We Tried Takis Kaboom And Enjoyed The Flavor Explosion

Get ready to buckle up your taste buds, Takis is back at it again. Since exploding onto the snack scene with Fuego Rolled Tortilla Chips in 2006, Takis has continued to roll out hit after hit.

2024 has been a wild ride for Takis. Early this year, Buckin' Ranch galloped into our lives. Cobra, the spicy Worcestershire sauce-flavored rolled chip slithered into Kroger stores on May 20 with a July 8 expansion to 7-Eleven. And then, coming in with a bang for summer 2024 — Kaboom! It's a sweet and spicy sriracha blast, all packed into a rolled tortilla chip.

A rep from Takis was kind enough to send samples my way. You'll find more info on methodology at the end of this article, but basically, after a couple of rounds of taste-testing (and a hefty amount of hand-washing to rid myself of the tell-tale red-orange dust) I'm here, typing with tingling lips, ready to share the explosive details of this tasty new flavor.

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The Spice Blend Behind The Boom

How do Takis Kaboom chips create a flavor explosion in your mouth? It starts with cornflower (processed with lime), vegetable oil, and seasoning. The seasoning is where things get mysterious and complicated. It's a mix of some of those hard-to-pronounce things, along with ingredients we might actually keep in our kitchens — sugar, salt, tomato powder, garlic powder, onion powder, and chili pepper powder. However, if you fancy yourself a culinary detective aiming to crack the code on that Kaboom flavor, you'll have to figure out the elusive "spices," along with "natural and artificial flavors." And if you click on the SmartLabel for more info about "natural and artificial flavors," you'll see the enlightening response: "A combination of natural flavor and artificial flavors." Yeah, thanks.

Given the strong sriracha flavor of Kaboom, I was curious how the blend of ingredients compared with sriracha sauces. Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce -- the one with the famous rooster on the bottle -- lists its first four ingredients as chili, sugar, salt, and garlic. Sounds familiar? Indeed, that overlaps with the chili pepper powder, sugar, salt, and garlic powder found in Takis sriracha-flavored Kaboom chips.

Bang For Your Buck

When you find Takis Kaboom chips in your local stores, expect the price to be comparable to other Takis products in your area. The 9.9-ounce size, which contains 10 servings per bag, will likely be less than $5. As of publication, that size is $4.00 at Five Below — other flavors, such as Takis Fuego and Takis Blue Heat, are the same price.

Do be aware of high markups on Takis products from third-party sellers on sites like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay. You might start sweating from the price instead of the spicy flavor.

Also, if you search for Takis Kaboom online, you may come across a Canadian version of them, which is labeled as a ketchup-sriracha flavor. The markup on these imported bags can be quite high — it might be cheaper to just go to Canada. Regardless of where you purchase your spicy stash, be sure to budget for a beverage to help put out the fire.

Get Takis Kaboom While You Can

Starting during the summer of 2024, Takis Kaboom will be available for a limited time at retailers nationwide. The launch is part of the "Ignite Your Intensity" campaign, a celebration of intensity in our snacks and our everyday lives. In addition to the new limited-edition Kaboom flavor, Takis will spend the summer spicing things up at major music festivals and running contests on Instagram with prizes ranging from t-shirts to tickets.

Takis loves shaking things up with limited-edition flavors. Remember Angry Burger with its bold dill pickle punch? But just like summer romances, Takis' special flavors don't stick around forever. They ignite with intensity and then sizzle out. But sometimes they come back. Takis Zombie flavor rises from the dead every fall. So come Halloween, you can once again enjoy the extreme heat of the mysterious Takis Zombie flavor. As for whether the Takis Kaboom flavor will ever be resurrected — we'll just have to wait and see.

Comparing The Heat

Takis makes some of the spiciest chips you can get in America. In fact, these rolled tortilla chips come with their very own spice-o-meter so you know exactly how much water you'll need on standby. Leading the pack with an "Extreme" rating is the classic Takis Fuego — it's like munching on a lit matchstick. Other "Extreme" flavors to brave include Takis Blue Heat and Takis Nitro. These are truly trial by fire. If you're not ready for a full-on firestorm, Takis Dragon Sweet dials it down to a "Hot" rating — still plenty intense, but you won't need a firehose.

Takis Kaboom fills a much-needed "Medium" rating option. Perfect for those of us who like some spice but might be a little scared off by fire-breathing dragons. Alongside Kaboom in the "Medium" lane is Takis' other new offering, the Worcestershire sauce-flavored Cobra. Though they share the same rating, Kaboom is far spicier than Cobra.

And Kaboom definitely has more heat than "Mild" flavors like Takis Crunchy Fajitas Rolls and Takis Guacamole. Eating Kaboom will make you feel way braver than munching on Takis Intense Nacho, which barely gets a rating — it's labeled "Zero Heat."

Crunching The Numbers On Kaboom's Nutrition Facts

According to the Nutrition Facts on the back of my sample bag of Takis Kaboom, the serving size is an ounce, which is about 10 rolled tortilla chips. Each serving contains 150 calories, 8 grams of total fat, 17 grams of total carbohydrate, and 200 milligrams of sodium.

If you're keeping score, the sodium accounts for 9% of the recommended daily value and is actually less than half the sodium of the classic Takis Fuego. That flavor, which consistently lands the top spot in Takis flavor rankings, contains 420 milligrams of sodium for the same serving size.

Snack happily knowing that Takis Kaboom contains zero cholesterol and zero trans fat. And don't let anyone tell you Takis Kaboom chips are empty calories. Each serving gets you 6% of your daily iron and 2% of your calcium. There's even 2% of the daily recommendation for potassium — that's like a bite of banana!

Is Kaboom A Good Explosion?

If you've ever had the pleasure of meeting a bag of Takis, you know these narrow rolled tortilla chips pack a serious crunch and wear a coating of intense flavor. The Kaboom flavor follows this blueprint with a sweet and spicy sriracha flavor. The sweet element tastes a lot like ketchup. Upon first bite, that's the leading flavor, followed by a rush of sriracha-like spice. In Canada, the Kaboom flavor is called Ketchup Sriracha. The ingredients align very closely with the U.S. Kaboom version, so the ketchup taste might not just be my imagination.

Takis rates Kaboom "Medium" on its heat level, which seems about right, but keep in mind, ratings are all relative. This is a Takis scale, so "Medium" actually has some kick, though certainly not nearly as much as the infamous Takis Fuego. As someone who isn't exactly a spice daredevil, I'd have no trouble mindlessly munching through a bag of Kaboom during my latest streaming binge.

Overall, I'm a fan. While there are plenty of sriracha-flavored and spicy snacks for heat lovers, I haven't tasted anything like Kaboom's sweet and spicy sriracha. Although I'm pretty sure it's actually ketchup and sriracha. The U.S. version of Kaboom probably should have followed Canada's lead with Ketchup Sriracha — a name that really tells it like it is. Regardless of what you call it, Takis Kaboom comes in snazzy packaging and offers a delicious explosion of flavor.

Methodology

This was a straightforward, get-my-fingers-dirty taste test. A representative from Takis sent courtesy samples for me to review, but the company had absolutely no input on the content of this article. I tasted Takis Kaboom chips on two separate days in an effort to really capture the essence of these chips and I based my review on this firsthand experience.

Read the original article on Mashed.