Simba tomato sauce chips is no more

Bad news for Simba Chips fans: the tomato sauce flavour is no more.

After Simba ran a four-month-long voting and buying campaign for three of their flavours, which began in April, the #SaveYourFlava – also known as the “Choose Me or Lose” campaign – gave chip lovers the power to save one of these three flavours – cheese & onion, tomato sauce and salt & vinegar.

Simba’s salt & vinegar and cheese & onion have survived the cut.

Senior marketing director for salty snacks at PepsiCo, custodian of the Simba brand, Giulia Iorio-Ndlovu, said in a statement that they took their role of catering to customers’ taste buds “very seriously”.

“We saw the leading flavour change a few times,” said Iorio-Ndlovu. “Salt & vinegar was top of the rankings for a while, then cheese & onion took over. But it was very close, and anything could have happened.”

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At the start of the process, salt & vinegar was leading its competitors. However, surprisingly, cheese & onion won the most votes with 44.99%, of the nearly 850,000 total votes. Salt & vinegar received 37%, whilst tomato sauce only received 18.01%.

Simba’s new flavours celebrate South Africa’s braai culture; they include shisanyama, chilli biltong and chakalaka. The potato chip brand says local taste preferences have been changing and they are just catering to the changes.

She added these flavours were “nostalgic and “bind us together”.

Tomato sauce fans were not convinced with the process and questioned if the votes were calculated correctly. They also asked if other flavours would have survived the chop.

People took to Twitter to express their dismay.

Tomato sauce lovers were mourning their loss

Simba’s tomato sauce flavour will still be available for the next few months until new flavours hit shelves.