18 months ago SunChips launched a new 100% biodegradable bag that, because of a unique molecular structure, sounds like a freakin’ lawnmower when you opened. After a drop in sales and a rise in consumers hating it, FritoLay is discontinuing the bags and retooling. Here is what one sounds like:
If enough people stop buying a product and complain about it, they can force a manufacturer to stop making it or to change it.
Frito-Lay sends noisy, ‘green’ SunChips bag to the dump [USA Today] (Thanks to GitEmSteveDave!)
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Thank you! I appreciated the effort, but I couldn’t make any stelthy midnight snack runs.
I thought they were quirky and funny. Although I haven’t tried to sneak one into a movie theater….
Oh, plus the noise lets me know when my wife is stealing my chips.
you also cannot sneak them at work…I work at home and had in the kitchen…my husband went to move it ….thing sounded like a dam vaccum cleaner with plastic caught in it. It got picked up on my sensitive head set, and i got a warning from my boss who listens to our back ground noise levels.
Do you work in customer service or something or has your boss juts decided to take being a control freak to a whole new level?
As a long time fan of sun chips- I actually liked those bags! Noisy, sure, but it’s not like I snack in classes or at the cinema so I didn’t really care.
I agree the bag is extremely noisy, and the first few times I got them it was strange. When I thought about it though, I could handle a noisy bag if it was better for the environment.
The bag wasn’t really better for the environment. The plastic, made from corn, is only biodegradable if sent for processing in a commercial composting plant capable of handling the waste, of which there are only a few in the entire USA. How many of you were ensuring that this was happening?
It also worked in your own compost, not just commercial. If it was placed in regular trash, it was not exposed to the needed elements to make the process work.
No, it doesn’t. That was the environmentally-friendly bait and switch about the bags. The only way those bags will break down is in the higher temperatures of a commercial composting facility.
Actually it does work in home composting, just slower. Their website has stuff about home composting the bags.
Just goes to show you… things might not be done some way because of some nefarious plot or because this evil company hates the environment… its done because decades of product research has found out exactly what the consumer likes out of the product…
Well, unfortunately the people who hate the environment are ourselves.
Convenience CRUSHES responsibility FTW!
Really, that little noise will put you off of choosing something more environmentally friendly?
Little? LITTLE? You try living in a house with 3 other people and try sneaking some snack. CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE “WHO’S EATING MY SUNCHIPS?!?!?” *stomp**stomp**stomp*
wait….do you live in my house?!
If fire itself could explode, it would make that noise. “Well dangit, looks like your fire done caught some ‘splodination!”
I think someone reported the decibel level at 95. By comparison, a lawnmower is around 90, and a motorcycle is 95.
It’s noise pollution.
It’s environmentally friendly if you throw it out the window. Encapsulated in a landfill with tons of other trash, does it really matter?
my coworker brought the bag in ONCE and we (his officemates) nearly throttled him. nothing whatsoever got done that day due to his bag killing our concentration.
There is nothing magical about chips that requires them to be eaten from a bag. Take a handful, put it on a plate or napkin, eat away.
Is it that hard?
I came here to see if anyone was being sane. Thank you.
If a bag – or any distracting sound – is preventing you from doing your work, you can’t be trying to work very hard.
That’s a pretty ignorant comment.
I’m sure you’re such a perfect worker that if your cube neighbor was blasting Gwar at 96 db, you’d have NO problem maintaining focus and getting your TPS cover sheets done just fine. The rest of us strive to be as perfect a human as you.
The new bags will be made out of the skins of baby seals. Very quiet, but not very enviro-friendly.
Actually, aren’t baby seals a renewable resource? As long as we only take some of the babies and leave the adults they can make more, can’t they?
I kid, I kid.
Why kid?
Where is the scientific evidence that baby seals need skin?
Heck, I’d actually buy the fool things just to make them off a few of those friggin’ moon-eyed crap factories…
I don’t kid… I don’t kid…
(Please send all hate comments c/o GitEmSteveDave. He’s much better with comment reply smackdowns than your old Uncle Pen…)
Love the dude in the video. His expression is priceless!
Hmm. I wanted to smack the smirk right off his face.
But that’s just me.
Actually, this is bad news. I was kind of hoping it would succeed because of the all out assault on plastic bags lately. I would love a biodegradable alternative to plastic.
I know, me too. When I had to bring some snacks to a work event recently, I reached for the SunChips precisely because of this new bag.
Yeah, it’s noisy, but I just don’t find myself in situations where I have to eat chips under the stealthy cover of silence all that often. Guess I’m weird, IDK.
I can’t decide if it’s a good or bad thing… better for the environment is nice, but that bag put me off buying Sun chips entirely. Which is better for me.
Damn! I’d heard about it, but WOAH. O_O
Pick your poison, Waste pollution or noise pollution…
Did they prove that sales are down because of the bag or using it as a scapegoat?
I thought the sales decline was from the brown corrugated squares inside the bags.
When I first heard about this, my natural reaction was to roll my eyes and think,”Cheezus, how noisy could a plastic bag be?” Then I encountered one and the answer is: Pretty damned noisy! Surprisingly, shockingly noisy.
My experience exactly. I thought, “Noisy? Pshaw!” until I got a bag for myself. Holy smokes, they’re loud.
I thought it was ridiculous, too so I touched one at the grocery store the other day. WHOA! Pretty freaking loud! (I’ll bet a lot of people have been doing that.)
I’ve had one of those things in my compost pile for months. Everything else breaks down around it, but I don’t think my pile gets hot enough.
Same, I tossed one in during early spring. We had a pretty toasty summer….and its still there. In all it’s fresh-off-the-shelf glory. The colors on the bag havent even faded.
Impossible to hide these… bastidges!
Nice video. I always take my bag of chips and crumble it like a discarded page of a term paper.
forget the environment….i want a silent bag.
it’s a never winning and ending battle!
The only time I’ve eaten Sun Chips was when I got them as my snack while flying Delta. But the last few times they haven’t given them out. Maybe the little bags were too noisy also.
I don’t think they were using them on the small bags – Subway carries them and I’ve yet to see them there. Guess I never will *sob*
It didn’t change how often I bought Sunchips but I hated that damn bag.
I like Sunchips but I haven’t bought them in a while, so I guess I missed this.
Everyone who hates this bag obviously hates Earth.
Noisy yes, but environmentally friendly. It’s funny how you’re basically supporting consumers rejecting products which greatly reduce the impact on the environment.
They’re pointing out that consumers can actually get manufacturers to change something if they complain enough and vote with their wallet.
Besides, consumers don’t have to like and accept all products flaws just because they also happen to be environmentally friendly. If the bag of chips grew a fist and punched you in the face when you opened the bag would that be acceptable if the manufacturing process didn’t produce any waste?
Yes. A million times yes.
But only because I would love to have a bag of chips that I can give to people to get them unsuspectingly punched in the face by the chips.
Wind Turbines. Ugly, yes. But environmentally friendly. Yet they don’t get built because some Kennedy thinks that having them 8 miles off shore will ruin their view. Ironic, dontcha think?
There are a zillon giant wind turbines down here in south Texas, and the farmers (who are struggling) love the $$ they get for leasing the land, and the schools (also struggling) love the taxes that wind up coming their way. And the industry itself provides well-paid jobs.
Forget putting wind farms near people with money who care about views; look for the po’ folk.
(Not that that has anything to do wtih deafening SunChips bags.)
Parents with babies and children who nap are thanking the gods tonight…
Personally, it didn’t bother me – I don’t spend hours opening and closing the bag, I just grab or pour out a serving, close it up and move along with my day.
With that bag you will always know when at the office, someone is sneaking into your snak stash.
+1 lol
This is a victory for man-beasts that have to consume multiple bags of product that approximates the feeling of potato chips daily. Weaklings suggested stupid options like “pour a portion into a bowl so you don’t eat too many”, but how are you supposed to get as much fat as you’d get from a handful of Ruffles that way? You’d need a huge bowl! Sun chips are healthier ergo I can eat 18 bags of them daily without guilt.
I don’t like the environment anyway. Every time I go outside I get sunburned within 10 seconds. It’s why I live in a basement that has cupboards full of sun chips moved in front of the windows. Mom picks up my daily palette of chips and frozen pizzas for me.
Marry me?
These bags were not only extremely noisy, but they also failed structurally about a third of the time straight out of the box. The vendors would leave us their boxes so we could replenish the sales floor. Every box had grease stains because the bags opened on both ends and let the chips spill out.
The SunChips bag is like bubblewrap for sadomasochists.
If I remember correctly, the bags weren’t as environmentally friendly as they would have liked you to believe. Better, yes — but not as good as they touted.
Also, the article confused me. There was the line:
“If enough people stop buying a product and complain about it, they can force a manufacturer to stop making it or to change it.”
Which was right below the line:
“FritoLay is discontinuing the bags and retooling.”
So, uh…didn’t the question get answered even before it was asked?
It wasn’t a question, just an if-then statement.
Another company should 1 up them and create a bag that is twice as loud and never biodegrades.
It’s only a matter of time before rabid environmentalists push a button to make everyone that works for sunchips or buys the normal sunchips bag explode.
Because if you don’t agree with their propaganda, they’ll kill you.
Here’s another ban idea; those bags that cereal come in that are inside the boxes. Whenever I try to pull the seams on those bags, the damn thing rips halfway down the side and I spill cereal all over the counter and floor.
Just use scissors to cut the bag open.
+1 I thought the same thing.
Wait….logic? This is a no logic zone!
Sunchips are something you find in a barnyard.
I liked the idea but I hated that the bag didn’t let me snack without my husband noticing. No late secret late night snacks with that bag!
Screw you planet! If I can’t get sit on my fat ass eating chips without having to turn Dancing With The Stars waaaaaaaaaay up, you’re on your own!
Amazing.
OMG people, just open the bag and dump what you want out into a bowl. Such a total non issue ;_; Keeps you from eating too much too.
worst bag ever
I didn’t mind the noisy bag, but what I do mind is that the original variety has become rare and the lovely cinnamon ones are gone.
I hated that bag!
Wow. Noisy chip bags. Talk about a First World Problem.
I’m sorry, I’m going to have to call shenanigans on that video.
I won’t dispute that it’s nosier AT ALL, but that recoding is disingenuos by it’s very nature: there are no OTHER sounds with which to properly, reasonably guage the actual volume of the bag. The guy couldn’t have said something, anything, at either the start or finish of the video??
Try this one, this guy tries to yell over top of it.. it really paints the picture well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQb7ULO_l7c
Reminds me of when you try to talk to someone with the vacuum on.
I wonder how much of this is due to loud crinkly packaging causing a decline in sales and how much is due to some other factor they aren’t publishing – like extra costs due to the bags, or that they come to life during solar flares and kill people.
Are there really that many people who stop buying a product because the packaging is noisier than the competition?
Yeah I used to buy Sun Chips occasionally. Ever since I got one of the new bags, I switched to Baked Lays. I only buy chips maybe once every month, but it turned me off them. It was so fucking annoying. Who wants to be ANNOYED by CHIPS for crying out loud?
It wasn’t just when you took a chip out that it made noise. If you breathed in the same room as the bag you’d hear CRINKLE CRINKLE CRINKLE.
aw, suck. I loved it. It felt neat.
I’m bummed to see it go. I use them to shoo people away from my cube when they’re having loud, non-work related conversations while I’m trying to concentrate.
My little girls hated those bags and constantly complained about how noisy they are. I ended up with a bag of Sun Chips to myself because they didn’t want to touch the bag. lol
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I get it from a profit perspective, but what is wrong with people when a loud bag is enough to make you stop buying the product? It’s not like the bag was made out of barbed wire and sealed with puppy blood.
We’d take a bag out and say “want to hear the most annoying noise ever?” then crinkle it
These people are whiny idiots.
Cut top of bag with scissors.
Pour contents into bowl.
Eat in silence.
Problem solved. Instead, the whining “this noisy bag WOKE UP my BABY” crowd wins. Ugh.
Am I the only one who doesn’t care if my snack packaging is slightly obnoxious? It’s not like I’m going to be constantly opening and closing it for hours on end. A fan or a car or something that constantly makes the noise, sure, but not a stupid bag of chips. This is silly.
Srsly? I liked the bag, who the fuck is eating out of a bag that big in public unless you’re a royal fatty, and I don’t care if you’re sharing. Oh, you can’t hear your television while you sit on the couch snacking away, pour some into a bowl!