Outed - the man who made chips inaccessible

T

HERE'S a couple of issues at play in the story you're about read.

One involves wtf chip companies were thinking when they make their bags so goddamn hard to get into.

The other centres around the type of people who struggle to open a chip packet.

An undisclosed number of years ago, John Spevacek was working for a company called Hercules in Delware, US, which specialised in chemicals and gunpowder.

A chemical engineer, one of Mr Specavek's first tasks at Hercules was making "multilayer polypropelene films" for food packaging.

"It was my first job right out of school," he wrote in a blog post confession yesterday.

"One of our larger clients used our films to make potato chip bags.

"The problem they had with our existing films was that the ... seal was too weak."

Too weak? Yes, there are those among us that remember such a day existed when opening a bag of chips - think Chickadees or Monster Munch - didn't involve using dangerous solvents or spreading a sterile groundsheet first.

Which was wonderful for small children and sun-shy public servants, but not so good for the "larger client" of Hercules who had to transport their chips from the Rocky Mountains to California.

"Some of the seals would open up due to the pressure difference between the high altitude air and the air sealed inside the bag," Mr Spevacek wrote.

"And so they needed a stronger seal from us, which was then passed down to me."

Suffice to say, he succeeded. Anyone who's struggled with a family-sized pack of Doritos knows the feeling when the top seal parts with such force that it splits the entire bag and they've got just three seconds to collect the lot. (Or 10, as the case may be.)

You can blame John Specavek, or "that guy" as he's become known since his last post.

Mr Specavek then details how chips bags are made - which is more interesting than you might think - and why they chose the simple "more glue" option over others, such as reducing the air pressure inside the bag.

(Side note: Whenever someone complains that their bag of chips is more air than chips, you can now tell them that it's to stop the chips from breaking, silly.)

"The best option was to develop an adhesive that sealed at a lower temperature," Mt Specavek wrote.

"Something that was successfully accomplished, or so I'm led to believe from all the complaints that colleagues pile on me now that they know I'm that guy."