The honest bit about where Wotsits came from
This is the point where a lot of snack writing produces a tidy invention story, complete with a date, a factory and a plucky inventor. There is no such record here. What the researched history behind this brand family does say is that Wotsits is one of the sub-brands and snack names now sitting under the Walkers banner, alongside Quavers and Monster Munch. So the honest story of this packet is the Walkers story, rather than a neat tale about the afternoon somebody first puffed some corn. Slightly less romantic, admittedly, but it has the advantage of being true, and an invented origin would only tidy away the interesting mess.
From a Leicester butcher’s shop to the crisp aisle
Walkers was founded in Leicester in 1948 by Henry Walker, though the family’s food roots in the city run back a good deal further. Henry James Walker had moved from Mansfield to Leicester in the 1880s to take over a butcher’s shop in the High Street, and the business stayed in meat until circumstances made that awkward. Post-war rationing left a butcher short of the one thing a butcher rather needs, and managing director R.E. Gerrard steered the company towards potato crisps instead. The earliest bags were hand-sliced, salted and sold for threepence. It is a very British sort of beginning: no grand vision, just a shortage, a potato, and somebody deciding to get on with it.
Cheese was already doing the heavy lifting
Walkers made flavour part of its identity early on. Cheese and Onion arrived in 1954, taking its cue from the ploughman’s lunch, and Salt and Vinegar followed in 1967, borrowing from the national habit of putting vinegar on chips. Prawn Cocktail turned up in the 1970s while the dinner-party starter was having its moment, and Roast Chicken nodded at the Sunday roast. Wotsits belongs to the same national instinct rather than the same recipe book: take a flavour British people already trust, turn it up rather louder than strictly necessary, and put it in a bag. Cheese has never needed much persuading in this country.
The boardroom shuffle that left the name alone
The Walkers family sold the business in 1970 to Standard Brands, which later merged with Nabisco to form Nabisco Brands in 1981. Since 1989 Walkers has been owned by PepsiCo, the company behind Frito-Lay, which uses Walkers as the regional equivalent of Lay’s. That is why a packet like this one belongs to an enormous international snack business and still reads as thoroughly British. Leicester stayed central through all of it, and the Leicester production base became one of the most significant crisp-making sites in Britain. Gary Lineker, another Leicester name, has fronted Walkers adverts since the mid-1990s, which is why a whole generation cannot look at the logo without half expecting some mischief.
Why six small bags cross an ocean
For British shoppers in Canada, Wotsits are one of those things that need no explaining to the right person and are almost impossible to explain to anyone else. Cheese puffs exist here. These are not those. The size is different, the way they melt is different, and the flavour sits in a place that only childhood put there: corner shop shelves, packed lunches, the bag handed over on a coach trip, the multipack raided before the shopping had properly been put away. Six is a sensible number to buy and an optimistic number to expect to last the week. The Great British Shop is happy to keep them within reach, orange fingers and all.
