We Tried Takis Hot Sauce (And We’ll Be Sticking To The Chips)

I remember when Takis really entered the food trend cycle in the 2010s. I was still in school and I remember lucky kids who were able to convince their parents to include Takis in their lunch ran through the school’s halls with red-dyed fingertips, taunting it in the faces of kids with less carefree parents. It was taboo and scandalous since it demonstrated bravado to conquer the spice. And everyone already knew that the bright red color wasn’t going to be doing us any good. But we didn’t care―they were coveted anyway.

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In recent years, the Takis collection has expanded as their popularity has grown. The Blue Heat Takis craze was almost as significant as its original counterparts’ surge in popularity and the brand has continued to launch a variety of products capitalizing off the spicy snack. Recently, they even did a collaboration with Spiderman for the upcoming “Brand New Day” movie release. And, as it turns out, the home of the largest collection of Takis products is Family Dollar. There, they sell Takis flavored nuts, chip varieties, and even popcorn. Their newest Takis product release was the Takis Fuego Hot Sauce. Naturally, we had to check it out.

Takis Flavored Everything

I mean, the idea for this hot sauce is pretty sound. If you love the flavor of Takis, then why wouldn’t you want to be able to add that flavor to anything and everything you’d like? And what better way to do that than with a sauce? Again, it seems like a great idea. And for just $2.75 a bottle, the deal sounded a bit too good to be true. Turns out, it was.

The flavor of Takis is perfected, it’s bright and zingy, yet warm and spicy. It tastes almost like if Tajín was a perfect salty chip… with way more Red 40. The problem with the hot sauce is just in the fact that it doesn’t actually taste like Takis at all. The lime-y flavor isn’t there, it’s just the spice. But even then, it’s not balanced. It tastes like that artificial spice that fast food chains will use that doesn’t taste like a real spice at all and just hurts your stomach instead. It’s smokey and deep in flavor and with something else, it’d definitely be improved. But as a solo entity, it’s the dark and bitter kind of spice that makes me sad I got excited and poured the hot sauce all over my next bite of burrito before tasting the sauce on its own. The texture is a pretty standard hot sauce and the salt level is pretty good. But I won’t be eating much more of it. Maybe I could use it to make a different sauce… but that’s not the kind of thing I think most people are going to want if they buy this new release.