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

Many questions will haunt us all the days of our lives.

What's the meaning of life? What happens to us after we die?

Why did Walkers choose blue wrappers for their cheese and onion crisps?

Wait, what?

I'm sure at one point or another, we've all wondered how colours are chosen for crisp flavours.

We all love crisps, whether they're ready salted, prawn cocktail or roasted chicken.

Perhaps some of you are really wild and opt for chilli chocolate when you can get your hands on it.

But what you'll notice is that each flavour comes in its own colour packet.

Why is that?

Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

Before we got onto that, let us take you on a little history lesson.

In 1948, 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, one of his most popular flavours would be born.

I am, of course, talking about 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.

Generally most crisp companies house their cheese and onion flavours in green packets, but Walkers has always stuck with 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."

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.

Getty stock images

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."

Who knew that this is something we would be divided on as a nation?

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.

The young people will lead the way.

Topics: Food And Drink

Ben Thompson