You Can't Eat Just One! - Potato Chip Bags become Museum Display

April 18, 2008

Snack sacks celebrated

This is taking the you-can't-eat-just-one thing too far: The world's largest collection of used potato chip bags went on display in a German museum this week.

"Snap! Towards the Cultural History of a Snack" at the Hamaland museum in Vreden, northwest Germany, showcases the 2,000-bag collection of local resident Bernd Schikora, impoortalized in the the Guinness Book of World Records.

Potato chips became wildly popular in Germany after World War II when U.S. soldiers arrived carrying the salty snacks, and are now known as "crisps" across the Continent.

"Crisps are a snack whose history hasn't really been explored," museum director Annette Menke was quoted in South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper.

The collection includes examples from Europe, the United States and Asia, part of an industry with global sales of about $16 billion annually, according to market research firm Datamonitor.

"Their packaging over the years clearly shows trends in marketing strategy," Menke said.

That gives us an idea. During the Christmas season Germans would probably love to wolf down a tube of Kris Pringles.