Once you pop… the fine print mysteries don’t stop!
Location: at home
Date Played: July 26, 2019
Team size: Do you want to share?
REA Reaction
Wow. That didn’t suck. Pringles bucked the trend and delivered an edible Mystery Flavor product… instead of some lab accident that they could never sell with proper labeling. (The people behind Peeps are monsters).
I’m a Pringles fan. I enjoy the texture. I’m fond of the flavor. I love the tube and stackability. I think it appeals to my sense of order.
Is this Mystery Flavor better than the original? Probably not.
Is this Mystery Flavor superior to Sour Cream & Onion Pringles? Hell no… but what is?
However… the flavor isn’t the real mystery. Instead, it’s the bewildering rules of the contest. The rules clearly state “No purchase necessary…” but you cannot submit a flavor guess without an image of your ^&*$!@# receipt!
It takes digging into the rules to learn that without a receipt, you have to mail in a 3” x 5” piece of paper containing a bunch of information… which is what we’d have to do to enter the contest, since a lovely reader sent us this product as a gift.
Anyway, the Mystery Flavor Pringles were good, but the contest itself was a laborious waste of time.
Who is this for?
- Pringles fans
- Mystery food junkies
- Lawyers
Why play?
- The food’s pretty good.
Gameplay
To begin, you’ll have to acquire a tube of Mystery Flavor Pringles, only available at Walgreens.
Next you’ll want to check for the flavor seal. You can’t have any of that mystery escaping the tube.
Your next step is to pop the top. Finally you can indulge in the mysterious flavor.
The last step is submitting your flavor guess for a chance to win $10,000 — or in my case, you can spend a few minutes reading a rules PDF before abandoning the contest because it’s structured for administrative ease, not user need.
Analysis
➕ These Pringles actually tasted good. We’re going to finish that tube off and we won’t even trick our friends into eating them.
It had a sort of barbecue cheese thing going on. It was very cheesy and smelled most strongly of cheese. There was a bit of paprika in there. I think it was a queso or nacho. If I’m being precise, I think the flavor was “cheap stadium nacho.” I’m confident that if you guess that, it will earn you $10,000 in the contest.
➕ The gold packaging featured a cryptex-like design spelling out the word “MYSTERY” really spoke to me.
➕ I really respected the decision makers over at Pringles who resisted the urge to force the graphic designers to make the logo bigger.
➖ I’m not sure what’s going on with the weird repeating pattern down at bottom of the tube. That was a great opportunity to embed a cipher or puzzle… or do nothing. Nothing would have looked better.
➖ The contest website was mediocre and submitting to it was a pain. This begs the question: why would Pringles do something to build goodwill with its customers – like run a contest – only to make the whole process so arduous that it leaves those customers with a bad impression of the brand?
The Pringle Tasting Hot Take
As a thank you to our Patreon supporters for helping us reach our early goals, we recorded our Mystery Pringle tasting for them. Each month we share a hot take on Patreon. It might be a reaction to an escape room just as we finish playing it. It might be a reaction to something more unusual. Join our Patreon backers for more exclusive content!
Tips For Playing
- Mystery Flavor Pringles are only available at Walgreens.
- You must submit your flavor guesses by July 30, 2019, to be eligible to win.
Thank you to Rex Millar for sending us our tube of Mystery Flavor Pringles.
