Who decided that ready salted crisps would be in red packs,cheese and onion in green and salt and vinegar in blue?And why do Walker’s do them the other way round so salt and vinegar is green and cheese and onion blue?Miffed me off when I got my usual blue bag in the pub the other night and it was cheese and onion :smack:
I think you answered your own question. There are no standards.
http://walkers.corpex.com/cr15p5/faqs.asp
AFAIK, Walkers chenged the colour schemes around in the UK about a year ago. I have no idea why, it doesn’t really matter just it sure is confusing !
But you’ll find many, many threads about this on the 'net including open letters to the company,
http://www.incredible.org.uk/backlash/walkers_crisps.html
and a petition !
I’ve just looked at the Walkers Crisp webby and its ever so comprenhensive history(about 2 paragraphs) which states they’ve been at it since 1948.
This is misleading to say the least, I recall when Golden Wonder was the market leader back in the early 1960’s and they were the ones to introduce the revolutionary new flavour of Cheese and Onion (note the ‘and’ had not yet been shortened to ‘n’)
For several years it remained this way, Cheese and Onion or Salted - ready salt or little blue bag, the little blue bag was a real ball ache to try find when you were in the dark of the cinema whilst watching the Saturday matinee.
It was Golden Wonder who introduced this colour scheme of green with yellow highlights to us and it was taken up by the other major crisps company of the day, Smiths.
I can’t remember exactly how much they cost, I think it was tuppence (two old denarii, or 120 part of one quid)
The next flavour that came along seemed to be Salt ‘n’ Vinegar swiftly followed by chicken, and beef(actually I think they were called Bovril flavour)
The point is, that these also had their colour schemes which seemed to have pervaded the whole crisp industry in the UK.
Walkers didn’t make it in any great number nationally until at least the late 1970’s, quite how Golden Wonder lost its leading market share I’ve no idea.
Walkers still have this habit of bringing in unusual colour schemes instead of following the more well known pattern, there is, for instance, one Walkers flavour that has a largely black bag with a white inset, I’m not sure but I think its supposed to be a slightly more upmarket beef crisp or somesuch.
I think that serious UK dopers need to be more enquiring on such important matters.
Ignorant Yank question: Are “crisps” the thin, fried potato slices we call “potato chips” in the US?
Yes, potato chips.
Black is “Barbeque Sauce flavour”.
Yes, and “chips” in BritSpeak are what you would call “fries” except that ours are larger, softer and beytter tasting.
What ever happened to Smith’s Crisps? They and Golden Wonder were the big boys of the crisp world when I was a lad. They both followed the Blue=S&V, Green=C&O, as did the lesser KP brand. I had never heard of Walkers until I started shaving.