“You don’t just eat ’em” is the trademarked slogan for pringles brand potato crisps. What does that mean? I thought eating them was the extent of my obligation if I came into possession of them, but apparently that is inadequate. And like many rules of society, the further expectation is not explained. What else should I be doing with these not-quite chips? Is the moronic “duck mouth,” which dominated the brands’ 1990s advertising, and which nobody should ever, ever do, now compulsory? Am I supposed to build something out of pringles? Is Kellogg, who purchased the brand from the Proctor and Gamble company in 2012, with its greater investment in remotely nutritional products, looking to instruct me on the full function of my digestive system? You don’t just eat em, you digest and excrete em.
And yet the ambiguous grammar of conversational english makes it difficult to determine if this is instruction or merely information. Sometimes an orator says “don’t” when one means “shouldn’t.” This may mean you SHOULD not merely eat Pringles. Be a responsible citizen; recycle the can afterward. Make a a kaleidoscope or store your travel toilet brush in it. Keep one as a blank round for a t-shirt gun and another as a marital aid for any medium-sized ungulate you are keeping (whose marriage is in need of aid, obviously; I would be practical, not lewd). Or perhaps this means that you should not eat Pringles without adequate preparation. Don’t just eat ’em, consider the risks. Ask your doctor if Pringles are right for you. The Pringles virus may already be inside you.
I have been out of the pringle game a long time, so this catchphrase, arriving in my presence without the context of a greater advertising campaign, has me somewhat bewildered. I stopped buying them when the company stopped putting fake little green things on the sour cream and onion chips like every other company does. Not that, in my experience, pieces of real native onions are ever green, you, the producer, have cultivated me as an american consumer to expect certain things without considering if they link up with reality, especially with regard to the color of things I put in my mouth. Grape is purple. Dew is green. Cheese is orange. Sour Cream and Onion chips have little green things on them. If you suddenly change a color or remove a component that contains a color, I need to know why. Otherwise I start wondering what those green things are or why I would eat “sour cream and onion” ANYTHING. I will not consume actual sour cream. I always make sure it is not in my burritos. It is essentially the Mexicish equivalent of mayonnaise for joints that never kept up on their trendy fees enough to have been issued chipotle mayonnaise. Disgusting white goop needs to be in all prepared food. They invent new names to make it harder for me to ask to not have it.
Now “aioli” is the unexplained mystery ingredient but I am not fooled! I would not even eat Aioli pringles.
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Indighost sez:
Agreed on the sour cream/mayonnaise/”aioli”/”chipotle mayo”. After realizing how much white goop is put into restaurant/fast food, that is really gross when you actually taste it, I politely request it to be excised. This has improved life.
Unrelately, I’ve noticed a slight increase in lewd jokes on your blog. As a cheeseball, this intrigues me.
Frimpinheap sez:
There was this lewd joke and another one ten years ago that I acknowledged recently, as being outside of my power to execute correctly! Possibly others here and there but I do not expect an overall increase in their numbers. In general I greatly dislike them and if they require specific language I will not bother. The one here may yet be removed.
Indighost sez:
Very good. Please always do what is best. :)
PurpleSpace sez:
I am absolutely certain that phrase was not Pringles’ original slogan! The old slogan used to be “Once you pop, you can’t stop”, which I will assume was dropped after some unfortunate incident at a hot-air balloon festival.
What is the rest of that slogan? “You don’t just eat (th)em, you digest them?” However, I imagine the second part is more likely something amazingly bourgeois existential such as “you experience them” or “you live them” with the hip marketing imagery showing that all you need to be the cool person is a “can” (see carboard tube) of prungles.
I remember older food ads, and maybe newer ads to an extent would show some dorky person (like a nemitz or even a pink bird) eating the boring off-brand, then the cool (less boring) person (elpse) comes by and opens the prungles, then a dance party suddenly happens.
Frimpinheap sez:
There is regularly shown somebody ripping open, or reaching into a bag labeled CHIPS, abruptly cut to that same person looking at their fingers in baffled dismay. The “I want pringles” ad has someone who is IN on the party looking through a pringle tube as a telescope at what? A poor soul who is OUT trying to eat chips. Use pringles to spy on people less fortunate than yourself!