A strikingly designed bag crinkles temptingly, leading you along the black and white path to the treasures inside

Disclaimer: Guinness is my favourite pint at the pub. Nothing beats it for originality, looks, taste and pouring time.

So, imagine my excitement as a co-worker gave me a free bag of Guinness crisps to try. My trembling hand accepted the offering, and I scurried them away behind my Brits in Toronto PR, communications and social media plan files, hiding them to take home that night.

Never got to try them that night because it was Friday and I went straight out to the pub after work, and didn’t want to carry the bag of crisps around Toronto. That would look really strange. So, the crisps stayed thus, secreted away.

Until just now. The moment had arrived to consume the Guinness crisps.

I popped the bag open, and heard the crisps rustling inside, similar to dry, autumn leaves, crunching underfoot of a wild boar foraging through the forest on a chilly, starry night.

My first disappointment came when I noticed the bag was only half full of crisps. The rest was air. Free air, mind you, because my co-worker had given them to me — but air, nonetheless.

“Good things come in small packages,” the great Ronnie Corbett once said, so I plunged in and took my first Guinness crisp.

Holding it aloft like a tiny brown crisp-shaped butterfly that doesn’t struggle, but has accepted its fate, I examined it … and it did indeed have the pleasing Guinness hue. Things were looking good. I popped it in my mouth and crunched.

It was an odd taste. Truth be told, I expected it not to taste exactly like Guinness — more like a beef or Worcestershire sauce kind of flavour — but this tasted like neither.

One thing though — to me, it didn’t taste like Guinness at all. I understand it’s food, not the drink, but quite honestly, I couldn’t match it to its liquid namesake, and was therefore quite disappointed. In the free crisps. That my co-worker had given me.

So, VERY sorry Guinness, I REALLY wanted to like these — but it pains me to say I have to give my first Brits in Toronto 0/5 stars.