People are only just working out what Pringles means - but it’s not easy for one reason

By Mieka Smiles, News Reporter

Noone really knows what Pringles means - but the history of the brand is fascinating (Image: Getty)

Once you pop you really can’t stop - but many have never stopped to actually think about its quirky name.

Pringles are a must-have snack in our cupboards and really are as addictive as the famous slogan suggests. But what is their origin?

The crisps have a fascinating history dating back to 1956 when Procter & Gamble assigned a task to chemist Fredric J. Baur: to develop a new kind of potato chip to address consumer complaints about broken, greasy and stale rivals.

He spent years trying to crack it and eventually came up with their famous saddle-shape - mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid.

The brand dates back long before the snack was actually released (Image: Getty)

But he couldn’t work out how to make them tasty and so gave up the fight to nail the crispier crisps.

In the mid-1960s another P&G researcher - Alexander Liepa of Montgomery from Ohio - restarted Baur's work and succeeded in improving the taste. And the snack - which had the original name Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips - were born.

Now, in terms of their name, there are actually several theories as to how it originated.

One respectable theory refers to Mark Pringle, who filed a patent on machinery to process potatoes in 1937. It’s quite a compelling hypothesis as his work was cited by P&G in filing their own patent for improving the taste of dehydrated processed potatoes.

A different theory suggests that two Procter advertising employees lived on Pringle Drive in Finneytown, north of Cincinnati in Ohio. Whereas another is a bit more haphazard saying P&G chose the Pringles name from a Cincinnati telephone book.

Another source claims the name Pringles was chosen out of a hat to promote a family name appeal.

Creative design experts Hatchwise explains more about the name’s origin on its website - and decides one theory is by far and away the best.

It said: “When it came to naming the brand, one story we love is that the marketing department for Pringles simply looked in a phone book for inspiration.

“It was in that phone book that they found ‘Pringle Drive’ in Ohio.

“As the legend goes, the marketing department fell in love with the name ‘Pringles’ and that was the name of the brand moving forward.”

And the rest, as they say, is history. Pringles are now sold in more than 140 countries and are the UK’s 14th most popular food and snack brands according to YouGov.

Don't eat too many!