Pringles Can Designer Dies, Buried In a Pringles Can

n3hat sends along an item from the Cincinnati Enquirer: "Dr. Fredric J. Baur was so proud of having designed the container for Pringles... that he asked his family to bury him in one. His children honored his request. Part of his remains was buried in a Pringles can — along with a regular urn containing the rest... Dr. Baur, a retired organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Procter & Gamble, died May 4 at 89... He developed many products, including frying oils and a freeze-dried ice cream, for P&G... But the Pringles can was his proudest accomplishment, his daughter said. He received a patent for the package as well as the method of packaging Pringles in 1970."

Re:Pringles cans suck.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Have you tried tilting the can?

It was a good design...

[lpangelrob]

...much better than the ubiquitous aluminum foil bag that chips now come in, which is 50 to 70% air (by design, so the chips don't smash each other in transit).

That said, my hands are large enough that I usually can't reach the bottom 20% of the can. If they widened the Pringles can design so that my hands could reach the lingering chips on the bottom, that'd make my decade.

Re:It was a good design...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah 75% gas, not "air". It's nitrogen in the can before you tear the seal, they stay frsh forever.

Re:Pringle's Can? Boring!

[sam_v1.35b]

From wikipedia: a certain non-orientable surface, i.e., a surface ... with no distinct "inner" and "outer" sides So, technically, he wasn't buried *in* it :)

Re:Pringles cans suck.

[zoogies]

Crumbs.

Re:It could have been worse

[blackest_k]

well if you really want to know, essentially pringles are reconstituted potato similar to instant mash. If I remember right its mainly dried potato powder and oil. A dough is made up which gets squeezed to the right thickness on a belt and then a roller cookie cuts the pringles out and the unused dough goes back into the hopper and is rolled out again. they are then fried, flavor added, and canned.

The recipe is all important since it controls both the flavor and the curve of the pringles. A big problem is that if they curve too much then you cant fit enough in a can (the machine couldn't handle bigger cans) and if the recipe was adjusted to make them flatter then the product tastes like cardboard.

It was a pretty cool machine to see in action.

things like quavers and wotsits are fried potato starch, without flavor they are like chewing on packing beads.

and finally low fat crisps are identical to regular crisps in every way right up to the flavor station where a lower fat flavor is added.

Re:Pringles cans suck.

[radimvice]

That's the same exact logic that brought us the drinking straw.

!chips

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that Pringles can't legally call themselves potato chips because what they're made of isn't potatoes, but processed potato paste? Lays handed them a false advertising lawsuit when Pringles started to move in on their turf once upon a time, so now they by law must call their product something other than potato chips like potato crisps.

Smuggling beer in a Pringles Can

[istartedi]

True story. Parents weekend, 1987. Beer drinking in one room, parents in suite. Beer in fridge of other room. Turns out, two 12-oz cans fit perfectly in one empty Pringles can. Play it cool while walking across suite, hope nobody wants Pringles. It worked.