Miss Vickie's Chips
The chip market is in a rut. The whole corn/potato split is old hat.
The Southwest angle? Tasty, sure, but how many versions of ranch can there
be? Chip makers need a new angle.
Which is why the folks at Frito-Lay have begun marketing Miss Vickie's chips, once
a strictly Canadian product, in the lower 48. Miss Vickie's, a Quebec company
acquired by Frito-Lay in 1993 and one of the dominant brands from Vancouver to St.
John's, is a kettle chip, which claims to be cooked "in small batches to bring
you the honest, simple and fresh taste of long ago."
We've seen kettle chips before, of course, and there's nothing about Canada that screams
high-quality chips. Nevertheless, there's one thing that makes Miss Vickie's stand out on the chip rack,
that will guarantee their success as the next "in" food, at least among the "in"
crowd. The bags are bilingual.
Miss Vickie's chips aren't just "From Our Farm to You;" there're "De notre ferme
a vous." They're not your everyday chips; they're croustilles. They're not
packaged by the gram — we're talking Poids Net.
But besides their Canadienne provenance, what gives Miss Vickie's the right to teach us a
language lesson? Besides being made with pommes de terre and canola
partiellement hydrogenee, there's nothing particularly French about them. And it
isn't as if the French is necessary — one particular bag was bought in Chicago, not
exactly a hotbed of Francophonia. And yet just watch — they'll disappear off 7-11
shelves. After all, these chips aren't just original recipe — they're recette
original.
One would think that after years of American-French cultural tension, we might have
broadened our cultural terminology, become more open to products with non-French
qualifiers. But how likely would you be to eat German fries? When was the last time
you were turned on by a Polish kiss? And how quickly do you think Victoria's Secret
could clear British-cut panties? Not very.
That being said, the chips, in "jalapeno" and "original recipe" flavors, are pretty average.
They're salty and greasy, with very little potato flavor involved. Each bag has 11
grams of fat and 170 milligrams of sodium, not exactly heart healthy. Of course, on
the other hand, each bag only holds about seven chips — an all-time record in the
"some settling may occur" category. There are, clearly, much better mid-afternoon
snack options.
But they're doing well, because, despite Americans' presumed distaste for all things
Gallic, things
described as "French" still have an automatic cache. Our Founding Fathers longed to
be more like the French; when John Quincy Adams was ambassador to France, he was known
to bring back shipholds full of Parisian furniture and clothing.
French culture is romantic, sophisticated and glamorous — even if we think the French
themselves are snooty and smelly. And in these days of genetically modified crops,
French foods are all the more wholesome, lorded over by big, fat farmers ready to go
on strike or smash a McDonald's at the first sight of a pesticide-resistant soy bean.
The French, with their anti-capitalist capitalism and anti-Hollywood movie industry,
are everything we are not. We are slaves to the Starbucks fast-food latte cartel; the
French sit in their cafes and savor espressos.
So when Frito-Lay sells Miss Vickie's in the United States, they aren't just saving
on repackaging — they're appealing to our hidden snob, our longing to buy bags of
greasy chips that are somehow, at the same time, not as crass as the average Ruffle.
Our longing to block our arteries with potato chips that speak French.
So grab yourself a bag of Miss Vickie's and satisfy your Francophilia. Just be sure
to check out the information nutritionelle first.
— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)
