Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Kettle Dill & Sour Cream Chips

My favorite junk snack growing up was the Laura Scudder's Sour Cream & Onion Potato Chips, which came in twin pack bags pumped with enough air to fill a tire. In 1987 or thereabouts, these chips were discontinued, and I've never really gotten over it, at least until two years ago. That's when Kettle Chips, my favorite brand of chips, came out with their Krinkle Cut Dill & Sour Cream Chips. Naturally I sampled a bag, and wouldn't you know that they appeared to have reverse-engineered the Laura Scudder's formula, and improved on it by making the chips less oily, more crunchy, and more evenly salted.

These chips were plain awesome. I quickly became addicted. I must've eaten like two bags a week for a few months in 2004. But as with all junk foods, you eventually get tired of gorging on them. So I laid off until recently, when I visited a couple of different Trader Joe's looking for these chips. But they didn't have it! Did they discontinue this line, repeating one of the signature traumatic moments of my youth?!? Do they think that this time it can be played for farce?!? Did the sales plunge to unacceptable levels after my own habit got kicked?

I don't know, but I've been very upset about this. As with everything, I blame those wacko Lars von Trier-worshippers, who no doubt snack on the inferior sour cream & onion chips made by Ruffles, thereby distorting the sc&o chip market with their skewed purchasing habits. Oh, if you confront them they'll give you a good spiel about the higher levels of maltodextrin in Ruffles or something creating "greater artificiality and abstraction of flavor." But it's all b.s. The real reason is because hell wants both LvT and Ruffles while heaven won't take either of them. So Earth is stuck with them both. Ugh!