Salt first, then cheese and onion, then vinegar
The three flavours in this box happen to line up with the earliest chapters of the Walkers flavour story, more or less in order. Salt came first, because the earliest Walkers crisps in 1948 were hand-sliced, fried, sprinkled with salt and sold for threepence a bag. Cheese and Onion arrived in 1954, drawing on the ploughman's lunch. Salt and Vinegar followed in 1967, tied to the British fondness for fish and chips. Prawn Cocktail did not turn up until the 1970s, borrowing from the dinner-party starter of the era, and Roast Chicken took its cue from the British roast dinner. So a box holding salted, cheese and onion, and salt and vinegar is not a random three. It is the old guard, the flavours the country had settled on before the crisp aisle got ambitious.
From a Leicester butcher's shop to a bag of potatoes
Walkers was founded in Leicester in 1948 by Henry Walker, though the family's food roots in the city run back to the 1880s, when Henry James Walker moved from Mansfield to take over a butcher's shop in the High Street. The turn towards crisps came after the Second World War, when meat rationing made life difficult for a meat business, and managing director R.E. Gerrard steered the company towards potatoes instead. It is a thoroughly British sort of beginning. The meat ran short, the potatoes did not, and somebody decided that crunch would do. Leicester has stayed attached to the brand ever since, both as its production base and through Gary Lineker, the former England footballer and another Leicester connection, who has fronted Walkers adverts since the mid-1990s.
A family tree that does not quite explain this packet
Here is the honest bit. There is no supplied origin record for French Fries itself, so what follows is the story of the brand family behind the modern packet rather than a tidy tale about one snack being invented on a particular Tuesday. The family is untidy anyway. The Walker family sold the business in 1970 to Standard Brands, which later merged with Nabisco to form Nabisco Brands in 1981, and PepsiCo has owned Walkers since 1989. Under the Walkers banner sit names including Quavers, Wotsits and Monster Munch, while Smiths is kept on as a sub-brand of its own, covering Chipsticks, Frazzles, Bacon Fries, Scampi Fries and some multipacks. British snack brands have always shuffled about like this, and the packet rarely gives any sign of it. What matters on the shelf is simpler: in the UK and Ireland the Walkers name is still the familiar local face, which is why people abroad go looking for it by name rather than settling for something that is nearly the same.
The box that settles an old argument
For British shoppers in Canada, a variety box is rarely just about wanting something crunchy. It is about having the right thing in the cupboard when a sandwich looks a bit lonely, when a packed lunch needs finishing off, or when someone says they are fine and then quietly opens the Salt and Vinegar. Three flavours in one box also settles an old domestic problem, because nobody has to pretend they do not mind. Ready Salted for the purist, Cheese and Onion for the sentimentalist, Salt and Vinegar for the one who was always going to take it anyway. None of it is grand food history, and that is rather the point. The Great British Shop keeps these boxes within reach because some small things carry far more memory than their size suggests.
