(WYTV)- Chef Boyardee, Chester Cheetah, Tony the Tiger…and Julius?
Julius Pringle: the guy on the Pringles can. No one is sure why that’s his name.
He’s had many looks over the years with his bushy mustache that look like two Pringles crisps put together. That’s crisps, not chips. We’ll explain in a moment.
Julius Pringle has been a floating head since 1967 and remains just a head. He started with a plump black mustache, red eyes, eyebrows, and black hair parted down the middle.
Julius later lost his red eyes and the design of the eyes changed and he grew floppy brown hair. Now he’s eyes are black again, no pupils, his eyebrows more expressive and he’s lost his hair, just as the word Pringles lost its apostrophe.
Pringles are actually made from dehydrated processed potato, so technically, they’re not really potato chips.
The Food and Drug Administration decided in 1975 that Pringles could only be called “chips” if they provided a note on the can saying they’re not made with real potatoes. Pringles didn’t want to do that so it named its product potato “crisps.”
Chemist and food technician Fred Baur was a graduate of the University of Toledo and the Ohio State University. He created the cylinder can after experimenting with chip storage so they wouldn’t break. His ashes are buried in a Pringles can in Cincinnati.
Alexander Liepa, from Montgomery, Ohio, gave the crisps their flavor and it’s his name that appears on the Pringles patent.
