OK, I'll admit. I never grew up and sometimes like to snack on potato chips (also known as crisps) while others eat trendy salad laden focaccia bread or gourmet pizza. I like choice so I buy those bags full of half a dozen different flavours of chip. But alas, in each bag there is always one flavour I don't like so after a couple of months, I have a pantry full of salt and vinegar flavour chips.
So I propose a machine placed in the snack food / school food isle at supermarkets where we can select our favourite flavours in whatever quantity. The little packets of potato chips are then spat out into the larger pack, which can be purchased as normal.
One addition advantage is that marketing companies could gather information about peoples preference for various flavours using sales data instead of irritating in-your-face surveys or paranoia producing 'viral' marketing.-- sdm, Aug 25 2001 In USA, potato chips are bagged with one flavor inside. I'd like to propose a Potato Chip Exchange between the Nations Of The World. It will promote whirled peas.-- thumbwax, Aug 25 2001 Is that so? The type I am talking about is a bag, typically full of sixteen or so smaller bags containing about 25 grams of chips each. It's great to pull a couple of bags out and mix-and-match.
A potato chip exchange would be dlightful! I'd enjoy the international flavours. Hmmm... I wonder if you can get curry potato chips...-- sdm, Aug 25 2001 Was that pun really called for? Back to potato chips, How about a Sunday roast flavour? It's full of green peaness.-- sdm, Aug 25 2001 Thumbwax, one can often find the large assortments he's talking about at warehouse stores like Costco or Sam's Club. Can find smaller ones at most stores, as well.-- StarChaser, Aug 25 2001 Hang on a mo, I am confused now. You call them potato chips, so I assume you are American. So how come you spell "flavour" like an English person? You say potato and I say potato, lets call the whole thing off...-- DaveSt, Aug 25 2001 I bet you pronounce tomato wrong as well...-- DaveSt, Aug 25 2001 Oh, the pedants are out in force. I've changed three of the spelling errors that may constitute abysmal spelling- I make no promises about the grammar. Also, I have included a comment about crisps in the international (?) vernacular. I won't change the way I spell flavour, colour, specialised, motorised, or homogenised: if it’s good enough for the English, it’s good enough for me, plus, if it gives pedantic Americans the shits, well, that's a bonus.-- sdm, Aug 25 2001 I'll take your salt and vinegar.-- butterjug2000, Aug 25 2001 This is totally baked. Ever see those multi-paks in the grocery store, intended to stick a different flavor in your kiddo's ever-so-healthy lunch every day of the week? It's essentially 8 little bags in one big package. You're all set.-- djanaba, Aug 26 2001 Perhaps you should not buy these sampler bags and just buy the varieties you like.-- snarfyguy, Aug 26 2001 Yes, we have the assortments - blah blah blah. Confusion reigned when idea read://I like choice so I buy those bags full of half a dozen different flavours of chip. But alas, in each bag there is always one flavour I don't like so ...//Perhaps you might form a trade group-- thumbwax, Aug 26 2001 Maybe Candians should stick to lumberjacking...-- DaveSt, Aug 26 2001 Well, now you've gone and done it, DaveSt. As my nom-de-bakery indicates I am Canadian. A proud Canadian. I am not a lumberjack. I do not say *aboot* or *hoose*. Oh, wait. That's a rant, isn't it. Sorry. (We Canadians are SO nice, aren't we? Yes, a few of us make a living doing lumberjacking but at least we don't do car-jacking like those rowdy 'Mericans ; )
A local radio station DJ recently brought back an assortment of potato chip flavours he found while on vacation in Japan. As it turns out, when he and his fellow on-air personalities taste-tested the strange-sounding varieties they were simply well-known domestic flavours with exotic names for marketing overseas. Perhaps if sdm relabelled his unwanted packets he might find a taker.-- Canuck, Aug 27 2001 I think everyone's missing the point here. We buy the multipack assortments because the cost per bag is lower but the reason it is lower is because the crisp manufacturers *know* that there are some flavours you won't like and therefore you will effectively run out of crisps before the multipack is finished. This allows the company to sell you crisps that you don't even eat, which keeps their sales high and improves profits over an above the amount lost through the bulk discount.
This is the only plausible explanation for those multipacks consisting entirely of ready-salted crisps.-- gravelpit, Aug 27 2001 Ah, but you'll never get everyone agreeing on which flavour's the donkey. I can't think of many people who like salted, salt & vinegar and cheese & onion. Me, I can't stand cheese & onion.-- -alx, Aug 27 2001 Great idea! I always find that half the flavours in those assortment packs are dodgy, and quite frankly an exchange program is out of the question (sorry, but sending my salt-and-vinegar chips across the world to England, Canada and the US sounds prohibitively expensive).
Of course these machines wouldn't take money, would they? Check-out chicks in my experience have far less incidence of wantonly racking your cash than machines.-- jabbers, Aug 27 2001 Salt and vinegar (my favorite variety) is quite easy to make oneself using regular chips and a bottle of vinegar (preferably with one of those stopper things that lets out only a few drops at a time).-- snarfyguy, Aug 27 2001 Walkers make multi-packs containing only one flavour of crisps: salt and vinegar, ready salted, and cheese and onion. We always have prawn cocktail left over if we buy the variety packs, so think yourself lucky because they're even harder to get rid of than salt and vinegar flavour. Even dogs and cats don't eat them!-- Miss Weston Smith, Aug 29 2001 Ooh, I'll take the prawn cocktail flavour crisps off your hands.-- angel, Aug 29 2001 There's been a lot of Cheese & Onion bashing going on around here. If you don't want them, I'll take 'em.-- sdm, Aug 29 2001 Hey man, I've got like seniority and stuff. I want those cheese and onion things.-- thumbwax, Aug 29 2001 get outta here, snarfyguy. I'm having the salt'n'vinegar!!!-- lewisgirl, Aug 29 2001 Don't you people go to the grocery store?? They sell small individual packets of chips in many flavors for 25 cents per bag, then they provide a large plastic bag for you to fill up as you select your own assortment. I've seen it in every grocery store I've been to except the warehouse one. Yeesh.-- Aurora, Jul 09 2002 prawn cocktail - yuk-- po, Jul 09 2002 random, halfbakery