"Cooling Sensation" Potato Chips... what??

March and April are the hottest months in Thailand, and in the weeks leading up to the Songkran Festival, we here in Bangkok will do anything to keep cool. Usually, keeping cool involves staying indoors, walking around the shopping malls, using cooling powder, drinking cold drinks, and complaining, but the other day, I saw something at the local convenience store that caught my eye...

"Cooling Sensation"

Lay's always likes to introduce new and weird potato chip flavors here in Thailand, and maybe some day I'll write a big post about some of the strangest ones that I've seen. The "Cooling Sensation" chips, however, are probably some of the strangest.

They came in two flavors: "Icy Lemon Flavor" and "Melon Bingsu Flavor".

My first impression of both chips was that they were weirdly sweet. I don't really think that potato chips should necessarily be sweet. After the initial sweetness had faded a bit, the "Cooling Sensation" came out. My mouth was hit by a menthol sort of feeling, which actually did make it feel a little bit cold.

The Icy Lemon Flavor was supposed to be like a cold lemonade, and it sort of tasted like that, but lemonade is just an odd flavor to put into a potato chip. Honestly, Melon Bingsu is even weirder (a bingsu is a type of Korean shaved ice desert, and I can't think of a stranger flavor for a potato chip than melon).

Overall, the chips didn't really work for me. I appreciate the idea, and I think that the "Cooling Sensation" gimick is kind of fun, but I'm not sure if I'll be taking them off the shelf that often in the future.