So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[LizzieMaine]

A friend who used to work for Frito-Lay explained to me that the air in chip bags does have a practical purpose: it cushions and protects the chips in shipment. Otherwise, all you'd get when you opened the bag would be a pile of crumbs.

While the wax-paper chip bags of the Era didn't use so much air, they also didn't have to be shipped as far as modern snack foods do -- nearly all snack companies were local or regionally based, as opposed to the giant corporate snack-food oligarchy that controls the modern manufacture and distribution of salted junk foods. Maine used to have several fine local producers of potato chips, and we sneered at the Frito-Lay product as a bland, inferior substitute for what was better produced by our own workers with our own potatoes.

The last of those local companies, however, was bought out by a giant Canadian snack-food oligarch back in the 90s, and now even the treasured Humpty Dumpty brand is an inferior substitute for what was once a local product -- and with lots of air in the bag. The prostitution of a fine old name in such a way really ticks me off.

 

[2jakes]

A friend who used to work for Frito-Lay explained to me that the air in chip bags does have a practical purpose: it cushions and protects the chips in shipment. Otherwise, all you'd get when you opened the bag would be a pile of crumbs.

While the wax-paper chip bags of the Era didn't use so much air, they also didn't have to be shipped as far as modern snack foods do -- nearly all snack companies were local or regionally based, as opposed to the giant corporate snack-food oligarchy that controls the modern manufacture and distribution of salted junk foods.

Not so sure about that LizzieMaine!
I recall chips costing 10¢ and getting a full bag. I don't remember
getting a pile of crumbs or fluffs of
empty air (nitrogen?)
But that was in the '50s when I was a
kid and Butterfingers, Baby Ruth, Snickers, Milky Way were going for a nickle!

Btw:
My dentist is so grateful to all of these
candy companies!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Your chips were likely made close to home and delivered to stores by a local route driver -- and not shipped halfway across the continent on a long-haul truck. All chips were prior to the mid-1960s, when snack-food consolidation set in, a process largely completed by the 1990s.

Another thing eliminated by the snack-food consolidation movement was home delivery of locally-made snack products, packaged in refillable metal or cardboard drums. There is nothing like a potato chip made a few miles from home.

 

[2jakes]

There is nothing like a potato chip made a few miles from home.

I’m with you 100% on this my dear Lizzie!

Btw:
Guam 1969:
Due to the humidity...I could not find a bag of chips of any kind in the entire island.
Civilian shoes had to be brushed daily otherwise...green powder mildew would set in
the next day.
Not sure why I ever took my civilian shoes...there wasn’t much to do
for leisure except perhaps go biking in the jungle with tarantulas
everywhere.
Was not into alcohol or drugs. Super shy with gals.
Was I happy when I landed in LA after my tour of duty?

You bet!

 

[Fading Fast]

Your chips were likely made close to home and delivered to stores by a local route driver -- and not shipped halfway across the continent on a long-haul truck. All chips were prior to the mid-1960s, when snack-food consolidation set in, a process largely completed by the 1990s.

Another thing eliminated by the snack-food consolidation movement was home delivery of locally-made snack products, packaged in refillable metal or cardboard drums. There is nothing like a potato chip made a few miles from home.

This ⇩ was the version of that ⇧, that I grew up with - they were everywhere in NJ (just checked, look like they were a Baltimore-based company then, so, as you said, a regional brand a few hundred miles down the coast).

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our other local favorite. I have a habit of referring to any tasty food product as A TREAT THAT CAN'T BE BEAT, and that's due entirely to repeated childhood exposure to Humpty Dumpty packaging. The back of the can says GOOD FOR YOU AND THE KIDDIES TOO, which may not be factually correct in view of current medical science, but at the time it was highly persuasive.

It offends me that when the Canadian Snack Food Imperialists took over the Humpty works in South Portland, they replaced this, the one true Humpty, with a dissolute looking drunken sot of a Humpty on the label.

NOT FOOLING ME FOR A MINUTE PEOPLE.

 

[Doctor Strange]

We had those Charles Chips cans delivered to my parents' (Yonkers, NY) photo studio too!

 

[Fading Fast]

Our other local favorite. I have a habit of referring to any tasty food product as A TREAT THAT CAN'T BE BEAT, and that's due entirely to repeated childhood exposure to Humpty Dumpty packaging. The back of the can says GOOD FOR YOU AND THE KIDDIES TOO, which may not be factually correct in view of current medical science, but at the time it was highly persuasive.

It offends me that when the Canadian Snack Food Imperialists took over the Humpty works in South Portland, they replaced this, the one true Humpty, with a dissolute looking drunken sot of a Humpty on the label.

NOT FOOLING ME FOR A MINUTE PEOPLE.

Lizzie, I believe Commissioner 2jakes is about to flash the Lizzie Signal over in the "What is the Last Movie You Watched" thread as your encyclopedic knowledge of, well, everything is need on a film / advertisement issue?

 

[redlinerobert]

Doritos. I love doritos. Especially while out fishing. Doritos, beef jerky and beer.

 

[Haversack]

It was back about 1970 when MAD Magazine ran an Al Jaffee cartoon about "The Incredible Shrinking Candy Bar". It displayed how small the package would be without the interior cardboard tray. I've also recently noticed that sugar is no longer sold in 5 lb. bags. They are all now 4 lb. bags. (10 lb. bags remain the same.).

 

[Bruce Wayne]

It was back about 1970 when MAD Magazine ran an Al Jaffee cartoon about "The Incredible Shrinking Candy Bar". It displayed how small the package would be without the interior cardboard tray. I've also recently noticed that sugar is no longer sold in 5 lb. bags. They are all now 4 lb. bags. (10 lb. bags remain the same.).

I still see 5 pound bags of flour and sugar but they are getting rarer.

 

[Zombie_61]

A friend who used to work for Frito-Lay explained to me that the air in chip bags does have a practical purpose: it cushions and protects the chips in shipment. Otherwise, all you'd get when you opened the bag would be a pile of crumbs...

That might be true, but I'm convinced all of the companies that produce potato chips use it as an excuse to put less product in the bag.

Doritos. I love doritos. Especially while out fishing. Doritos, beef jerky and beer.

I liked Doritos when they were just Doritos, i.e. before someone decided everything had to come in different flavors. All of those flavors taste pretty much the same to me, and none of them are an improvement on the original Doritos which you can't find around here any more. Sure, there are other tortilla chips to be had, but they don't taste the same.

 

[vitanola]

Our other local favorite. I have a habit of referring to any tasty food product as A TREAT THAT CAN'T BE BEAT, and that's due entirely to repeated childhood exposure to Humpty Dumpty packaging. The back of the can says GOOD FOR YOU AND THE KIDDIES TOO, which may not be factually correct in view of current medical science, but at the time it was highly persuasive.

It offends me that when the Canadian Snack Food Imperialists took over the Humpty works in South Portland, they replaced this, the one true Humpty, with a dissolute looking drunken sot of a Humpty on the label.

NOT FOOLING ME FOR A MINUTE PEOPLE.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Darn tootin'. As I continue along the inexorable journey to the cold and lonely embrace of the grave, the more I realize I will not, under any circumstance, lie on my final bed and raise a rheumy eye to the humorless public-welfare nursing aide who attends my fading moments and say "damn, I should have laid off them potato chips."

As for Doritos, I've never forgiven them for discontinuing the original Taco Flavor chip of the 1960s and 70s, redolent of cumin and torula yeast extract. Every "taco flavor" fraud they've perpetrated on a suffering public since 1980 has stunk of that disgusting sour-cream-and-cheese blend they put in everything. If I wanted to enjoy a flavor experience like licking the dried residue out of a discarded multiplex nacho tray on a hot summer night at two AM, I'd just go ahead and buy the frigging "Nacho Cheesier" flavor. Nertz.

Another chip I miss was the "Hot Jalapeno" flavor put out in the '70s by an obscure small-time company called Keystone Foods. You couldn't find these in any supermarket, you had to hit the bricks and scout out the grubbiest and most run-down of neighborhood mom-and-pop Associated Grocers or Plee-Zing stores, and reach way into the back shelf where the most unpopular and unwanted snacks lurked, down there with the Andy Capp's Pub Fries and the French's canned potato sticks. They were worth the effort, though -- the experience was like swabbing your tongue with kerosene, and your breath afterwards kept unwanted friends away for days.

 

[redlinerobert]

As for Doritos, I've never forgiven them for discontinuing the original Taco Flavor chip of the 1960s and 70s, redolent of cumin and torula yeast extract. Every "taco flavor" fraud they've perpetrated on a suffering public since 1980 has stunk of that disgusting sour-cream-and-cheese blend they put in everything. If I wanted to enjoy a flavor experience like licking the dried residue out of a discarded multiplex nacho tray on a hot summer night at two AM, I'd just go ahead and buy the frigging "Nacho Cheesier" flavor. Nertz.

These are available. At least here in California. One of my favorites!

 

[ChiTownScion]

The original name- in honor of company founder Leonard Japp's wife. Then December 7, 1941 happened, and they changed the name to the one we know now, Jay's.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Doritos was invented at Disneyland. In the 1960s one of the restaurants at the famed theme park was Casa de Fritos, which was sponsored by Frito Lay. Someone hit on the idea of making use of the surplus tortillas by cutting them up in the familiar triangle shape and frying them.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

My father was in packaging for many years, and he lamented about how difficult it was to please people. If you didn't inflate the bag, consumers complained that the contents were reduced to fragments. If you inflated the bags, they complained that they were getting more air than chips. If you made the bags easy to open people complained that the contents got stale. If you made the seal tight, they complained because they were too hard to open. My favorite packaging story of his was about cigarette packaging. You remember the little red tear-strip you pulled off to open a pack of cigs? It was about 1 tenth of an inch wide and maybe 5 or 6 inches long. The company he worked for sold the red cellophane to the tobacco companies in thousand-ton lots. It gives you an idea of what the tobacco addiction amounted to in the '50s-'60s.

 

[Zombie_61]

These are available. At least here in California. One of my favorites!

Taco flavor Doritos are my wife's favorite. They aren't bad, but they don't taste like any tacos I've ever eaten and they aren't the original Doritos so I can take 'em or leave 'em.

View attachment 113294

The original name- in honor of company founder Leonard Japp's wife. Then December 7, 1941 happened, and they changed the name to the one we know now, Jay's.

Jay's potato chips, specifically their "Barbecue" chips, are another of my wife's favorite snack foods. She grew up eating them in Chicago, and every great once-in-a-while will have one of her relatives ship her some because we've never been able to find them here on the west coast.

 

[2jakes]

Coca~Cola in glass bottles also sold for 5¢.

The Frito Company was born in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression.
The family of Charles Elmer (C. E.) Doolin (1903-1959) owned the Highland
Park Confectionary in San Antonio, and Doolin, twenty-eight at the time,
wanted to add a salty snack to their repertoire. He responded to an ad in
the San Antonio Express newspaper,

The ad, placed by Gustavo Olguin, listed for sale an original recipe for
fried corn chips along with an adapted potato ricer and nineteen
retail accounts.

Doolin bought the small business venture for $100, and began to
manufacture the chips in his mother’s kitchen at first with the help
of his father, Charles Bernard Doolin; mother, Daisy Dean
Stephenson Doolin; and brother, Earl Doolin.
These four founders made up the first board of directors, with
Charles Bernard Doolin serving as the first chairman.

First location, a garage in San Antonio.

1940s

For the record, Frito-Lay did not invent tortilla chips; they were just the
first to make and sell them for a mass U.S. market. The original tortilla
chip is widely credited to Rebecca Webb Carranza, who is said to have
begun frying tortilla pieces at her Southern California tortilla factory in
the 1940s.