The photo above is of two packets of Walkers crisps, purchased this week. One is cheese and onion flavoured, in blue, the other, in green, is salt and vinegar flavoured. Nothing unusual about this, I hear you say, but is everything as it seems or has something changed?
There is the theory that Walkers cheese and onion crisps were originally in green packets, salt and vinegar in blue so has something changed? Not according to Walkers Crisps who have stated emphatically that the colours of packets we see today are the colours they have always used. Personally, I’m not so sure. I seem to remember that blue was always salt and vinegar and green, cheese and onion and I’m not the only one.
The market leaders used to be Golden Wonder who first launched cheese and onion in green packets and salt and vinegar in blue back in the early 1960s. They started a petition calling on all makers to package both flavours in the same coloured wrappers as they felt that disparity between the brands confused shoppers, causing them to mistakenly buy the wrong flavour. The crisp industry had a “gentleman’s” agreement which ensured their flavours would be easily recognised.
They claim the current mix-up is the result of Walkers’ decision to change their packaging in the mid-1980s.
Walkers are today’s market leaders in the UK, with sales topping an amazing £480million. Their good fortune arose from their simple non-compliance with the industry norm.
According to the digital spy forum: “Walkers decided to throw the cat among the pigeons in the 1980s when they relaunched their product; they changed the colour of their packets to blue for cheese and onion and green for salt and vinegar. The resultant confusion led to a great increase in their sales of salt and vinegar. This was capitalised on by the recruitment of Gary Lineker in the 1990s to appear in their commercials. He appears as the face of Walkers crisps even today, amid the outrage about sporting heroes advertising ‘junk’ foods.”
Is this theory correct or is there another rational explanation? Golden Wonder were once the market leaders in this industry, their packets have always been blue for salt and vinegar and green for cheese and onion. Am I, like many others, getting confused by the two brands? Have Walkers always bucked the trend by effectively reversing the industry recognised packaging? Has their continued success been in part because they unwittingly succeeded in confusing their customers?
This is all complete trivia I know and who really cares? But, at a time when there is very little light relief in the media, I thought this article might be food for thought but you could just take it with a pinch of salt.
Image Credits: Nick Forman .
When I was a lad, the leading brand was Smith’s Crisps. The crisps were plain, i.e.not flavoured, and they provided a twisted blue wrap of salt in the packet which you dug out and sprinkled as much or as little as you wanted.
That’s what I call customer choice.
But the Smith’s Crisp customer didn’t have the choice of polluting the environment nearly as effectively as today since the packets were greaseproof paper rather than plastic foil…
The original Walkers factory was in Leicester, hence, I presume, the early link with former Leicester City player Lineker. Living fairly locally at the time, Walkers were readily available from the beginning, and I remember very quickly getting hooked on the cheese & onion flavour – so much so, that some years later, when I went off to university, my parents sent me off with a wholesale box of these crisps which lasted me…oh, a week or two at most! And a lot of my fellow students would steal them from me because they loved the taste and had never seen or tasted Walkers where they came from! And they were in BLUE packets, right from the start!