Keith Nallawalla
In the late 90s and early 2000s, various brands experimented with adding extra flavour sachets to their fast food and snack offerings. The main 3 that I look back on nostalgically that were released in Australia are Samboy Chip Flavour Bombs, McDonald’s Shaker Fries and KFC Popcorn Chicken Shakers.
The purpose of these sachets was to add extra or different flavours to your chips or other food, either by enhancing the existing flavour or adding something completely different.
Out of these, McDonald’s Shaker Fries continue to return every few years, and even Hungry Jack’s has done Arnott’s Shapes Shaker Seasoning in 2018, but the others seem nearly forgotten about.
This topic has been interesting to me lately, as my favourite beef jerky and Aussie biltong brand (Original Beef Chief) has been selling individual packets on their Salt and Vinegar Jerky page and sometimes also offers full bags of Salt and Vinegar seasoning that you can buy separately from their jerky.
Let’s take a step back from 2025 and into the past with these flavour sachets and have a refresher on what these products were.
Samboy Flavour Bombs 
Samboy is an Australian potato chip company that was popular in the 1980s and has gone up and down in popularity ever since. The peak memory for most people my age would definitely be the Flavour Bombs of the late 90s. This made these already strongly flavoured chips very extreme and very fun.
The flavour bombs included:
- Chicken with Garlic Flavour Bomb
- Salt and Vinegar with extra Salt and Vinegar bomb
- Atomic Tomato with a Mustard flavour bomb
- BBQ with Chilli flavour bomb
- Plain with Pepper Flavour bomb
I see Samboy Flavour Bombs as an alternative to the Tazo promotions that younger kids were attracted to; this was more of an extreme novelty for “cool” teens to get excited by.
Will Samboy flavour bombs ever return? I find it unlikely. They were part of Pepsico at the time of this promotion, and Pepsico sold off many of its chip brands after acquiring Smiths in 1998. This means that CC’s, Ruffles, Thins, Cheezels, and Samboy were sold to the smaller Dollar Sweet Holdings/SnackFood Australia to avoid a monopoly.
Now, some of these brands, such as Samboy, are only found in smaller supermarkets such as IGA and Foodworks and definitely don’t have the marketing power to add something extra like this again, sadly.
McDonald’s Shaker Fries
I would have to say that the occasional promotional item, McDonald’s Shaker Fries, is the most iconic and memorable on the list, as they come and go the most. These came with a Shaker Bag and a sachet so that you could dump your fries into the bag, mix in the flavour and shake it up.
These worked amazingly as the chips really helped the powder stick if you did it whilst they were still hot. Over the years, a few different flavours were released, so it’s a bit hard to remember the exact taste of them, but they were all good.
I won’t be surprised if we see these return to Australia again and again and again.
KFC’s Popcorn Chicken Shakers
Now, I have to be fair to this product because I don’t really remember the taste. However, the ad above is ingrained in my mind and is a genius, if not corny, piece of advertising because of how it sticks with you.
Here’s a list of the flavours I remember;
- Salt & Vinegar, now this was my favourite. I don’t know if I’m just a sucker for anything salt and vinegar, or if they are just that good, but the combination of the extra salt and tangy taste of vinegar on my popcorn chicken was so yummy, and I need them to bring them back asap.
- Nacho Cheese, now I may be sacrilegious, but I didn’t really like the nacho cheese flavour. Something about the cheese just felt off; maybe it was a bad KFC that I went to, but it was not good the day after. I do think it has legs, as chicken and cheese rarely disappoints.
- Hot Shot, oh my, Hot Shot was good. Imagine if KFC’s popcorn chicken had Nando’s peri peri sauce; it was so good after a night out, and you needed something spicy. I could go for one right now.
Sadly, all of these flavours are lost to time, and KFC hasn’t brought them back in Australia, to my knowledge.
Hungry Jack’s Shapes BBQ Shaker Chips
Ok, first of all, I love fries and I love shapes and combining the two should be a home run. However, there were some flaws with this. First of all, the packaging, please Hungry Jacks, use a bag instead of a box; this is where McDonald’s has you beat. The box itself has two holes on either side, so when you shake the chips, all the seasoning comes out of the box. It was tragic and messy. Second of all, the flavouring smells like those 2-minute noodle flavouring packets, so you’re left wondering if it will taste anything like shapes. Thirdly, the flavour was good, yes, good, it tasted like Shapes and chips; however, you only got a maximum of like 5 chips that had that flavour before you were just eating chips that tasted a bit saltier. So, please, Hungry Jack’s, if you bring it back, change the packaging.
Conclusion
There will always be a market for these, as everyone has different taste buds and some combinations of flavours just speak to each of us differently, from the simple McDonald’s Shaker Fries to the bombastic Samboy Flavour Bombs.
All of these flavour sachets are definitely worth a try. But maybe stick to the flavours you like and avoid any that might create a mess, like ones with holes in their sides.
