I like these Lay’s Stax Original Flavor Potato Crisps. Though this canned version of Lay’s classic potato chips is a much younger product than Pringles, the signature Lay’s potato flavor has been enjoyed for decades, in the bagged version. Lay’s duplicated that flavor very well in their Lay’s Stax canned potato chips offering, which I’m reviewing here.
Lay’s Stax fit well into most any party cuisine, hold their freshness for several hours when poured into a non-sealed bowl, and are widely recognized as a snack food regular. They’re often sent to school with children in their lunch boxes, and served in school cafeterias as part of a balanced lunch menu.
Benefits, Pros, Advantages, and Features
- This Stax product has perhaps the lowest amount of sodium per serving of any of the Stax products I’ve reviewed so far, at 140 milligrams. In this case anyhow, simple flavors like this one require less sodium.
- Though I’ve enjoyed the numerous Lay’s Stax flavors, I believe that with the exception of the Salt & Vinegar flavor, I like this very simple original potato flavor the best. Their flavored chips have lots of extra chemicals that I’d rather avoid. So I’m back to basics with this simplified product.
- Their natural potato flavor bests those bouts of afternoon snack-cravings and late-night yearnings for a light snack food.
- These potato crisps have a notably rigid, snappy crunch, such that one-at-a-time in the mouth yields more than enough chomp. Two or three at a time becomes too hard to chew. One or two at once is plenty for me.
- This product is neither oily nor greasy.
- The quite realistic potato taste, unlike the more traditional bagged chips, never becomes monotonous to me.
- This product is easy to find at many larger food stores. Even when you cannot find the other flavors of Lay’s Stax, stores will generally carry this more tried-and-true original flavor. So of all the Stax flavors, this one is probably the easiest to buy.
- The freshness-locking plastic can, with the flexible plastic lid, keeps the chips from losing their revered crunchiness for weeks after the initial can-opening.
- The chips in the can with the lid securely in place, remain fresh for months, or at the least, several weeks once the initial foil seal is removed. Thus, this is a great snack to stock pile, whether you’ve taken off that foil or not.
- The cans may be stacked vertically or horizontally in many rows, without worry that the crisps inside will be crushed.
- $1.50 per can, I feel, is a pretty decent price, and competitive with similar snack products.
- I appreciate the shape of the plastic canister (oval). You can with more ease, firmly grasp the can when shaped as it is.
- The chips are all the same shape (the hyperbolic paraboloid), which simplifies consuming them. You can reach into the canister and pull out a large stack in your hand, and stuff them into your mouth without much spillage. But as noted, eating one at a time is the way I eat this snack because these potato chips are significantly thicker than the Pringles, and thus, give more satisfaction per chip than do the Pringles ones.
Disadvantages, Cons, Problems, and Concerns
- The chips are too much prone to breakage in the can if you jostle them abundantly,
- Though I like these thicker-than-Pringles potato chips, perhaps the added weight per chip actually increases their sensitivity to breakage, by making them more brittle. But then again, it also prevents them from going flat too fast when exposed to the air. I don’t mind this extra break-ability much however.
- Sugar (in the form of dextrose) is here. But please, Frito-Lay. Get rid of all that added sugar.
- Due to the fat and lower-but-still-significant salt content, this product could not rightly be classified as a healthy food. It’s still a refined carb, and starchy, which can promote weight-gain. So eat them thus, in moderation, when acquiring or preserving a healthy weight. However if you’re an eat-drink-and-be-merry sort of person, then this is one snack you’ll highly approve of.
Ingredients
Dried potatoes, vegetable oil (cottonseed, sunflower, and/or corn oil), unmodified potato starch, rice flour, and less than 2% of the following: mono- and diglycerides, salt, sugar, dextrose, and soy lecithin.
Contains a soy ingredient.
Nutrition Facts
- Serving size: 1 ounce (12 crisps). 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: 140 milligrams, 6% DV.
- Total carbohydrate: 16 grams, 5% 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
I purchased a canister of these potato crisps a couple weeks ago for evaluation, and am sorry I haven’t gotten to them until now. Their ingredients list is quite small compared to the other Stax flavors, and that authentic potato taste, for which Lay’s has become so well-known, was packed true-to-form in this product. The chips have a light yellow luster that allows a good bit of light to pass through them. Unlike the bagged version of Lay’s potato chips, the crisps here are highly uniform, in the shape of a hyperbolic paraboloid. This allows them to stack well on top of each other in the canister.
While Lay’s Stax crumble in the can easier than the Pringles in my opinion, I do appreciate the thicker chips in this product, because they hold more salsa without cracking, and forming a tomato and jalapeno pepper mess on my jeans. So I’d rate this product at 92 out of 100.
Where To Buy Lay’s Stax Original Flavor Potato Chips
Look for this product in the blue can with the yellow, blue, red, and white label, with the bright yellow lid, at your favorite larger grocery or convenience stores.
References
Revision History
- : Adjusted category and tag assignments, fixed typos, and added whitespace.
- 2012-05-23: Originally published.