Pringles

Pringles were a feat of engineering before they were a snack. Procter & Gamble chemist Fredric Baur designed the tubular can and the distinctive saddle shape back in 1956; colleague Alexander Liepa later perfected the taste (his name is on the patent), and engineer Gene Wolfe — later a celebrated science-fiction author — helped build the machine that cooked them. That saddle shape is a hyperbolic paraboloid, chosen so the chips nest into a flawless stack.

P&G test-marketed the chips in 1968 as "Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips" and rolled them out nationally by 1975. There was a catch: because they're pressed from dried, reconstituted potato rather than sliced whole potatoes, the FDA ruled in 1975 that P&G couldn't simply call them "potato chips." Pringles sidestepped the whole fight by rebranding them "crisps" — which is why, to this day, the word "chip" is conspicuously absent from the can.

The brand's biggest cultural moment came in the 90s. In 1996 Pringles launched "Once you pop, you can't stop!" — a slogan and jingle so sticky it defined the brand for a quarter-century and cemented the can, and Mr. P's mustachioed face, as a snack-aisle icon. Peeling the foil seal, the hollow pop of the lid, the reach down the tube: the whole ritual was the product.

The story has a fittingly quirky coda. When Fredric Baur died in 2008, his family honored his request and buried part of his remains in a Pringles can. Four years later, in 2012, P&G sold Pringles to Kellogg's for roughly $2.7 billion. The chips, the tube, and the slogan all endure — the campaign's phrasing genuinely proved hard to stop.