Lay’s Stax Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips Review

I found Lay’s Stax Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips recently at Walmart, and wanted to fetch a can of them home, try them out, and write on on how they impressed me. They’re good; better in fact, than the Salt & Vinegar flavor Pringles crisps in my humble opinion. You get more potato in each chip, and a notably stronger vinegar taste, which makes these chips easily recognized as vinegar-flavored. Compared to these, the Pringles version is a much weaker flavor. Not bad per se. Just weaker.

As is the case with many of the Pringles flavors, the taste in the Lay’s Stax Salt & Vinegar offing comes from artificial food additives and chemicals. The potato chips themselves are coated each with a fair amount of this fine, grainy powder that carries the salty salad-dressing flavor in this snack. However, though the taste in the Pringles I described in my review of them as “well-pronounced,” the Lay’s Stax flavor seems stronger still. I like Lay’s more in fact.

Benefits, Pros, Advantages, and Features

This Pringles flavor potato chip is fairly easily found at the bigger grocery outlets as well as some smaller ones, where I bought mine this morning.
Their intense vinegar-saltiness can quickly eliminate that afternoon hunger or those bedtime snack yearnings. The crispy crunch is definitely Pringles, which have never arrived at my pavilion soggy.
This snack is not greasy, and the flavor, never grows tiresome.
The stay-fresh plastic can with the lid for resealing keeps the chips inside fresh for weeks after first opening, and at least several months before. So this is a great snack to hoard.
The can is not as easily bent or distorted as the Pringles cans can be. So the good fit of the lid, and thus, the great seal it makes, lasts longer on the Lay’s Stax cans.
Zero grams of trans fat. None of the Lay’s Stax flavors I’ve examined so far have any trans fats. Looks like trans fats are fast-falling out of favor in the snack food industry.
Cans may be stacked vertically or horizontally, several layers deep, without damaging the contents inside.
I found this product for roughly $1.50 per Super Stack can. Not a bad price.
As with Pringles canned potato chips, Lay’s Stax are all shaped identically, which simplifies eating them. You can, with near-effortlessness, grab a big handful, chew them, and slide them down, without much crumbs falling to the floor.
The flavors-list is small for this product, including salt, potatoes, a few oils, and of course, vinegar. They also use buttermilk. Interesting.

Disadvantages, Cons, Problems, and Concerns

These potato chips can shatter into lots of little crumbs should you drop the can accidently.
There’s a sizable list of modern-day food additives printed on the can that includes sodium diacetate and disodium inosinate. But there are no yellow or red dyes in this flavor. Excellent!
These chips have much fat and sodium in my estimation, at 9 grams and 290 milligrams respectively, per 1-ounce serving.
Sugar (in the form of dextrose and unmodified potato starch) has been added. Do away with that excess sugar, won’t you?

Ingredients

Dried potatoes, vegetable oil (cottonseed, sunflower, and/or corn oil), unmodified potato starch, rice flour, and less than 2% of the following: sugar, salt, maltodextrin (made from corn), sodium diacetate, lactose, mono- and diglycerides, dextrose, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavor, citric acid, monosodium glutamate, malic acid, skim milk, buttermilk, disodium inosinate, and disodium guanylate. Contains mik and soy ingredients.

Nutrition Facts

Serving size: 1 ounce. Servings per container: About. 6.
Calories per serving: 150. Calories from fat: 80.
Total fat: 9 grams, 13% DV.
Saturated fat: 2.5 grams, 13% DV.
Trans fat: 0 grams.
Polyunsaturated fat: 3.5 grams.
Monounsaturated fat: 1.5 grams.
Cholesterol: 0 milligrams, 0% DV.
Sodium: 290 milligrams, 12% DV.
Total carbohydrate: 17 grams, 6% DV.
Dietary fiber: 1 gram, 4% DV.
Sugars: 1 gram.
Protein: 1 gram.
Vitamin A: 0% DV.
Calcium: 0% DV.
Vitamin C: 2% DV.
Iron: 0% DV.

Product Rating

In short: I find these potato chips quite the flavorful and satisfying break snack. Lay’s potato chips work well at really any celebration, birthday party, or other gathering. The 7-out-of-10 intensity level vinegar-salt flavor, wakes people up and gets them asking what kind of chips they’re eating. These potato chips hold their freshness for several hours when poured into a bowl, even on humid days. Since these chips are significantly thicker than Pringles, they stay crunchy longer in humid party air, both outdoors and inside. People might confuse a Lay’s potato chip with a Pringles one because their shapes are rather similar. Nonetheless, Lay’s Stax chips occupy their own substantial corner of the uniquely-flavored potato chip market, and I’d rate this product at 96 of 100 due primarily to that great-tasting trademark flavor.

Where To Buy Lay’s Stax Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips

Most of the bigger stores that stock Pringles potato crisps also sell Lay’s Stax potato chips. So look for Lay’s Stax in the deep blue plastic can with the bright yellow lid at your favorite larger grocery stores like Walmart, Giant Eagle, Giant, Hometown, and others. They may also appear at smaller, regional shops now and again. I picked up mine at Walmart.

References

Revision History

2015-01-23: Added whitespace, tweaked content, extended References section, and rearranged category and tag assignments.
2012-05-20: Originally published.