On Sunday I got to spend some time with Ryan & Sarah, two friends that I had not seen for quite a while.While we were eating lunch they presented me with three gifts (not gold, frankincense, and myrrh). The first was a can of Pringles.
Something jumped out at me right away when I saw the container.
Do you see what I see?
Instead of crisps the Pringles were called chips. That was more conspicuous to me than the French text. It alerted me to the fact that I was looking at an imported can of Pringles.
According to my understanding of the situation, Pringles cannot be called crisps in the UK and Canada because they are composed of less than 42% potato products (a bit disturbing, no?). In the US supposedly a lawsuit prevented Pringles from calling themselves chips because they are molded from a liquid, not sliced chips. I spent considerable time trying to find documentation of that lawsuit, but was unsuccessful. I’m not sure where reality ends and urban legend begins. (It is somewhat likely that I will write a future blog post on the legal history of Pringles semantics when I have time to chase down the legal documents and news stories.)
The Pringles in front of me were Canadian.
Stupid knows no geographical borders. 100 chips is as pointless as 100 crisps.
The can contained the maddening 100 count declaration on the sides and on the peel-off seal. This summer I tried the Pringles American Summer Griller Sidekicks Ketchup flavor. I would say the same recipe was used for that flavor and the Canadian Ketchup flavor. Since I’d never had a Pringles chip before it was well worth trying the Canadian version. Plus you never know about these things, if you assumed Canadian bacon was the same as American bacon you’d be making a serious mistake. Better to investigate than to assume. (Rating: [Canadian] Ketchup 7.3, 6.8, C-)
The final two gifts were Herbert Hoover campaign buttons. Considering that I love history and that my name contains an H, two Os, a V, an E, and an R they are very fitting. Of course I wore one of them for the remainder of the day. Thanks Ryan and Sarah!
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