Walkers Squares: Flavours, History and Are They Crisps

TL;DR: Walkers Squares are square potato snacks made from potato granules and potato starch, not sliced potato. Smiths launched them as Square Crisps in 1978, and Walkers took the brand over in 2001. Three flavours remain in the UK range: Salt & Vinegar, Cheese & Onion and Ready Salted. You can buy Walkers Squares on Amazon or grab a full box on eBay.

Squares are the snack that shreds the roof of your mouth and somehow you keep going anyway. Sharp corners, hard crunch, a salt and vinegar hit that could strip paint.

They also have a longer history than most people realise, and they are not technically crisps at all. Here is the full story, the current range, the label details and where to buy them properly.

What Are Walkers Squares?

Start with the thing most people get wrong. A Square is not a slice of potato.

Reformed, not sliced

Check the ingredients on any pack. Salt & Vinegar Squares list potato granules, sunflower oil and potato starch as the first three items. Walkers takes dried potato, mixes it into a dough, forms it into shapes and fries it.

That is the same basic method behind Pringles. Real crisps are cut from a whole potato and fried as slices. Squares are built.

Where the crunch comes from

The dough process gives Squares their trademark texture. Because each piece is uniform in thickness, they crunch harder and more consistently than a sliced crisp.

They are also flatter and denser. So the seasoning sits right on the surface and hits you straight away, which is why the salt and vinegar version feels so aggressive.

The shape is the point

Squares have corners, and corners are sharp. That is either the appeal or the problem, depending on your palate.

Broadcaster Richard Osman summed it up neatly in his book The World Cup of Everything, joking that Squares were invented because children were not damaging the roofs of their mouths often enough. Fair.

The Smiths Years: Where Squares Came From

Walkers did not invent Squares. Smiths did, and the brand is older than most people assume.

Square Crisps, 1978

The earliest press mentions turn up in 1978, when the East Kent Times ran an advert headed SQUARE CRISPS. The Daily Record followed in April 1979, telling Scottish readers that Smith’s was bringing something called Square Crisps north of the border.

So the product is pushing fifty. That makes it older than Wotsits and roughly the same vintage as Monster Munch.

Lenny Henry and the adverts

Smiths put serious money behind them in the early eighties. Lenny Henry fronted several campaigns, including a 1981 cinema commercial held in the BFI archive.

The slogans leaned entirely on the texture. Two of them stuck: “more of a crunch than a crisp” and “the crisp that isn’t a crisp”.

The 25% less fat angle

Eighties packs also pushed a health claim. The design of the time flagged that Squares carried 25% lower fat than regular crisps.

That claim still holds up, as you will see in the nutrition section below. If you want more from that era, our rundown of what crisps were popular in the 80s covers the rest of the shelf.

How Squares Became a Walkers Product

The ownership story runs through the biggest shake-up in British snacking.

PepsiCo buys everything

PepsiCo acquired both Walkers and Smiths in 1989. It then merged them, and gradually moved the best Smiths products onto the stronger Walkers brand.

Quavers switched in 1993. Monster Munch followed in 1994. Frazzles came much later, in 2005.

Squares held out

Square stayed with Smiths longer than almost anything else. After the PepsiCo takeover, the product dropped the word “crisps” from its name entirely and was relabelled as a potato snack, which was more accurate anyway.

Then in January 2001, Walkers announced a relaunch and moved the brand across. The name changed to Squares shortly after, and it has stayed that way since.

Who owns Walkers Squares now

PepsiCo, through Walkers Snack Foods. If you want the full corporate picture, we mapped it out in who owns Walkers crisps.

The same Smiths-to-Walkers migration explains a lot of the modern range. Walkers French Fries and Smiths Snaps both came out of the same stable.

Every Walkers Squares Flavour

The UK range is small. Walkers currently lists three flavours:

1. Salt & Vinegar. The flagship, and by a distance the most searched for. Sharp, sour, unapologetic.
2. Cheese & Onion. Milder and creamier, built on milk lactose and dried cheese.
3. Ready Salted. The plainest recipe in the whole Walkers portfolio: potato granules, sunflower oil, potato starch, maltodextrin and salt. That is it.

Salt & Vinegar dominates the sales. Pick up a box of Walkers Squares Salt and Vinegar if you want the classic, or the box of Squares Cheese and Onion snack bags for the softer option.

The blue bag question

Here is a detail that trips people up. Walkers Salt & Vinegar crisps come in a green bag. Squares Salt & Vinegar come in blue.

Blue is the traditional British salt and vinegar colour, used by almost every other brand. Walkers is the odd one out, and we explained exactly why in why Walkers salt and vinegar bags are green.

Are Squares discontinued?

No. People ask constantly, and the confusion is understandable. Supermarket distribution has thinned out over the years, and you will often find them in multipacks or on a pub card rather than as a single bag on the crisp aisle.

Walkers still lists all three flavours in its current range. Availability, not discontinuation, is the issue.

Walkers Squares Nutrition

Squares are genuinely lower in fat than a standard crisp. Here is Salt & Vinegar per 100g, straight from Walkers:

• Energy: 443kcal
• Fat: 18g, of which saturates 1.5g
• Carbohydrate: 61g, of which sugars 4.5g
• Fibre: 5.5g
• Protein: 6.5g
• Salt: 1.83g

Now compare that with Walkers Ready Salted crisps, which carry 518kcal and 31g of fat per 100g.

What that actually means

Squares contain roughly 42% less fat per 100g than standard Walkers crisps. The dough process needs less oil than frying a raw potato slice, which is where the difference comes from.

However, they carry more salt: 1.83g per 100g against 1.3g for Ready Salted. So the eighties claim was fair, but it was only ever half the picture.

A single 22g multipack bag works out at 97 calories, 4g of fat and 0.4g of salt. That is one of the smaller snack portions going. For the wider context, see our piece on whether crisps are a healthy snack.

Are Walkers Squares Vegetarian, Vegan or Gluten Free?

Worth checking properly, because the three flavours differ.

Vegetarian

Yes. Walkers labels all three as suitable for vegetarians.

Vegan

Cheese & Onion is out, since it contains milk lactose and dried cheese made from milk. Salt & Vinegar and Ready Salted contain no animal ingredients on the list.

That said, Walkers does not carry a vegan label on either. The factory also handles milk, so a strict vegan may want to avoid them. Our guide on what to check before assuming crisps are vegan walks through the method.

Gluten free

No gluten-containing ingredients appear in any of the three recipes. However, Walkers states that Squares are made in a factory that also handles milk, wheat, gluten, barley and soya.

There is no gluten free certification on the pack. Coeliacs should treat them as unsuitable and stick to properly labelled options from our UK guide to gluten free crisps.

Squares vs Pringles vs French Fries

All three are reformed potato snacks rather than sliced crisps. The differences come down to shape and density.

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Pringles are curved and thin, so they snap cleanly. Squares are flat and dense, so they crunch harder and take more chewing. French Fries are extruded into hollow sticks, which makes them lighter than either.

Americans have no direct Squares equivalent, which surprises a lot of visitors. Their reformed potato snacks skew towards Pringles and puffed corn instead. We compared the two markets properly in British vs American snacks.

The VAT Detail Nobody Mentions

Here is a small oddity. Squares carry 20% VAT, and the reason is the potato content.

UK VAT law charges the standard rate on potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from potato, potato flour or potato starch. Squares fall squarely inside that definition thanks to the potato granules and starch.

Meanwhile, snacks made from other bases can escape it. Wheat Crunchies are zero rated, as are Skips, Twiglets and tortilla chips. The potato is what costs you the tax.

Where to Buy Walkers Squares

Single bags are hard to find and expensive when you do. Multipacks and full boxes are the sensible route.

For cases, browse the 32 pack of Squares Salt and Vinegar 27g, the Squares Cheese and Onion or the Squares Salt and Vinegar grab bag. You can also see the wider Walkers range on One Pound Crisps.

Amazon usually carries the multipacks and larger cases. Have a look at Walkers Squares Salt and Vinegar on Amazon or Squares Cheese and Onion.

For box quantities at pub-card prices, eBay is often cheaper. Check Walkers Squares boxes on eBay or the general Walkers Squares listings. If you are buying for a bar, start with our wholesale crisps for pubs section and our guide to buying crisps in bulk.

Fancy more from the same era? Our list of discontinued crisps we still miss is a decent follow-up read.