Walkers explains why its cheese and onion crisp packets are blue and not green

Fireworks, streamers and party poppers at the ready: the universe’s biggest secret has been cracked. 

No, we’re not talking dark matter, Jack the Ripper’s real identity or the existence of God - we’re talking crisps. 

Salty, greasy, paper-thin spuds bagged up for your scoffing pleasure - crisps are woven into Britain’s DNA, and there’s even a very British reason why the packets of Walkers’ most popular flavour - cheese and onion - are blue, not green.

David Lee / Alamy Stock Photo

But before the big reveal, let us take you back to 1948, when Leicester butcher Henry Walker started frying up potato slices, lathering them in salt and selling them in packets for three pence a pop.

Six years later, Walker came up with what would quickly become his most popular flavour: cheese and onion.

To this day, cheese and onion is the UK’s biggest-selling flavour, with more than six billion packets a year coming out of Walkers’ Leicester factory, and while most other crisp companies house their cheese and onion flavours in green packets, Walkers has always been in blue bags.

The crisp brand even has a section on its website explaining the flavour’s colourway.

It reads: “Our Salt & Vinegar and Cheese & Onion flavour crisps packs have always been the colours they are today.

"Contrary to popular belief, we’ve never swapped the colours around, not even temporarily. We’ve no plans to change these designs, as they’re signature to our brand.”

David Davies / Alamy Stock Photo

But as the Leicester Mercury notes, the blue packet colour is also something of a homage to the Midlands, where the iconic flavour hails from.

While a 2014 YouGov survey found that, on the whole, the public wanted the packaging to be changed from blue to green (44 percent voted green, 30 percent blue), the disparity was different among Midlanders.

YouGov found that The Midlands was the only region that voted in favour of Walkers’ current colour scheme, seemingly standing in solidarity with the Leicester-based brand.

YouGov noted: "This is likely because Walkers is a Midlands company, founded in Leicester in 1948, and was still primarily a regional brand as late as the 1980s."

What’s more, the blue packaging was found to be popular among younger generations, with 54 percent of young people backing the flavour’s packet colour. 

Now please excuse us, we’re off to gorge on cheese and onion crisps in the name of, erm, research.

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