Remember the hedgehog flavour? Moon cheese? The strangest, coolest and most amazing crunchy packet designs ever | art

WCan you eat Smoked Spider Flavor Monster Munch? How about a crispy Bovril cake baked to celebrate the release of Back to the Future? Then there’s the hedgehog flavor — and even a Wallace and Gromit corn snack designed to capture the unique taste of moon cheese, which the duo set out to collect on their “big day out.”

All of these salty, crunchy and perhaps even delicious snacks are celebrated in UK Crisp Packets 1970-2000, a 140-page compendium that delves into the colourful, often bizarre and sometimes brutal world of crisp packet design. The book will be a nostalgic hit for many people, as it features many childhood favorites – Chipsticks, Frazzles, Snaps – along with lesser-known and rare ones.

You’ll find Dennis the Menace bacon and baked bean relish along with Golden Wonder roasted turkey, stuffing, and Sonic the Hedgehog salt and vinegar. There are long-established regional brands such as Penryn, Blackpool and Wigan, as well as a full range of TV and film releases, including the Spice Girls, Thunderbirds, Zig and Zag, Dr Who, The Mask and Jurassic Park.

The book is written by a 43-year-old artist named Chris Puckett, who has amassed a large archive. He’s nothing if not eclectic, with the designs he showcases ranging from the straightforward to the inspired to the whimsical. There are veiled cheese and onions commemorating the 1981 royal wedding and even innuendo-laden storyboards reminiscent of tacky seaside postcards. Dandy’s Beryl the Peril offers a bag of sausages and tomatoes.

Equally great is the huge array of lettering, illustrations, animations and patterns that always feel fun and are sometimes adorable. The early discotheque package—all wavy lines, three-dimensional lettering, and sharp design—is as attractive as a record sleeve. Odduns, a cheeseburger-flavored potato snack, feature a geometrically impossible, complex triangular shape. There’s a definite vibe from a cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

The story of this collection began in 2018, when Paquette was exploring an abandoned train tunnel in London. “I heard stories about dance parties happening in the 1990s,” he recalls. “There are still enthusiastic slogans on the walls.”

Then something else caught his attention. On the ground, he saw something insignificant. Under the dirt, he could see sharp blue and bright green, as well as an alien-like figure firing a laser gun. It was a decades-old pack of Space Raiders pickled onions, marked 10p. “Garbage usually doesn’t last long,” Puckett says. “But it settled in the tunnel and was protected from the rain, the sun, the garbage collectors and everything else.”

He found another product, and then another, and soon his portfolio expanded to include the classic Smiths Salt’n’Shake bag, the Quavers tomato flavor from 1996, and a Monster Munch bag bearing a best-by-date of July 1989. “They brought back strong memories from my childhood,” Puckett recalls. “And I also said, ‘Wow, I forgot how good those drawings were.’ I realized that they were actually unique pieces of history.

Paquette, now based in Athens, began searching the Internet for more and buying bags from collectors. Friends will also be keeping an eye on this, as a friend found a package in a WWII bunker in Dover which had been there since the 1980s.

“My criteria is the artwork,” he says. “I come from an art and graffiti background, so I’m interested in design. It’s all about lettering, illustrations and cartoon characters.” Space Invaders cites. “Compare the modern Space Raiders package to the original Brett Ewins package.” Ewens was a comic book artist respected for his work on the 2000 AD strips such as Judge Dredd. “It’s as if they forgot the art of design,” Puckett says.

His book aims to commemorate the golden age. “After 2000, packages lost something,” he says. “Anything that looked like a 3D CAD model was never going to catch on. Some of the designs were hand-drawn, but when computers started coming in, I think a lot of those people lost their trade. Obviously you lose a lot of character and detail because of that.”

The book contains an introduction by Annabella Bullen, Professor of Visual and Material Culture at the University of Brighton. “It’s a cultural hangover,” she says. “But this very humble material – which is really nothing more than rubbish – can tell an alternative history.” The professor’s introduction addresses everything from gender representation to the loss of regional independent businesses, while looking at the fact that, as part of the battle against childhood obesity, potato chips are now banned in schools. “This is the culture of children,” she says of the old packages. “There has been a clear strategic attempt to move potato chips beyond being snacks associated with grown men in pubs and into children’s lunch boxes.”

Pauline believes that palpable nostalgia hits people deeply for very precise reasons. “It reminds them of those moments when they were kids when they had a little bit of independence,” she says. “Maybe it’s what goes in their lunchbox or the first 10p they spend in a convenience store – those early choices that were your choice. These may just be empty containers now, but we fill them with memories.”

● Crispy Packs were published in the UK 1970-2000 by Sports Banger; @chris_packet