WOW! Chips (Olestra)

The secret was olestra, a fat substitute Procter & Gamble had been working on since 1968, when its researchers were studying fats for premature infants. Olestra tastes and fries like fat but passes through the body undigested, and it took P&G decades of study and lobbying to get it through the FDA, which approved it for savory snacks on January 24, 1996, one day before P&G's patent would have expired. The approval came with a condition: every package had to carry a label reading, "This Product Contains Olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools. Olestra inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. Vitamins A, D, E, and K have been added."

Frito-Lay test-marketed olestra chips in 1996 and rolled out the WOW! line nationally in 1998 under the Lay's, Ruffles, Doritos and Tostitos names, with P&G's Olean-brand olestra in fat-free Pringles alongside. It was a hit: WOW! did more than $340 million in sales in 1998, and fat-free Pringles added roughly $100 million more.

Then the label did its work. The Center for Science in the Public Interest collected complaints, thousands of reports of cramps and diarrhea reached the FDA and P&G, and the phrase "anal leakage" attached itself to the chips in a way no marketing budget could undo. Sales fell to $200 million by 2000. P&G's own studies found olestra eaters no more likely to report loose stools than people eating regular chips, and the FDA agreed, dropping the label requirement in 2003, but by then P&G had sold its Cincinnati olestra factory and abandoned attempts to widen the ingredient's uses.

Frito-Lay quietly renamed the WOW! chips "Light" in 2004 and discontinued them in 2016; Pringles Light went in 2015, and olestra has all but vanished from American shelves. The chips are remembered less for their taste, which was the whole point, than for the bag copy every kid read out loud in the snack aisle.