Foreign Versions Of Familiar Products: Vietnam Salt & Seaweed Pringles

I enjoy looking at foreign versions of familiar products when I travel. Products are often geared toward local markets in different ways and it can be interesting to look at those. As a result of this, I picked up Salt & Seaweed Pringles at a roadside tourist souvenir complex building somewhere in the north of Vietnam. (I believe it was on the way to Hue.)

This was not a good idea. For one thing, this was a full on souvenir complex building, buses park at one side and then pick you up at the other, full of old crap products and ten times the price they’d be anywhere else in Vietnam. Beyond that, these just weren’t that interesting.

I thought they were smaller than the Pringles I got in the United States, and they seemed a different color and to have a different base taste. It’s possible I was just imagining it, but it seemed that way. They were also very, very stale. Most importantly, the interesting part, the seaweed part, just didn’t end up much. There was only the tiniest amount of green dust appearing here and there on a chip. Frankly, it seemed much more of a decoration gimmick and I wasn’t sure there was even enough to taste. I certainly didn’t taste any seaweed, just slightly different Pringles.

Bottom line, these just weren’t that interesting to try. It looked dressed up and all, but it wasn’t really that different. It seemed just made to appear that it was.