The Surprising History Of Your Favorite Chip Brands

Before it was a snack empire, Utz Brands was founded as Hanover Home Brand Potato Chips in 1921 by William and Salie Utz. Salie cooked the potato chips out of their home in Hanover, Pennsylvania, while William did deliveries to businesses in their hometown and down to Baltimore, Maryland.

Eventually, they were able to build a building with a fryer in their backyard in the '30s, and upgraded to a bigger production facility after success in the '40s. The Utz's passed away in the '60s, and operation of the company has stayed in the hands of younger generations of the family as it scaled up to what we know today.

Sun Chips by Frito-Lay tries to market itself as a healthy multigrain alternative, but they're about as indulgent and junky as a normal chip. They attempted to keep that brand image going by introducing biodegradable bags in 2010, but they ended up getting tons of complaints from buyers that the bags were too noisy.

When Herman Lay purchased the potato chip manufacturer Barrett's foods in 1938, he first named it "H.W. Lay Lingo & Company," and then eventually sort of shortened the name to the more bizarre "Lay's Lay Lingo Company" in 1944. It was eventually truncated to Lay's, thankfully, and merged with the Frito Company to become Frito-Lay, Inc. in 1961.

Some chips have classic mascots, and Fritos tried a couple out to varying success. A blonde cowboy named "Frito Kid" adorned boxes from 1952 until 1967. They then tried out the unfortunately named "Frito Bandito," which was discontinued after four years due to complaints over the racist imagery.

The Muncha Bunch, a group of cowboys, came in in the '70s, and the last mascot they attempted was "W.C. Fritos," modeled after W.C. Fields. Obviously, none of these really stuck.

In 1956 Proctor & Gamble asked chemist Frederic Bauer to try and produce a chip that would break less easily and addressed customer complaints about chip bags. He was able to design their classic stackable shape and the tube container, but couldn't figure out the right recipe to actually make them taste good. It was eventually figured out by Alexander Liepa and first sold in 1968.

Another fun fact, the name of Pringles' mustachioed mascot is Mr. P.

The founders of Stacy's Pita Chips, Stacy Madison and Mark Andrus, first made the products in 1996 and gave them away for free from Stacy's D'Lites, their food cart which sold pita sandwiches in Boston, Massachusetts. Stacy's classic flavors of cinnamon and parmesan garlic pita chips were even conceived here, as they toasted and seasoned extra pita bread with those toppings to entice customers to return.

The chips got so popular that they eventually closed the cart and just focused on selling the chips, scaling up the business and eventually getting acquired by PepsiCo in 2005.

Cape Cod Chips was founded in Hyannis, Massachusetts, in 1980 by brothers Steve and Jude Bernard. The term "Kettle Cooked chips" means the chips were prepared in batches in a shallow vat of oil, also called a kettle. This produces the distinctive crunch kettle chips are known for.

This was the primary style of cooking potato chips before the 1920s, when it fell out of favor for more automated processes. It's great that this style came back into popularity with different brands, though.

This may be obvious to some people, but a few Tostitos fans may not have ever noticed this (including the author). If you look at the font of the Tostitos logo, the middle two t's make two adorable stick figures chowing down on a chip and some salsa shown with a splash of red in the dot of the central i.