We found Lay’s Stax Pizza Flavor Potato Chips at Walmart, and fetched a couple of cans home to try. They’re okay, though we’re not highly impressed. Indeed, Lay’s does a great job mimicking the taste of frozen store-bought pizzas of the seventies and eighties in this product. But then again, we never really liked frozen pizza, which is probably why we’re non plussed with these pizza flavored potato chips. However, this product has a stronger pizza taste than the Pringles pizza potato crisps, that we reviewed some time back.
To get the pizza taste in this offing, Frito-Lay used mainly natural ingredients like cheese, buttermilk, spices, and tomato powder. The potato chips themselves are coated each with a fair amount of a bright orange powder that carries the Italian-style pizza flavor in these potato crisps. However, though the taste in the Pringles I just mentioned is fairly strong, the Lay’s Stax pizza taste here seems even more intense.
Benefits, Pros, Advantages, and Features
- This canned potato chip product is fairly easily found at the bigger grocery outlets. I’ve not yet seen it in the smaller 24-hour-style convenience stores yet however.
- Their reasonably good pizza essence can quickly eliminate that afternoon hunger or those bedtime food cravings. The crispy crunch exactly resembles that found in the other Lay’s Stax products. These chips never reach my basement retreat soggy or flat.
- This snack is neither greasy nor excessively salty.
- 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. This plastic appears a bit more flexible than the Pringles cans, and thus, creates a better-fitting, more air-tight seal for the chips in the can.
- The can is not as easily bent or distorted as the Pringles are at times. So the precision 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 tested thus, have any trans fats. Trans fats are fast-becoming history in the snack food industry.
- These plastic cans may be stacked vertically or horizontally, several layers deep, without damaging the contents inside.
- We found this product for roughly $1.50 per Super Stack can, and find this a non objectionable 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 swallow them without much crumbs reaching the floor.
Disadvantages, Cons, Problems, and Concerns
- Sugar (in the form of dextrose and unmodified potato starch) has been added. Do away with that excess sugar. How about it.
- There’s a sizable list of modern-day food additives printed on the can that includes disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate. There are also a few artificial colors and dies. Not preferred.
- These pizza flavored crisps have much fat and sodium as I understand food labels, at 9 grams and 200 milligrams respectively, per 1-ounce serving.
- These potato chips can shatter into lots of little crumbs should you drop the can accidently.
Ingredients
Dried potatoes, vegetable oil (cottonseed, sunflower, and/or corn oil), unmodified potato starch, rice flour, and less than 2% of the following: sugar, mono- and diglycerides, salt, dextrose, soy lecithin, maltodextrin (made from corn), monosodium glutamate, onion powder, cheddar cheese (milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), corn syrup solids, spices, whey, buttermilk, romano cheese (part-skim cow’s milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), tomato powder, garlic powder, whey protein concentrate, lactose, natural and artificial flavors (including natural pepperoni flavor and natural and artificial tomato flavor), citric acid, artificial color (including red 40 lake, yellow 5 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 6) skim milk, malic acid, sodium caseinate, lactic acid, disodium inosinate, and disodium guanylate.
Contains soy and milk ingredients.
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, 14% 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: 200 milligrams, 8% DV.
- Total carbohydrate: 16 grams, 5% DV.
- Dietary fiber: 1 gram, 5% DV.
- Sugars: 1 gram, 5% DV.
- 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 flavorful and a satisfying break snack, even though the particular flavor they used is not my favorite. Though I can take or leave this particular pizza imitation, I can enjoy eating these when very hungry, and they’ll take that hungry edge off for a spell. In other words, these are not so bad that I would totally avoid them. They would simply not be my first snack choice, but definitely a higher selection than last.
People might confuse a Lay’s Stax potato chip with a Pringles one because their shapes are quite similar. Nonetheless, Lay’s Stax occupy a defining spot in the uniquely-flavored potato chip market, and I’d rate this product thus, at 88 out of 100. Though I’m only lukewarm to the pizza they chose to imitate here, it is a decent level of flavor nonetheless. That is, it’s strong enough to be easily recognized as pizza, but not so overpowering that you are unable to taste the potatoes in the chips. It would be worth several more points in my rating, if they made this product taste like today’s pizzeria-style pizza, rather than yesterday’s frozen pizza. Keep tryin’, Frito-Lay. You’ll get it.
Where To Buy Lay’s Stax Pizza Flavor 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 pizza flavor in the deep blue plastic can with the bright pink label and the bright yellow lid at your favorite larger grocery stores such as Walmart, Giant Eagle, Weis, Hometown, et al. They may also appear at smaller, regional shops now and again. But this is spotty at best. I found mine at Walmart.
References
Revision History
- : Adjusted category and tag assignments, fixed typos, and added whitespace.
- 2012-05-21: Originally published.