Twisties
Encyclopedia
Snack food
A snack is a portion of food oftentimes smaller than that of a regular meal, that is generally eaten between meals. Snacks come in a variety of forms including packaged and processed foods and items made from fresh ingredients at home....
product available in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
(marketed under a different name), Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, Malaysia, Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
, Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
and Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
, among others. It was launched in 1950 by the General Foods Corporation. The brand name is owned by The Smith's Snackfood Company
The Smith's Snackfood Company
The Smith's Snackfood Company is a company best known for producing and selling a range of snack food such as crisps. It is now owned by New York based company PepsiCo.-Smiths in the UK:...
. While originally an Australian owned company, Smith's was acquired in August 1998, by Frito-Lay
Frito-Lay
Frito-Lay North America is the division of PepsiCo that manufactures, markets and sells corn chips, potato chips and other snack foods. The primary snack food brands produced under the Frito-Lay name include Fritos corn chips, Cheetos cheese-flavored snacks, Doritos and Tostitos tortilla chips,...
the second largest producer of snack foods in Australia, which in turn is owned by PepsiCo
PepsiCo
PepsiCo Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York, United States, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company...
. In Malaysia, since Danone Malaysia has been acquired by Kraft
Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods Inc. is an American confectionery, food and beverage conglomerate. It markets many brands in more than 170 countries. 12 of its brands annually earn more than $1 billion worldwide: Cadbury, Jacobs, Kraft, LU, Maxwell House, Milka, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer, Philadelphia, Trident, Tang...
Twisties is now a product of Kraft Malaysia.
Twisties are one of the most popular snack foods in Australia. An invention of Michael Hunter a former Smiths exeutive Smith's claims it to be the "number one extruded snack brand".
Twisties are produced by feeding a mix of milled corn, rice and water into a machine known as a rotary head or random extruder. This machine cooks the mix at high temperature and pressure whilst forming the pieces. This process results in the characteristic Twisties shape with the knobbly surface and squiggly shape. After forming, the pieces are oven baked before being flavoured with a coating of seasoning and vegetable oil.
During the 1990s the texture of Twisties was altered resulting in a smoother finish, and may have coincided with the acquisition of The Smith's Snackfood Company
The Smith's Snackfood Company
The Smith's Snackfood Company is a company best known for producing and selling a range of snack food such as crisps. It is now owned by New York based company PepsiCo.-Smiths in the UK:...
by Frito-Lay.
Twisties were originally available only in cheese
Cheese
Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....
flavour, but chicken
Chicken
The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...
flavour was introduced and became a standard part of the product line. There have also been flavours in various countries as diverse as Toffee, Tomato and Salmon Teriyaki.
Twisties have been advertised for several years with the well-known slogan
Slogan
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...
"Life's pretty straight without... Twisties". Typical television advertisements play on the slogan by showing people in mundane situations being transported to surreal and exciting environments when they eat Twisties.
International variants
In Australia, bacon
Bacon
Bacon is a cured meat prepared from a pig. It is first cured using large quantities of salt, either in a brine or in a dry packing; the result is fresh bacon . Fresh bacon may then be further dried for weeks or months in cold air, boiled, or smoked. Fresh and dried bacon must be cooked before eating...
flavour Twisties were produced briefly in the early 1970s, but were not a success and were withdrawn from the market after only a year. Twisties has recently released cheddar flavour Zig Zag twisties
Twisties in New Zealand are different from the Australian variety. They are manufactured by Bluebird Foods Ltd
Bluebird Foods Ltd
Bluebird Foods Ltd is a division of the U.S. based PepsiCo corporation, that manufactures snack foods, cereals and muesli bars in New Zealand. The company now owns the rights to distribute Gatorade in New Zealand.-Description:...
and are only available in cheese flavour. They are less dense than the Australian variety, and their shape is less 'twisty'. In New Zealand the Australian Smith's variety are not widely available.
Twisties advertising has almost completely stopped in the last decade in comparison to its past promotions.
Twisties largest (and most expensive) campaign ever was between 1982-1983 with its "Twisties jumper" -
Lillian Darrell, a famed actress of the stage and screen, played the role of an old woman knitting a twisties jumper straight from a sheep. The promotion included free knitting patterns and free bags of Twisties. Other promotions were attempted afterwards, but they resulted in little success.