I’ve mentioned several times lately that there seems to be a big increase in conspiracy theories and rumors — even about some pretty mundane things. Things that make you wonder why even bother to make something up about them because they are so insignificant.
My last entry talked about a “conspiracy” to convince people that we say “hello” when answering the phone because Alexander Graham Bell’s girlfriend was named Hello. How stupid is that? But — here’s one that’s maybe even more stupid. A rumor has been circulating that the “creator” of Pringles was cremated when he died and his ashes were put into cans of Pringles and sold to unknowing customers.
Needless to say, I’m petty sure that story/rumor isn’t true. Dr. Fredric Baur was employed as a chemist by Proctor & Gamble; he was assigned the task of finding a way to get around the problem of stale and broken chips in bags — he worked on finding an alternative “chip” and container. He came up with the “saddle” or Heyerbolic Paraboloid shape for the chips. However the chips he produced just didn’t taste very good and he was eventually assigned to a different project. Alexander Liepa was able to improve on the flavor of the chips and is generally considered the inventor of Pringles. Dr. Baur did invent the Pringles can for packaging the chips. The “chips” that the two came up with were originally called “Pringles Newfangled Potato Chips.” But Pringles are made using only about 42% potato based content — most of the rest being from wheat starch and various types of flour, including corn and rice. Because of their ingredients, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made them change the name because the product didn’t technically meet the definition of a potato chip.
But Fredric J. Baur was proud of his “invention” of the packaging system used for Pringles. He died in Cincinnati, just short of his 90th birthday. It turns out hat he had, in fact, requested his cremated remains be buried inside a Pringles can. Since not all of the ashes would fit in a Pringles can, most of his ashes were placed in a traditional urn. His kids actually decided to honor his request when they were on the way to the funeral home to collect his ashes. They stopped off at a Walgreens and purchased a can of Pringles and some of the ashes were placed in the Pringles container that was placed in the niche with the traditional urn. According to one of his children, there was some discussion at Walgreens as to what flavor Pringles to buy… of course the obvious decision was — “Original.”
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