The Chief Executive Officer
Walkers Crisps and Snacks

cc. Harry Hill

Dear Sir,

This has really got to stop.

Although many people have argued that standardisation leads to the loss of individuality, you cannot expect to continue playing the maverick without inconvenience to the innocent consumer.

It is not your exemplary foil packaging, nor the method by which you cook your snacks, flavour them or even use celebrity endorsement in such a way that the name of the product is changed to a vague soundalike.

The problem is very simple: colour.

In this multi-cultural society, we are encouraged to view the world around us without prejudice, without worrying about race, creed, religion - this is a good thing. However, people still react to colour using the standards of the society in which they live; human nature dictates that the majority rule.

This is why I bought a lovely packet of salt and vinegar crisps - attractively packaged as low in fat, high in taste - and then found, to my disgust, that they were, in fact, cheese and onion. Do you not see? Everyone knows that you've got it wrong, yet you persist in your inappropriate pigmentation of food packaging.

I've heard it said that your argument as to why you should not change to the standard, blue for salt and vinegar (or salt 'n' vinegar if you like) and green for cheese and onion, is that it is an arbitrary standard anyway. I've heard it said that you think you are such a market leader that it doesn't matter what other companies do, since you'll still have the most packets on shelves. However, even if I did believe that the majority of all crisps in this country are supplied by yourselves with the incorrect colour scheme, I'm not satisfied.

Perhaps the blue/green colour scheme of all other manufacturers is correct - even though salt, vinegar, cheese and onion are not really blue or green.

Maybe you could think of it from an outsider's point of view. Which colour did Pringles (a company that had not previous delved into the wonders of the salt and the vinegar) adopt when they devised a salt and vinegar crisp? Yes, it was blue - and they chose that colour from all possible ones. I admit that their latest choice - pink for real cheese and onion (as opposed to the green they used for pretentious equivalent - sour cream and chives) - is rather poor, but my point is still valid!

I've been thinking about the possible reasons why blue is for salt and vinegar and green is for cheese and onion.

• Salt comes from the sea - the sea is blue.
• Onions can be green (the film Fried Blue Onions at the Whistlestop Café was renamed just in time to become a bit hit on the silver screen).
• Fancy bottles of vinegar from garden centres and supermarket "special" aisles often come in blue bottles.
• When left for a while, cheese develops a green mould (and smells a bit like the cheese of cheese 'n' onion).
• If someone ate all my salt and vinegar crisps, I'd feel pretty sad (have the blues).
• If someone ate all my cheese and onion crisps - they'd probably feel quite sick (green).

And here are some of my reasons why your colour scheme is unjustified.

• While you can have blue cheese, that is not the sort of cheese used in cheese and onion crisps.
• While salt and vinegar can be put on chips and chips can have green edges, this is not a thing to be encouraged; green edges are an indication that the chip shop has a poor potato peeling service.
• Whilst blue can often mean obscene and cheese and onion crisps smell like poor genital hygiene, you have to appreciate that crisps are enjoyed by children and this sort of thing should be kept away from the young and innocent.
• Even though the sea (where the salt comes from - see above) can be green, this is usually an indication of pollution and is not the ideal analogy for a snack-food.

And so I put it to you that you should adopt the standard colour scheme for your crisps forthwith. Perhaps if you will not do this, you will at least explain your reasoning. For your information, I have listed all the other colours I could be bothered to remember, lest other flavours' packaging go awry.

• Pink - Prawn Cocktail (prawns are pink)
• Brown - Worcester Sauce (Worcester sauce is brown) - or beef (also a nice brown)
• Yellow - Cheese (cheddar is a lovely yellow)
• Red - Ready salted (ready - RED-y)
• Black - unused - perhaps really well-done crisps
• Orange - chicken? Cheese again? Bit of an all-purpose colour!
• Lilac - unused - lovely colour - perhaps for a spicy snack as yet uninvented.

I imagine a company such as yours would take the views of its customers quite seriously and so I look forward to a detailed reply, which will, hopefully, address many of the points I have made. At the end of the day, I don't really want to have to spend time reading a packet of crisps just to make sure I have got the right ones - I want to grab the ones that look about right, pay, and then get out of that shop and tuck in as soon as possible. In this instance, standardisation would be utopian.

Yours faithfully,

Ashley Frieze.