All That and a Bag of Chips

Recently dear friends of mine went on a two week trip to Italy which involved sunning them selves seaside, lounging at at castle with friends and many other luxurious, relaxing endeavors. Also, apparently, they ate potato chips. Upon their return, they announced “We brought you something from Italy!” and produced the bag of chips above from their tote bags. (I should say: the empty bag of chips.) “Isn’t the packaging so cool!”, they said excitedly as they produced another (empty) bag, “you should blog about it!”

The packaging is cool, if rather austere and no-fun which is most definitely not what I think of when I think of chips. The San Carlo’s minimalism is refreshingly different - no shooting stars with ragged text announcing “Super Extra Bonus Size!” or “Now with more CRUNCH!” You know exactly what’s inside without having to read a word, and in fact it isn’t specified anywhere prominently that they are, in fact, potato chips.

When I think of potato chips, I think of sloppy greezy indulgence. I think of being at Jones Beach when I was a kid and taking bites that were salty and sandy because the a little bit of beach always ended up in the bag. I think of a huge yellow Pyrex bowl full of chips laid out on a table among other junk food because company was coming. I think of hot Summers, sitting in the back of the school bus during our day camp’s trip to Shea, passing around small bags of Wise or Lays chips to each other.

Chips, born in the U.S.A. ( in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1853 according to the Snack Food Association) have evolved considerably from their origins: there is now a fast array of choices. You can get all fanceh with some $5/bag Terra Chips, or go for a faux-classic New England kind of feel with Cape Cod or Kettle. Still, the enduring potato chip icon has always been Wise, even since the days of the Last Supper (Warhol’s Last Supper that is).

I’d say that chips fall into that comfort food category for me, and for many people I know. Sure it’s not a vat of Haagen-Dazs, but it’s childhood-nostalgic and full of positive associatitons. I guess that’s why I gravitate to what I consider to be more classic packaging. The Wise Owl logic itself has been largely unchanged since it’s inception. Sure, the bags are now that slick mylar and they seem to have modernized the packaging in lots of ways (mostly aesthetically wrong, in my humble opinion.) But, it’s iconic. There’s no doubt that the bag of chips above (the Wise ones) is of the same provenance as the bag of chips below.

One way to stand out in the chips aisle these days would be to return to that classic packaging - it’s striking, features some nice typography, it’s fun and it’s also kind of creepy-weird.