In the fall of last year, Lay's kicked off their "Do Us a Flavor" contest, with these three flavors selected as finalists and released throughout the country starting last week. Seems like an awesome, groundbreaking idea to not only get people excited about potato chips, but also a good gimmick to get them to buy three bags of chips at one time, right? But wait...
Much like The Office and drum-and-bass music, this ingenious contest/ad campaign was originally done by the British and then rehashed by American counterparts, where it was only about half as good. British crisps manufacturer Walkers (also owned by Lay's parent company, PepsiCo) ran the "Do Us a Flavour" contest in the summer of 2008, which asked the public to come up with a new flavor for the Walkers crisps line. Six flavors were selected by the company from the pool of entries, and released the following January to a vote, with the winner becoming a permanent flavor. In the end, Builder's Breakfast (a mix of fried eggs, tomato and assorted breakfast meats) beat out the other flavors (which included Chilli & Chocolate and Cajun Squirrel) and was named a permanent flavor, although it was discontinued the following year so that Walkers could run a similar contest featuring international flavors to coincide with the World Cup. (Oops.)
