UFOs are a packaged
cheese-flavoured snack, consisting of bite-size portions of deep-fried
potatos with orange colouring, flavoring and
preservatives. In many respects they taste like
Twisties, and if they are made from the same substance then a 100 gram packet of UFOs would supply 9% of a person's daily
calcium needs, 12% of their
protein needs and a whopping of their 35% energy needs (aka
fat if the energy is not expended). UFOs are in the shape of three-spoked wagon wheels or the
peace symbol, but in fact they are marketed as "unusually flavoured objects", hence
UFOs.
UFOs were packaged in distinctive silvery wrapping, which made them look quite unique when they first hit the shelves in Australia in the late 1970s. At the time they complemented the zeitgeist of the period, asStar Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Close Encounters of the Third Kind fired up the imagination of many a child and teenager about the prospect of us getting in contact extraterrestial life, just as the first trials of the Space Shuttle suggested this could become a reality. Television advertisements for UFOs featured (as I recall) a beach party at night with people looking at bright unusual lights in the sky, which beam down back to earth craters full of UFO snacks.
UFOs have long since disappeared from the stores, however they are still produced and sold in the civil war torn country of the Solomon Islands (of all places) .