Pringles
 2009–present Logo |
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A pile of Pringles chips
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| Product type | Potato snack |
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| Owner | Kellogg's |
| Country | United States |
| Introduced | 1967 in America 1991 in Great Britain. |
| Markets | Worldwide |
| Previous owners | Procter & Gamble (1967-2012) |
| Website | pringles |
Pringles is a brand of potato and wheat-based stackable snack chips owned by Kellogg's. Originally marketed as "Pringles Newfangled Potato Chips", Pringles are sold in more than 140 countries, and it was the fourth most popular snack brand after Lay's, Doritos and Cheetos in 2012, with 2.2% market share globally, compared to Lay's share of 6.7%. The snack was originally developed by Procter & Gamble (P&G), who first sold the product in 1967. P&G sold the brand to Kellogg's in 2012.
Pringles were initially sold in 1967 and became nationally distributed across the US in 1975, and internationally from 1991 onwards. P&G wanted to create a perfect chip to address consumer complaints about broken, greasy, and stale chips, as well as air in the bags. The task was assigned to chemist Fredric Baur, who, from 1956 to 1958, created Pringles’ saddle shape from fried dough, and the can to go with it. Baur could not figure out how to make the chips taste good and he eventually was pulled off the Pringles job to work on another brand. In the mid-1960s, another P&G researcher, Alexander Liepa of Montgomery, Ohio, restarted Baur’s work, and set out to improve on the Pringles taste, which he succeeded in doing. While Baur was the true inventor of the Pringles chip, Liepa's name is on the patent.Gene Wolfe, a mechanical engineer-author known for science fiction and fantasy novels, developed the machine that cooks them. Their consistent saddle shape is mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid. Their designers reportedly used supercomputers to ensure that the chips' aerodynamics would keep them in place during packaging.
There are several theories behind the origin of the name "Pringles". One theory refers to Mark Pringle, who filed a US Patent 2,286,644 titled "Method and Apparatus for Processing Potatoes" on 5 March 1937. Pringle's work was cited by Procter & Gamble (P&G) in filing their own patent for improving the taste of dehydrated processed potatoes. Another theory suggested two Procter advertising employees lived on Pringle Drive in Finneytown (north of Cincinnati, Ohio), and the name paired well with potato. Another theory says that P&G chose the Pringles name from a Cincinnati telephone book.
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