Stand and Deliver!

Actor Tom Felton asks, “Does this flavour crisp alarm anyone else or am I just weird?”

To be honest, Tom, I suspect the reason Kettle opted for this flavour combination for their ‘savory snacks’ (the term for their ‘hand roasted potato chips’ that they prefer over ‘crisps’), is because a competing multinational corporation’s food division had already copyrighted the particular cocktail of chemicals that constitute ‘sour cream and chives’ in that territory.

Or, perhaps, given the unavailability of flavouring additives x and y that normally constitute ‘sour cream and chives’– the variables stand for those substances listed as numbers in the ‘ingredients’ section of food packaging so that we never really know what chemicals we are consuming – they had to go with x+1 and y+1, which shifted the resulting flavour a little to the right of the hitherto acceptable ‘sour cream and chives’.

But if either of these options happens to be the case, I’d go a step further and suggest it’s been done before. Why go to the trouble of removing the letter ‘h’ from the word ‘yoghurt’, if not to sidestep legal redress from established purveyors of ‘yoghurt and green onion’ chips?

According to my buddy Lexa, in the US, Kettle offers both ‘Sour Cream, Onion & Chive’, and ‘Yogurt & Green Onion’ flavours. So what’s actually going on – while it still may be an instance of utilising chemicals x+1 and y+1 instead of x and y – is that practice favoured by companies of producing an extensive range to lock out competition. After all, if someone likes the Sour Cream, Onion & Chive flavour, chances are they’ll actually like the Yogurt & Green Onion flavour.

Irrespective, I still must conclude that you are just a little bit weird, Tom. Kettle’s ‘Yogurt & Green Onion’ chips are fine. It’s the ‘Custard & Garlic’ flavour that’s to be avoided. And the ‘Pickled Herring Thickshake’ variety.

Addendum

Who'd have thought someone else would have made a similar observation – and a similar joke – about Kettle’s Yogurt & Green Onion chips? Alex points out that Judith Lucy did – about a decade ago on The Mick Molloy Show.