Snackmasters was a fun show, with the bulk of the entertainment derived from watching world-class (and sometimes Michelin-starred) chefs trying to figure out and recreate popular food from production-line process. Naturally, the frustrations as their efforts fall apart was gold for audiences. The now-ubiquitous Jade Adams brought the required educational content to allow its blatant product plugging to go ahead, and good old Fred Sirieix is a personable enough host when he's not blatantly course-correcting some of the contestants, but with respectable ratings and an international franchise, many wonder why it only ran for a short time.
When looking closely, it becomes obvious. Everything was fine whilst the contestants where making more specialist things like chocolate bars, which taxed the chefs' skills to try and replicate them on a smaller scale, but it was when fast-food was brought into the show that the trouble soon started. When confronted with reproducing a Domino's pepperoni pizza, true-blue Italian Francesco Mazzei was downright hostile about the product from the start, and became increasingly vitriolic about it as the episode progressed, which must have REALLY annoyed the owners of Domino's. Things weren't quite as venomous when teams competed to re-create KFC's top secret recipe, but there was still a good deal of resentment. It really wouldn't have helped the shows' fortunes when, after his work was described one of KFC's senior representatives, as being "the closest they've tasted", winner Tom Aikens addressed the camera and listed the entire recipe to blow the lid of the secrecy.
Is it any wonder it didn't come back?
