Is it true that Pringle’s is required to call its products potato crisps rather than chips, for fear of a lawsuit from some group like the Potato Chip Makers of America or some-such?
I heard it has something to do with how Pringle’s are made - that they aren’t actually slices of potato, but tiny bits of potato reformed.
How can this possibly be a big deal?
Is there really some group out there that calls the shots on when a chip is a chip, or is it just an urban legend?
“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known” - Michel Gyquem de Montaigne
IIRC they wanted to trademark the name “potato chips” and an organization such as Guy Incognito mentioned said no way. Allowing this would have meant that every other potato chip maker would have not been able to use the term “potato chips” as a description of their own products. “Potato chips” is a generic term, “potato crisps” is all Pringle’s. - MC
I don’t think this answers your question, but what the hell. A link to www.pringle.com can’t hurt. Warning - the shockwave splash startup screen is highly annoying.
Oops, that’s a link to a retirement community, I think www.pringles.com is what you really want. Or maybe not. It’s your call. Once you pop, you can’t stop.
In a literal sense, they aren’t chips, i.e., chips of potato. Being reconstituted potatoes (or 'flaked and formed, like Steak’Ums), I think the FTC requires them to be called something else.
Maybe.
“If I pinch my nose with my fingers, close my mouth tight,
and blow real hard, I can make my ears bleed. It’s
not as cool as Superman’s X-ray vision, but it’s my own
special talent.”
So what about those Baked Lay’s potato snacks like you can pick up at Subway? What do they call them? I don’t have a bag at hand but I’m pretty sure those are made much the same way as Pringles.
“Gypsy: Tom, I don’t get you.
Tom Servo: Nobody does. I’m the wind, baby.”
Alphagene, my husband had me convinced that I was the only person on earth that likes that show. As special and important as I am, I knew they didn’t just air a show for ME every week!
Dang! Now that you mention it, I think Pringles figured prominently in an MST3K host segment. Not sure if it’s Joel doing foley sounds during Cave Dwellers, or something else. I can just see Mike and the bots debating this very thread:
Tom- You may well ask “what difference ‘chips’ or ‘crisps,’” as if it were merely a matter of…
Crow- Hey! Who ate all the CheezWhiz?
Mike- mmph
I lead a boring life of relative unimportance. Really.
Under the FDA, there are rules about food labeling. There are “generally recognized” names for certain types of food. Therefore, if a food is labeled with that name, the customer can be reasonably sure of what he or she is getting.
An example is cheese. It has to be “natural” cheese if it is to be labeled “cheese.” Processed cheeses cannot be called “cheese.” This is why you see such labels as “Kraft’s Singles.” Then in smaller print it says “processed cheese food,” or some such.
The same holds true for potato chips. A potato chip is a deep-fried slice of potato. (I am not sure about whther a baked slice can be called a potato chip.)
Pringles are not deep-fried slices of potato. They are made from a dehydrated, granulated potato product, which is then reconstituted and molded into the familiar Pringles shape. I think it is deep-fried after that.
So, Pringle’s do not meet the FDA definition of potato chips. Therefore they can not label the product “potato chips.”
Actually, Proctor and Gamble are no more or less capable of trademarking the term “Potato Crisp” than they are of the term “Potato Chip”. As has been mentioned, potato crisp is the common term in the UK and, in fact, many varieties of potato crisps are marketed in the US. All of this hints as to why P&G decided to call Pringles potato crisps… The story that I’ve been told is that originally these were manufactured by a Scotsman named Pringle who called them crisps, per his cultural standard. When P&G bought the rights to the process they adopted the name as a product differentiator.
