You have stood in the crisps aisle at Woolworths looking for something, anything, that eats like the packet you grew up with, and come away with a bag of something that was fine but was not it. So here is the honest Nik Naks Australia equivalent answer: nothing on an Australian supermarket shelf is the same snack, one Australian product gets close enough to be worth buying, and one flavour cannot be matched at all.
There is also a trap waiting for you. Search the name and you will get two completely different snacks, made by two different companies on two different continents, both legally called Nik Naks. Knowing which one you actually miss saves you buying the wrong thing.
Table of Contents
- The short answer
- There are two Nik Naks, and they are nothing alike
- What South African NikNaks actually are
- Your nik naks australia equivalent, ranked
- The flavour Australia cannot match
- Making a chutney dust at home
- Where to buy the real thing in Australia
- If you are after the British Nik Naks instead
- Quick answers
- The bigger picture
The short answer
If you miss the South African cheese NikNaks, buy Twisties Cheese. Same base grain, same firm crunchy curl, a milder and more buttery cheese hit than you remember.
If you miss the Flamin’ Hot ones, buy Cheetos Flamin Hot. Different shape, similar intent.
If you miss Fruit Chutney, sit down. Nothing in Australia does that flavour, and no amount of wandering the aisle will change it. There is a home fix further down, and it is a fix, not a replacement.
There are two Nik Naks, and they are nothing alike
The South African one is NikNaks, made by Simba, which is a PepsiCo company. It is a maize snack, meaning it is made from corn, extruded into firm knobbly curls and dusted with seasoning. It has been on South African shelves since 1972.
The British one is Nik Naks, made by KP Snacks, which describes them as uniquely knobbly and made from corn. Different recipe, different flavours entirely, with names like Nice ‘n’ Spicy and Scampi ‘n’ Lemon. The two brands are unrelated.
They have also had a scrap about it. In 2014, KP Snacks put importers of the South African NikNaks on notice that bringing them into the United Kingdom infringed the older British brand name. That is the sort of detail that only matters until the day you are the one searching for the thing, and then it explains a lot about why your search results are a mess.
For the rest of this post, when I say NikNaks I mean the South African maize snack.
What South African NikNaks actually are
Maize snack is the phrase on the packet, and it is doing real work. NikNaks are corn, oil and salt pushed through an extruder, so the curl puffs and sets hard rather than staying soft. That is why they crunch instead of melting, and it is the single most important thing to match when you go shopping here.
The range has grown well past the original cheese. Alongside Original Cheese there is BBQ, which used to be Spicy Beef, plus Fruit Chutney, Grilled Chicken, Sweet Chilli, Flamin’ Hot and a couple of two-flavour packs. If someone tells you NikNaks are just a cheese snack, they stopped buying them a decade ago.
Your nik naks australia equivalent, ranked
Australia has a decent corn snack aisle. It just organises it differently.
Twisties Cheese. The closest thing you will find in a normal supermarket. Twisties are a corn based curl made by The Smith’s Snackfood Company, which calls them an Aussie snack icon of more than fifty years, sold in Cheese, Chicken and a Zig Zags shape. The base texture is right: firm, crunchy, hollow in the middle, the same finger-dust situation. The cheese is where it parts company. Twisties cheese is smoother and more buttery. NikNaks cheese is sharper and saltier and hits the back of your tongue harder. If you eat a bowl of Twisties expecting NikNaks you will notice. If you eat a bowl of Twisties expecting a good cheese curl, you will be happy.
Cheetos. Interesting one, this. Cheetos and NikNaks are corporate cousins, both PepsiCo brands, and in South Africa Simba sells both. Smith’s sells Cheetos here too, in Cheese and Bacon Balls, Flamin Hot and Puffs. The catch is texture. Australian Cheetos lean towards balls and soft puffs rather than the hard curl, so a Cheetos Puff dissolves where a NikNak fights back. The exception is Flamin Hot, which is the single best like-for-like swap in this whole post, because NikNaks has its own Flamin’ Hot and the two are chasing the same chilli-and-tomato idea.
Cheezels. Made by Snackbrands Australia, which sits under the same Intersnack group as the British Nik Naks, which is a coincidence too neat to leave out. Cheezels are corn and rice rings with a strong savoury cheddar flavour. Wrong shape, and a bit richer, but of the mainstream options this one is the closest to that sharp cheese note. Worth a bag if Twisties reads too mild to you.
Burger Rings. Not a cheese match at all, but the closest thing Australia has to the meaty-tangy direction of the old Spicy Beef flavour. File under worth a try rather than solved.
That is the whole realistic list. There is no hidden Australian brand that nails it, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not eaten the two side by side.
The flavour Australia cannot match
Fruit Chutney. Australia has no snack in this direction, because Australia does not have the chutney habit that South Africa has. The fruity, tangy, slightly sweet, slightly spicy seasoning that South Africans put on crisps, curls and everything else has no equivalent product on a supermarket shelf here.
I would rather say that plainly than send you off buying sweet chilli and hoping. Sweet chilli is not chutney. It is sweeter, sharper and one dimensional next to a proper fruit chutney seasoning.
Making a chutney dust at home
You can get closer than nothing. The method is simple and the result lands somewhere between a decent tribute and the real thing, which for a snack you eat by the handful in front of the cricket is not a bad outcome.
Take a good fruit chutney and spread it thin on a lined oven tray. Dry it in the oven at its lowest setting, with the door propped very slightly open, until it is leathery and no longer tacky. Break it up, blitz it to a powder in a spice grinder or a small blender, then sieve out the lumps. Toss the powder through a bowl of plain salted corn curls while they are still warm from a low oven, so it clings.
If you cannot get the real chutney here, the substitutes that actually work are covered in the Mrs Balls chutney substitute guide, and the same logic applies to drying them out.
Two honest warnings. Sugar burns fast, so keep the oven low and check it often. And the colour will be browner than the packet, because the packet has help you do not have in a home kitchen.
Where to buy the real thing in Australia
South African grocers around the country do import Simba snacks, including NikNaks, and stock moves in waves depending on shipping. The practical approach is to find your nearest South African shop, ask what they are getting and when, and buy the flavours you actually miss rather than one of everything. The state by state directory of South African shops in Australia is the fastest way to find one near you.
Prices for imported snacks are what they are, and they change often enough that quoting one here would only mislead you. Expect to pay import money for an import.
If you are after the British Nik Naks instead
Different problem, same aisle. The British Nik Naks are a corn snack too, so the texture logic still holds and Twisties remains the sensible starting point. The flavours are the issue: Nice ‘n’ Spicy and Rib ‘n’ Saucy have no Australian counterpart, and Scampi ‘n’ Lemon has no counterpart anywhere. British expat shops and the international aisle of larger supermarkets are a better bet than trying to reverse engineer them.
Quick answers
Are Nik Naks and Twisties the same thing? No. Both are corn curls, and the shape and crunch are close, but the seasonings are different and they are made by different companies in different countries.
Can you buy NikNaks in Australia? Not in mainstream supermarkets. South African grocers import them, and stock comes and goes.
Are NikNaks the same as Cheetos? No, but they are related. Both are PepsiCo brands, and Simba sells both in South Africa. In Australia, Cheetos comes in balls and puffs rather than the firm curl, so it eats quite differently.
What is the best nik naks australia equivalent for the cheese flavour? Twisties Cheese for texture, Cheezels if you want a sharper cheese hit and can live with a ring instead of a curl.
Is there a fruit chutney flavoured snack in Australia? No. Making a chutney dust at home is the only route, and it gets you close rather than all the way.
The bigger picture
Snacks are the last thing expats sort out and the first thing they miss, which is why the nik naks australia equivalent question comes up so often at braais here. The pattern is always the same: the base product exists in Australia, the seasoning culture does not.
If you are working through a longer list of things you cannot find, the complete guide to South African ingredient substitutes in Australia covers the pantry staples, and the tennis biscuits substitute post handles the other great expat snack gap.
Buy the Twisties. Make the chutney dust once, for the novelty. And when someone flies out from home, ask for the green packet.
