UK. Built in 1937 as the original Smiths Potato Crisp factory, it made crisps continuously for nearly 90 years. Snaps were made there from 1975 until the line closed in 2025.

What Were Smiths Snaps?

Snaps were not a conventional sliced potato crisp. They were an extruded snack: made from a dough of potato starch and potato granules rather than a sliced potato, pushed through a die, shaped, and baked. That production method gave them their characteristic curved rectangle shape with slightly raised edges, roughly the size of a large postage stamp but with a pronounced bow to the surface.

The curved shape was not cosmetic. The concave interior of each piece trapped seasoning in a way that flat or uniform shapes do not. When you ate a Snap, the spicy tomato flavour was concentrated on the inner surface, and the combination of the shape and the seasoning placement created a flavour hit that was more intense per gram than the ingredient list might suggest.

The texture was also distinct: crisper and more shattering than a puffed snack, lighter than a standard potato crisp. They had a particular snap to them, the kind that you hear as much as feel, which is presumably where the name came from.

The Ingredients

The Spicy Tomato seasoning was built from a substantial list of components. The base was potato starch and potato granules in sunflower oil. The flavouring included sugar, acidity regulators (sodium diacetate, citric acid, malic acid), wheat rusk, onion powder, yeast powder, hydrolysed soya protein, flavour enhancers (monosodium glutamate and disodium ribonucleotides), apple powder, orange powder, garlic powder, tomato powder, barley malt flour, paprika, lactose from milk, wheat flour, skimmed milk powder, dextrose, and colours from paprika extract and caramel.

That is a longer ingredients list than most crisps carry. The apple powder, orange powder, and barley malt flour in particular are unusual in a spicy tomato snack, and they contributed to the sweetness that sat underneath the heat. The seasoning was not a simple tomato-and-chilli blend. It was more layered than that: sweet, tangy, warm, with a savoury depth from the yeast and hydrolysed protein.

The seasoning was not vegetarian under a strict reading (skimmed milk powder means it contains dairy) but the packs were labelled suitable for vegetarians.

Nutritional Information

A standard 21g grab bag contained approximately 105 calories (440kJ), 5.5g of fat, 14g of carbohydrates, and 0.3g of salt. The fat content was moderate for a baked-format snack, higher than a completely baked product but lower than a fried crisp. The sodium diacetate in the seasoning acted as a preservative as well as a flavouring agent.

The Flavours: Then and Now

Snaps launched in 1975 with two flavours: Spicy Tomato and Savoury Cheese. The Savoury Cheese flavour did not survive as long as the Spicy Tomato. By the time most people who remember Snaps from the 1980s and 1990s were buying them, Spicy Tomato was the only variant on the market. The Savoury Cheese option has disappeared from most recollections of the brand, which tells you something about how completely Spicy Tomato came to define the product.

That single-flavour identity became both a strength and a vulnerability. Snaps had no range to expand into, no seasonal variants, no limited editions. They were one thing, done consistently for five decades. When PepsiCo decided the portfolio needed trimming, a single-SKU product with an ageing audience was an obvious candidate.

The Brand Timeline

Here is how Snaps fitted into the broader Smiths story:

1920: Frank Smith and Jim Viney found the Smiths Potato Crisps Company in Cricklewood, London.

1934: Smiths holds approximately 95 per cent of the British crisp market.

1937: Newark Road factory opens in Lincoln.

1967: Smiths launches Salt and Vinegar nationally, first tested by Tudor.

1968: Quavers launched by Smiths at the Newark Road factory in Lincoln.

1975: Snaps launched under the Smiths brand in Spicy Tomato and Savoury Cheese flavours.

1977: Monster Munch launched by Smiths.

1989: PepsiCo acquires Smiths as part of the Walkers acquisition. Products rebrand to Walkers.

1993: Monster Munch, Quavers, and other former Smiths products complete the move to the Walkers brand.

Post-1993: Snaps return to being sold under the Smiths name as a value-tier sub-brand.

October 2025: PepsiCo confirms discontinuation of Snaps Spicy Tomato at the Newark Road factory.

Early 2026: Final retail stock clears from wholesale and online sellers.

What the Smiths Brand Still Makes

Snaps were the highest-profile product to disappear, but the Smiths name did not go with them. Three products still carry the Smiths branding in the UK:

Frazzles are an extruded corn snack shaped like a bacon rasher in a bacon flavour. They were introduced by Smiths and remain one of the more distinctive products in the budget snack category. The format is corn rather than potato, and the crunch is softer than Snaps were. For more on this product, see the Frazzles complete guide.

Chipsticks are an extruded corn starch snack shaped like a thin french fry, sold in salt and vinegar flavour. They are a smaller, lighter product than Frazzles and sit at the same value price point. Chipsticks have been part of the Smiths range for decades and show no signs of going anywhere.

Scampi Fries and Bacon Fries are bagged pub-style snacks sold under the Smiths name. These are products that have survived multiple ownership changes and market shifts and remain popular in pub settings and through impulse retail. Scampi Fries use real scampi powder in the seasoning.

All three are available through the Smiths crisps category page.

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Why Snaps Were Different

A lot of snacks claim a distinctive quality that turns out to be mostly marketing. Snaps were genuinely distinctive in a measurable way: the format. The curved rectangle shape with raised edges is not something that appears in any current mainstream product. It is not a tube like a Pringle, not a flat crisp, not a puff. The geometry of the thing was its own, and the way that shape concentrated seasoning on the inner face created an eating experience that cannot be straightforwardly replicated.

Frazzles are the closest Smiths equivalent in terms of format and market position, but they are corn-based, bacon-flavoured, and lighter in texture. The discontinued crisps post covers more on the broader history of British snacks that came and went.

The absence of a direct replacement is one reason the reaction to the October 2025 announcement was strong enough to generate a social media campaign (#SaveOurSnaps). Products get discontinued regularly. Products that have a format and flavour combination with no analogue elsewhere generate a different kind of loss.

Can You Still Buy Smiths Snaps?

No, not as a current product. The last batches cleared from wholesale and online sellers in early 2026. Occasional listings appear on eBay from sellers who stocked up before the product was pulled, but those packets will be well past their best-before date by now.

If you are looking to fill the gap, the closest experiences available from the current Smiths range are Frazzles (for the extruded retro-snack format) and Scampi Fries (for the seasoning-forward pub snack experience). Neither is Snaps, but both are genuinely good products in their own right.

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