This is a discussion almost worse than whether you pronounce the word poh-tayto or poh-tahtto. It has to do with chips and crisps, and too much time on your hands.
What is billed as the world’s largest potato chip, was created June 3, 1991, by food engineers working (a debatable term) for the Proctor and Gamble company, owners of Pringle’s Potato Chips.
The massive “chip”, measured 25 x 14 inches, weighed 5.4 ounces, and equaled the size and content of 80 regular Pringle’s chips. Not to forget, that it contains 920 calories. Somewhat dilapidated by time, it sits on display at the World Potato Exhibit in Blackfoot, Idaho, a monument to man’s ability to fudge his terminology. Because it’s not really a chip.
Potato chips, are thinly sliced fresh potatoes that are fried in vegetable oil. Pringles “chips”, are technically what should be called “crisps”. A crisp is produced through a food processor, from processed, dehydrated potatoes. Although introduced to America as Pringles Chips in 1968, the Proctor and Gamble legal beagles bowed to nitpickers and changed the name to “crisps”.
The idea for Pringles, was born of an excess of leftover processed potatoes. Someone proposed they make potato chips. That was fine, but they didn’t have the distribution system to get them out there and sold while still fresh. So they invented the uniform saddle-shaped crisp, that could be stacked in a tall can of a width just big enough to fit the chips..crisps. Sealed against oxygen and out of the influences of light, they had a longer shelf life and wouldn’t get crushed or broken.
From there on, there was no stopping them. In 2003 Pringles introduced colored chips…er, crisps. Then in the Spring of 2004, announced their next marketing strategy- printing each single crisp in there silo-shaped containers, with a trivia question or joke.
At one time, a popular urban legend held that Pringles were made from leftover McDonald’s Fries. Ronald hotly denied this.
