h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

the late 1960s to be precise. Crisps were available only as "plain" with several little twisted bits of blue paper in them, the paper twists contained the salt. I assume they were available prior to this time, but I'm a 60s kid myself.... but there are plenty of us "oldie" researchers who must remember the salt-packet-competitions (who had the most) or eating-the-salt-packet-competitions (usually the weedy bespectacled of us were forced to do this). Ah, those were the days.....

I did that with the newer ones. My question is, didn't anyone else feel conned by salt'n'shake I mean, tehy basically don't bother to add the salt to lightly salted crisps and expect you to pay for teh privelage. and flavour and shake was just the biscuit

Cheated? No. Rather typically, I'm afraid, for teenage girls (for I was at the time) I - along with my friends - used to calculate how many calories we could use shaking the bag vigorously thus enabling us to eat the crisps. Sad? Probably. Tasty - yes. Actually, I prefer only slightly salted crisps so, for some reason which I have forgotten now, I used to send the salt to my little brother.

Did you ever try adding vinegar to the manually-salted crisps? The theory was sound (to an eight year old boy at any rate), if you can add the salt, then a couple of squirts from a vinegar bottle should be just as effective.

Sadly all you'd end up with was a soggy, unedible crisp (not that that would stop us from eating them anyway) and a gooey mess at the bottom of the bag.

Yep. Done that. Got the furry tongue and rough teeth to prove it!
And what about that old (boarding school) staple: the crisp sandwich. You shook the vinegar on the 2nd (top) slice of bread before adding the butter or sandwich spread. Yum.

Never tried that. Did do the "Can you eat the salt in teh packet" Bet though. Was damn good at it too.

Also, when I was about 14 the fashion was to "shrink" the empty packet and make it into a badge. This involved careful use of a bunsen-burner when the chemistry teacher wasn't looking. It was difficult, and there was a lot of wastage, necessitating the consumption of vast quantities of crisps. Which was ok at the time, but they're all on my hips now.

We did teh same, but turned them into keyrings as well. And someone tried earrings (We were young and it was teh 80s)

I am now beginning to suspect that we may have been to the same school - maybe 5 or 6 years apart!

We used to cover Polo mints with clear nail varnish and make earrings and necklaces out of them......

never remeber that, possably too young/old/labsing in memory. I remember doing something silly with youghurt pots though.

Ok.You've got me interested. So....... what did you do with them?

I went one better than just vinegar, I used to take a pack of crisps, empty them into a bowl, add vinegar, pepper, tomato sauce, possibly worcester sauce, and then eat! Ok, it was a gooey mess, but hey

I don't remember what we did to youghurt pots but it involved heating them. Meybey I'll buy a yoghurt and heat teh pot to find out.

i was never very creative with crisps. But I used to (and in fact when she's around still do) get at my older sister for putting decent crisp flavours into sandwiches. See, in our household, Cheese and Onion was unpopular, beef was mildly popular. Ready salted and chicken were normal and everything else was popular. but she'd still put salt'n'vinegar on a sandwich leaving a mass of bags of cheese and onion crisps left over (Which I think work better in sandwiches anyway)

Stop right there! I live in a country where only recently flavours other than plain and paprika (urgh) have become available. No cheese 'n' onion, no salt 'n' vinegar and no Hedgehog.
Sometimes I warm plain crisps in the oven and then sprinkle grated cheese on them. And if I'm feeling very daring, I add Yorkshire Relish. Yum.

Wow, plain and paprika? Odd combo, paprika's a new addition where I come from. I'm generally unimaginative with crisps prefering teh instant gratification of shoveling a bag into your mouth.

Wow, plain and paprika? Odd combo, paprika's a new addition where I come from. I'm generally unimaginative with crisps prefering teh instant gratification of shoveling a bag into myr mouth.

Relatively recently they have discovered Pringles. But I don't buy them on principle, usually (my little protest against total globalisatin). On the other hand they're the only ones that come in reduced fat versions... so it's like being stuck between a rock and a hard place - they do cheese 'n' onion flavour..... life, it's sooooo full of difficult decisions.

I hear pringles are so addictive because tehy only have salt on one side. Sounds wierd. And i prefer full fat.

Despite not wanting to buy Pringles (and full fat anything always tastes better, but at my age the fat shows immediately!) I have to say that I am endlessly fascinated by them. The shape for one, the fact that the tube really does keep them crisp for ages, etc. etc. I'm going to go home later and lick a whole packet on each side to test your theory. But probably they only salt one side because it rubs off onto the non-salted side of the other crisps in the packet. I'm going to lick them anyway.

I remember tyring it while drunk so I don't remember teh result. i would lick pringles but teh temptation is to eat them. Full fat doesn't really make a differece to me. There's enough there already to mask anything new.