Pringles Original Hot Sauce Potato Chips Review

The Original Hot Sauce red pepper kick of these canned potato chips comes from dried hot sauce, which is natural aside from the drying. Many artificial chemicals remain. Yet the uncanny resemblance to real hot sauce is a tribute to sticking with natural flavors where practical, as Pringles did with this flavored chip. Indeed the taste of hot sauce seems close to the real red pepper. They coat the crisps themselves with this orange-red powder that carries the hot saucy taste.

I learned of Pringles Original Hot Sauce Potato Crisps years ago at Walmart, and decided to check them out back in 2012. We sensed magic around the corner as we eyed the orange and yellow can with the picture of the white football stitching. I’m a gluttonous fan of hot sauce and cajun, and anything that tastes like these. So the anticipation of eating those first few flavored Pringles chips almost overwhelmed us as we stood at the checkout to buy them.

They offer a rather hot and peppery flavor, but not so kicky that it overpowered that original Pringles potato chip flavor. This taste is perhaps the strongest of the tastes found in the entire Pringles flavored potato crisps line.

Pringles Original Hot Sauce Chips make a delightfully augmented twist on traditional BBQ potato chips. The stronger hot sauce flavor does well here. Pringles should consider strengthening the other flavors in their Super Stack and Light lines, to match the authenticity and boldness of this one, and they should do that by using only flavorings derived from the foods the chips are intended to taste like. If you want to make a cheddar cheese chip, use cheddar cheese. If you want to create a ranch flavored chip, then put ranch dressing into it somehow. Pringles sure figured out how to implement this philosophy well with this tongue-stingy potato chip product.

Benefits, Pros, Advantages, and Features

Buffalo like flavor in a potato chip. The hot sauce flavor, unlike the more traditional bagged potato chips never gets overly repetitive. It’s similar to Buffalo wings, whose flavors never grow tiresome for us. Pringles could just as accurately called this product Buffalo Wing Chips. Definitely hot and spicy.
Widely available in larger grocery stores. This product is fairly easily found, though I’ve only seen it in the biggest stores. Fortunately, I’m close to a Walmart super center.
Jolts you awake and satisfies afternoon hunger. Their sassy red pepper flavor can win out over that afternoon hunger or those bedtime munchies, like a summer breeze beats the heat. The loud crunch yells Pringles, which have never reached my basement rocking chair soggy.
Chips remain crisp for weeks if properly sealed. The stay-fresh can with the re sealable lid well-preserves the brand-newness for some weeks after opening, and many months before initially breaking that seal. So this is a great snack food to stock up on.
Zero grams of trans fat. No hydrogenated oils here.
A cheap yet satisfying snack. This product can be procured for roughly $1.50 per Super Stack can; a good price.
Exciting and unusual flavors. Though the original Pringles flavor is the one we generally prefer, we’re enthusiastic to see that Pringles also offers numerous other flavors of their famed potato-chip-in-a-can, like this Original Hot Sauce work-over.
Then, there’s that famed Pringles chips shape. Like with all other Pringles canned potato chips, these hot ones are all shaped the same, which makes them easier to eat. You can almost effortlessly grasp a big handful of them, and gobble them up with little spillage. Perhaps the ease of eating is not such a good thing these days however.

Disadvantages, Cons, Problems, and Concerns

A bit fatty. This selection has much fat and sodium, at 9 grams and 230 milligrams respectively, per 1-ounce serving. But on the bright side, not much of that fat is saturated.
Highly processed with an abundance of chemicals. There’s also a long list of high-tech-sounding food additives, including sodium diacetate, disodium inositate, disodium guanylate, and monosodium glutamate. Much of the natural-ness herein, seems to have been more than wiped out by all of these extra chemicals. But these potato chips still taste quite a lot like hot sauce.
Added sugar. Sugar (in the form of dextrose) as well as just plain sugar are here too. Get rid of that added sugar, please. Please? We so wish these Original Hot Sauce potato chips could taste as fine as they do, but without the added sugar, salt, and fat.
A thicker chip is needed here. These crisps could be a tad thicker to further improve the eating experience, as I often grab two or three chips at a time for a big enough mouthful. Thicker crisps would not only boost their warm-hot taste, but also strengthen them enough to hold any chip dip that you’d wish to spoon into your mouth with them.
May not be available for long. This is a limited time only flavor according to the can. So enjoy it while you can. Maybe they’ll decide to keep it around if enough folks buy it.

Ingredients List

Dried potatoes, vegetable oil (contains one or more of the following: corn oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, and / or sunflower oil), corn flour, wheat starch, and maltodextrin. Contains 2% or less of: rice flour, salt, dextrose, hot sauce (red peppers, vinegar, salt, garlic), sodium diacetate, garlic powder, monosodium glutamate, sugar, canola oil, natural and artificial flavors, paprika extract (color), red 40 lake, acetic acid, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, and yellow 6 lake. Contains wheat ingredients.

Nutrition Facts

Serving size: 1 ounce. Servings per container: Approx. 6.
Calories per serving: 140.
Calories from fat: 80.
Total fat: 9 grams, 14% DV.
Saturated fat: 2.5 grams, 13% DV.
Trans fat: 0 grams.
Cholesterol: 0 milligrams, 0% DV.
Sodium: 230 milligrams, 10% DV.
Total carbohydrate: 15 grams, 5% DV.
Dietary fiber: 1 gram, 4% DV.
Sugars: 1 gram.
Protein: 1 gram.

Product Rating

We find this Pringles flavored potato chip a first-rate snack; particularly at southern-themed parties. Pringles always mesh well at just about any gathering, no matter the flavor. They retain their freshness for at least several hours when poured out of their protective tube into a bowl, and are widely recognized as an old and very dear snack tradition. People know Pringles without even seeing the can, and generally like the newfangled flavors of this newfangled 1970s snack product. So we rate this product at 94 of 100.

Where To Buy Pringles Original Hot Sauce Potato Crisps

Look for them in the red and orange can with the clear plastic lid at your favorite larger grocery stores. If you enjoy peppery hot sauce on your fish or chicken, you’ll really like these.

References

Revision History

2015-01-22: Moved this piece to the Tom’s Diet Quest blog, added whitespace, tweaked content, and adjusted ad placement and category and tag assignments.
2012-09-04: Originally published.