It’s 1944. A young boy, about five years old, sets off from home with a knotted bag on a stick. His provisions: a packet of crisps. In 1944, packets of crisps were hard to come by. The Battle of the Atlantic was in its fourth year. Rationing was at its height. As the commentator notesContinue reading “1944 British Pathé: Boy Steps Out”
Author Archives: chippotato
6 facts about crisps
Crunching a crisp is as noisy as standing next to a busy road or doing the vacuum cleaning. That’s “annoyingly noisy”, according to the official Noise Comparison chart. Research shows that people like crunchy crisps. If crisps aren’t crunchy, they aren’t nearly as fun to eat. The first crisp flavour ever was Cheese & Onion.Continue reading “6 facts about crisps”
Crisp packaging
In the early years, crisps were sold in bulk from barrels or glass display cases or supplied to customers in tins. This limited the production possibilities. In 1927, Laura Scudder entered the crisp business, with the Laura Scudder Potato Chip Factory. She was a packaging innovator: she started paying her workers to take home sheetsContinue reading “Crisp packaging”
Blue Star Potato Chips
One of the many businesses that emerged in the early years of crisp commercialisation was Blue Star. Blue Star’s story is in many ways typical of the many crisp producers of the time. The family business was founded in 1939, in Madison, Wisconsin. As demand for its crisps grew, the company moved to Rockford, Illinois,Continue reading “Blue Star Potato Chips”
Some vintage potato crisp tins
For many years, crisp manufacturers packaged their potato crisps in tins. Here are some examples.
Rishy Crisps
Rishy Crisps was founded in the 1950s in Lancashire. The company moved into a former woollen mill in Great Harwood in the early 1960s. It was later acquired by another Lancashire snacks company, Burtons. There was possibly a factory fire some time in the 1960s: “I remember a big fire there in the 1960’s, theContinue reading “Rishy Crisps”
Hedgehog-flavour Crisps: the first novelty flavour?
Hedgehog flavoured crisps were created in 1981 by Phillip Lewis, landlord of the Vaults public house in Welshpool. He created them as a joke, in part inspired by a Gypsy tale of eating baked hedgehog. Just to be sure no-one worried about actual hedgehogs, the back of the packet had a disclaimer: “Savour all theContinue reading “Hedgehog-flavour Crisps: the first novelty flavour?”
Smith’s beautiful factory buildings
Smith’s Crisps started life in a garage behind the Cricklewood Crown pub. Frank Smith and his wife cooked the crisps and sold them to the pub clientele. Soon Smith was selling them across London from his pony and trap, and within a year, they had taken on 12 full-time staff to keep up with demand.Continue reading “Smith’s beautiful factory buildings”
How we verify our crisp listings
With many different brands and more than 1000 different flavours around the world, it would be impossible for us to physically check every packet of crisps that we list on this site. However, for crisps that we haven’t come across ourselves, we do run a variety of checks to verify that they are bone fide:Continue reading “How we verify our crisp listings”
Now we’ve passed the 1000-flavour mark, we need a rest!
Over the weekend, we took our crisp-flavour count to more than 1000 – and we keep finding more. We’ve been helped in our search by the work already done by the crisp enthusiasts at a couple of excellent crisp blogs: Closet Chipsin’ and Lays Around The World. They’re really worth taking a look at forContinue reading “Now we’ve passed the 1000-flavour mark, we need a rest!”
Museum of Crisps 