TIDBITS083007

Tidbits: Pringles redefines Pringles

Star Tribune

Last update: August 29, 2007 - 5:24 PM

Pringle redefines Pringles

Everybody knows what Pringles are: sort-of potato chips (made with dried potatoes and this and that), formed into uniform wavy chips that stack up neatly in a cardboard tube.

Not necessarily. Meet Pringles Selects, which you might think are just four new flavors of Pringles. But there's more (or less):

Two of the flavors (sun-dried tomato and Parmesan garlic) are indeed chips made from the usual dried potatoes and this and that. One (Szechuan barbecue) is made from rice flour and dried potatoes and this and that. And one (cinnamon sweet potato) is made from sweet potato flakes and potato flakes and this and that.

But all are notably smaller than regular Pringles, and they're packed loose in bags, not stacked up neatly in tubes.

Finally (all together, now): They cost more. At one store where a 6-ounce tube of regular Pringles costs $1.27, an 8-ounce bag of Selects costs $2.99 -- about 75 percent more per ounce.

Origins is original

Only two weeks ago Mr. Tidbit was saying that Dove's parent, Mars, had been rolling out comparatively few new candy items lately. Well, Dove Origins joins the crowd a little late, but it offers perhaps the best approach of many high- and middle-priced chocolatemakers to the idea of marketing dark chocolates by the country where the cacao beans grew.

Others (including Dove) are selling large (3½-ounce) bars of dark chocolate with specific cacao-bean origins (at $2.50, $3 or more each). That's a significant outlay if you want to compare them (and significant waste if you really don't like one). But Dove also offers a bag of Dove Origins containing 18 little (¼-ounce) squares from Ecuador, Ghana and Dominican Republic -- several of each, individually wrapped and labeled -- with the subtle flavor differences described on the bag, for a suggested $3.99.

AL SICHERMAN