Pringles new veggie plot inspired range

Reconstituted shells of death covered in the ashes of artificial vegetables

Pringles, the parched aerodynamic saddle chip ‘crack in a can’ brand, has just launched a new flavour range in New Zealand called Veggie Creations. Lacking any restorative or energy giving qualities of actual vegetables, this vegetable garden inspired line represents so much of what is wrong with the world today. Climate change, a cost-of-living crisis, and cheap factory-produced food that’s lab-designed to taste like fresh produce, in packaging that refuses to be recycled.

Purported to be a “multisensory snacking sensation”, the Veggie Creations range of three includes purple sweet potato, orange sweet potato and tomato with mozzarella. As with all Pringles products, the multisensory experience comes in the form of puzzling over how its chalk-like substance could be deemed legally safe to eat, and the wanton insatiability that overcomes you while your body attempts to digest the Frankenstein-esque test lab microbes.

Note the careful use of the word “veggie” and not “vegetable” in the name, thus, to avoid FDA complications with its pesky demands that products labelled as food actually contain said food ingredients. I’d say take anything Pringles says with a pinch of salt but given the high sodium count of the chips it would be best to refrain from such a treacherous act.

While the Veggie Creations range was conceived a couple of years ago, it’s only just made its way to our shores. I was alerted to its arrival by my local supermarket last week, as two of the line’s “flavours” (given the list of unholy ingredients, it may be more accurate to describe them as “colours”) appeared in the shouty bargain saving section. While the packaging was slightly dented, it wasn’t clear if they were discounted because the novel flavours (Purple and Orange) had flopped in sales, or if some heavy-footed customer had become so outraged at the brand’s attempt at health food, they had stomped on the containers out of spite.

Never one to miss a Pak N Save saving on a pack, I snapped up a couple of tubes (hey! when the chips are down). I can confirm they taste more than a little bit terrible. Made with the same dehydrated, processed mock potato, corn starch padding, and rich in sodium and MSG as standard Pringles flavours, the new flavours are crafted with just a powdered iota of the vegetables they are meant to represent. As nutritive as kitchen floor lint, these chips taste as bad as they smell and worse than they look. They are reconstituted shells of death covered in the ashes of artificial vegetables. Pringles definitely taste better bald.

Pringles in general taste a lot like cardboard, with cardboard providing a few more nutrients. Cardboard, at least, is made from 100% plant, and can be recycled. In terms of kinship to the humble potato, Pringles are likely more closely related to neon green furry nylon tennis balls, which may explain why they come served in straight-for-landfill sport ball storage tubes with plastic lids. The company takes the same approach to caring for the planet as they do their customers’ health.

You know the saying, Pringles are “the only chip in the world that doesn’t sell air.” It is also the only one which comes in a foil lined cardboard tube that can’t be recycled. The innovation behind the tube is well documented, but for what? It makes as much sense as sending your trash out each week in a velvet lined stretch Hummer. While the company has vowed to make changes, the closest we have seen in New Zealand are the smaller tubes which now don’t have a plastic lid.

Because Pringles is not wasting time and resources innovating its monstrous packaging, it’s had plenty of capacity to come up with ambitious flavours such as mushroom soup, hot dog and eggs benedict. Similar to Veggie Creations, these are all flavours far from the product’s actual ingredients. The brand would do well to launch flavours already in its backyard, such as Disease, Inflammation and the mouth-watering and zingy flavour of Depravity. Thank me later Pringles — sometimes, you just can’t see the wood for trees.