I work for Walkers – real reason crisps have bonkers name like Quavers and Monster Munch, it always blows people’s minds
GROWING up in the UK, we all loved crisps like Monster Munch, Quavers and Doritos. But did you ever stop to wonder who came up with the names for said snacks?
Now, speaking exclusively to The Sun’s Fabulous magazine, a brand expert at Walkers has revealed all - giving some detailed background into each of these bonkers crisp names.
To start, Walkers was first founded in 1948 in Leicester by a local butcher called Henry Walker.
When he noticed his factory output drop dramatically in the post-war rationing, he decided to make a drastic change by hand-slicing potatoes to make crisps.
Sprinkled with salt and sold at threepence a bag, Walkers eventually grew into the massive company that we know today.
Besides the classic Walkers crisps, there are many other delicious snacks under the brand’s name.
READ MORE ON FABULOUS
Wotsits, for example, is a really cheesy corn puff.
The brand expert explained that it is an allusion to the slang term for "whatsit" - often used as a placeholder name - to which it is phonetically identical in British speech.
A fan-favourite crisp, Monster Munch, on the other hand, has a much more interesting origin story.
Launched in 1977, it was first called 'The Prime Monster', which is a play on 'The Prime Minister'.
Most read in Fabulous
And in 1978, they were renamed Monster Munch.
And while there has been much debate over the years, the Monster Munch shapes that we have come to know and love today are, in fact, claws and not monsters.
Quavers simply comes from the musical note. A quaver, otherwise known as the “eighth note”, makes the sound “ti”. It is half of a beat and takes eight of them to complete a measure.
Then there’s Bugles, which comes from their “horn” or bugle shape. French Fries is another easy one to figure out.
Similarly, Squares got its name from its shape. The name changed from Square Crisps to Squares after Walkers relaunched it back in 2001.
And finally, there’s Doritos, which has two theories behind how it got its name.
The first theory is that it came from the Spanish ‘doradito’, which means ‘little fried and golden thing’ and a diminutive of dorado, meaning ‘friend and golden thing’.
The other theory, reported by , is that the name was made up by the inventor of the Dorito, Arch West, after a trip he took to Mexico, where he had been attempting to register Frito as a trademark.
Apparently it was deemed “too generic” as it just means ‘fried’.
And when he asked a local what colour he thought the Fritos were, the answer he got was oro, which is Spanish for 'gold'
READ MORE SUN STORIES
West added the 'ito' suffix to emphasise that his new creation was part of the Fritos/Cheetos family after this conversation.
And he added: "Let’s stick a D in front of it."