please empty your brain below
As a child in the 90s I think I mainly ate crisps from Sainsburys, which at the time used blue for salt & vinegar and green for cheese & onion. They have since swapped the colours.

In most other countries Pepsico sells ready salted crisps in yellow packets (same logo but called Lays) so there may be more changes to come!

Alan | 24.09.23 - 7:28 a.m. | #

Are we entitled to have Sundays off as well?

Trevor S | 24.09.23 - 7:51 a.m. | #

Vice once asked Gary Lineker about this, and even he thought that Walkers changed the colour at some point in the 80s.

Next week: what's your favourite biscuit?

martin | 24.09.23 - 7:58 a.m. | #

Just don’t take away pink for Prawn Cocktail and everything will be just fine 👍

Geofftech | 24.09.23 - 7:59 a.m. | #

Cheese and onion? Salt and vinegar? Yuk! I don’t care what colour bags they have. This house only stocks ready salted or,if you can get them, plain with the salt in a packet.

Please, can next Sunday’s blog discuss the so annoying way that supermarkets lay out their stores and the way they move it all round just as you’ve learned to write out a shopping list in the correct order. 😉

Jo W | 24.09.23 - 8:02 a.m. | #

Oh, and in France, Lay's salt and vinegar crisps are in a pink packet.

martin | 24.09.23 - 8:06 a.m. | #

Today's post made me curious about the fate of Golden Wonder crisps, which I haven't seen for years. It seems they are still in production (although the brand is now owned by the Irish crisp company, Tayto) and importantly, the cheese and onion flavour is still sold in green bags so Walkers/Lays haven't achieved total domination of the crisp packet colour palette.

Richard | 24.09.23 - 8:12 a.m. | #

I got around all of these issues by learning to read.

Simon | Homepage | 24.09.23 - 8:25 a.m. | #

Crisp production used to be regional, so different brands dominated different areas.

BBC local radio used to be regional, so different content dominated different areas.

I'm not entirely sure what local is anymore, my supermarket sells plantain chips, Japanese crisps and Nigerian Guinness (it has the mouth feel of a creamy coffee) - they don't sell goat meat yet.

Still Anon | 24.09.23 - 8:26 a.m. | #

Next week - the correct colour for the caps on milk containers (mine come in foil-topped bottles, but I understand there is some concern with the bland white plastic screw caps over red, green and blue).

Andrew | 24.09.23 - 8:29 a.m. | #

Frazzles and Chipsticks are fripperies?

Now, sure, those corn-based snacks are not crisps, but they aren't showy or unnecessary.

Si | 24.09.23 - 8:31 a.m. | #

The only reason one would need to know the colour of prawn cocktail crisps is to avoid them.

In Ireland, salt and vinegar are correctly blue, but cheese and onion are red. Outrageous

Ian | 24.09.23 - 8:38 a.m. | #

Tayto, who originated Cheese & Onion flavour a couple of years before Golden Wonder brought it across the Irish Sea, use red(!) for Cheese & Onion (except in NI, where the red, white and blue packet is replaced with a much more cheesy and much less unionist-looking yellow).

Seabrooks also use yellow. The 10% demanding the most logical colour for C&O are going to be focused in Yorkshire and Northern Ireland.

Si | 24.09.23 - 8:40 a.m. | #

Seabrook’s Crinkle Cut are the king of crisps and their (correct!) flavour colour schemes from the “See what you buy” era are indelibly imprinted in the mind of every West-Yorkshireman of a certain age!

Joe | 24.09.23 - 8:50 a.m. | #

I'm a Kettle man but given they are apparently determined to price themselves out of the market Walkers beckons.

JohnC | 24.09.23 - 9:11 a.m. | #

I always found it funny that Cheese & Onion was blue for Walkers but green for Hula Hoops, and vice versa with Salt & Vinegar. I had no clue there was a whole culture war about it.

(And yes, as a young person, I have never heard of Smiths, but I do read blogs and I do agree that cheese and onion should be green)

TW | 24.09.23 - 9:15 a.m. | #

In my childhood (50s) crisps came as Plain, but in the packet was a little twist of waxed blue paper containing salt, so you could salt your own.
I guess they eventually found a way to make the salt stick to the crisps and introduced Ready Salted.
I think the vivid dark blue paper was so that you could find it amongst the crisps.
Later it became one of those horrible flat sachets.

There a track by the mighty Can that goes "blue, blue bag; inside paper" which is roughly what was printed on the packet.

Joho | Homepage | 24.09.23 - 9:15 a.m. | #

Commenters - I don't think that you are supposed to be writing about crisps this morning.

The real news is that DG is taking Sundays off now, so we won't be able to read about where he's been on Saturday. Until later in the week (when it will all be too late). Bad show.

It's all the government's fault. I'm going to write to my MP.

Petras409 | 24.09.23 - 9:25 a.m. | #

Enjour your Sunday off!

As for all this syndicated stuff - it's terrible for BBC Local Radio.

Hadders | 24.09.23 - 9:47 a.m. | #

I grew up in South Africa and remember the main crisp brand there definitely had blue for salt and vinegar (my favourite as a kid) and green for cheese and onion.

These days I usually stick to ready-salted because I find most flavoured crisps in the UK taste largely of industrial onion powder and yeast extract rather than the advertised flavour.

Fancy Spanish or Italian crisps from over-priced specialist retailers are usually worth the extra money if you can afford them.

ST | 24.09.23 - 9:48 a.m. | #

Twenty-odd years ago, while working for a magazine, I asked the Walkers’ press office why their cheese and onion crisps were in blue packets. I was told it was because shops used to display cheese in counters under a blue light. I presume this was thought to preserve them longer.

Ackshley | 24.09.23 - 9:57 a.m. | #

I was in Australia recently and Smiths Crisps brand still rules. That is the good news. The bad news is that their colour code is: Blue = plain; Green = chicken; Pink = salt & vinegar and Yellow = cheese and onion. What is the world coming to if we cannot have universal colours for our crisp packets. Something needs to be done.

Robas | 24.09.23 - 10:28 a.m. | #

I used to like Smiths, with the little blue twist bag for the salt. I often didn't put the salt in, preferring the crisps au naturel..

Alex McKenna | 24.09.23 - 10:34 a.m. | #

You may think brown packets to be a no-win marketing-wise, but my secondary school "tuck shop" sold Oxo (maybe Bovril?),and Vinegar (only) flavours in brown packets. They were both wonderful.
This syndicated blogging will deffo catch on, being a vast improvement on yesterday's offering.

Frank F | 24.09.23 - 10:45 a.m. | #

I'm not sure Morrissey had any place in making carb-laden savoury snacks. I did think their square crisps had a very specific crunch, though.

Dominic h | 24.09.23 - 10:57 a.m. | #

Where I grew up (the Great White North), salted was blue, salt and vinegar yellow, and sour cream and chive (functionally indistinguishable from cheese and onion) was green. Which at least made sense with chives as a purported ingredient.

What's my point? That we're lucky they're still called Walkers. Lays bought out all the competition in Canada and imposed the corporate colours and brand.

Chz | 24.09.23 - 11:24 a.m. | #

All I know is that when I went to live in America for a decade in the mid-90s cheese & onion crisps were in green packets as they had always been but when I returned, they weren't!
Still haven't got used to it - it's just wrong!

Looking forward to next Sunday's supplement. Far from being irrelevant, it's high-time these issues were addressed!

Cornish Cockney | 24.09.23 - 11:28 a.m. | #

Of far greater importance is the north-south divide over other flavours. Sensible northerners like smoky bacon, southern pansies eat prawn cocktail. Only one ever features in supermarket sandwich meal deals and it varies based on where you are in the country… as a northerner in exile I hate it!

Nick | 24.09.23 - 11:39 a.m. | #

We all eat far too much salt.

Except me, of course.

Malcolm of Kent | 24.09.23 - 11:47 a.m. | #

The real Walkers crisp scandal is the scarcity of their Tomato Ketchup crisps. You can't seem to get these anywhere down here.

Tim Roll-Pickering | 24.09.23 - 12:19 p.m. | #

If you grew up in the North East or Scotland you'll be thinking 'Tudor, a canny bag of crisps'. Salt and vinegar, blue; cheese and spring onion green. Of course. Tudor where known for their range of flavours, unavailable elsewhere at the time. These included hot dog and mustard, lamb and mint sauce, and brown as well as red sauce. Adventurous specials included kipper and.......chocolate, can't think why they did not catch on.

Rod | 24.09.23 - 3:04 p.m. | #

I liked the dinosaurs that came in the white Smiths packs. Still have some somewhere.

ap | 24.09.23 - 3:08 p.m. | #

Haha everyone commenting on the crisps :P

Michael | 24.09.23 - 3:35 p.m. | #

We're commenting on the crisps because the idea of DG really joining in a trend started by a downsizing BBC (under extreme financial pressure) is just too weird to contemplate. So I'm assuming that he did not mean it.

Malcolm of Kent | 24.09.23 - 6:35 p.m. | #

To be clear: if you are the first to post Sunday content, can the rest of us nick it to re-post?

Blue Witch | 24.09.23 - 6:46 p.m. | #

I do like the way you can almost always tell what sort of material's ahead when it's in Comic Sans.

David | 24.09.23 - 7:05 p.m. | #

Distract everyone with a top nostalgic topic and hardly anybody notices the dumbing down.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 24.09.23 - 11:00 p.m. | #

Sadly BBC Radio London is so long past its former glories I doubt many of your readers are that upset. That said if I lived in places like Devon, Cornwall or Norfolk I might well be furious. Local journalism has been particularly hard hit in London. Bloggers like yourself are now effectively filling a hole.

ap | 25.09.23 - 9:53 a.m. | #

Golden Wonder was my first taste of the brave, new world of modern food technology. I changed primary school in 1963 and was intially sent with daily with a packet of Smiths crisps. Plain with the bag of soggy salt, the crisps themselves were often damp and lifeless - no doubt as they were free of preservatives! Then one memorable day, Golden Wonder "ready salted" took their place, always the same, and ever-reliable, courtesy of a host of what are now called e-numbers. Cheese and Onion and Smoky Bacon appeared alongside. The abomination that is Salt & Vinegar must have appeared much later; giving, as it does, the feeling of having a heavy cold, as the first crisp enters ones mouth. So a blue packet for ever has that connotation. So much for consumer choice in the free market.

cau1khead | 25.09.23 - 9:58 a.m. | #

Reckon it might be a German conspiracy. Nip into Aldi. Green Packets = Salt and Vinegar, RedPacket = Ready Salted (Plain); Blue Packets = Cheese and Onion.

RogerEssex | 25.09.23 - 10:51 a.m. | #

Thank you for this excellent work of scholarhsip. Never have I have found myself in such complete agreement with an article - my head head has not yet stopped nodding. I must however confess that my favourite crisps circa 1974 were KP Cheese & Onion which I believe at the time came in a predominantly yellow bag with green accents. I find it a sad indictment of our government's priorities that while we are hamstrung with pointless rules and regulations regarding the colours of road signs, traffic lights, electrical wiring and such like, the decoration of crisp packets has become a chaotic free-for-all in which long-cherished traditions are flouted with impunity.

Chris Essex | 27.09.23 - 8:31 p.m. | #











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