The Discontinued Lay's Chips Literally No One Wants To See Again

Like awkward goth phases immortalized in your high school yearbook, companies have their own embarrassments they'd like to put behind them. There's the New Coke fiasco, where the brand risked it all to try and taste like Pepsi; there's also Gerber Singles, the baby food company's ill-fated attempt to market to adults. But no matter how badly those companies faltered, at least they were never the cause of something called "anal leakage." And so we come to WOW Chips, Lay's disastrous attempt to make a healthier potato chip.

Before we talk about the chips, we need to talk about something called olestra. It's a substance invented by Procter & Gamble in 1968, one that bounced around in search of a purpose for a couple of decades before seeming to find its niche in the 1990s as a fat-free cooking oil. Even lighter cooking oils come with calories, after all, and in the low-fat craze of the '90s, that was no good. But because olestra can't be digested, it could be used as a fry oil without adding any extra calories. That was music to the ears of any snack company executive, and in 1996, Frito-Lay released Lay's WOW Chips, fried in olestra, to instant success. Consumers loved that they tasted pretty close to full-fat potato chips, with some even preferring WOW to the originals, and the chips racked up $347 million in American sales in their first year.

There was just one problem. Because olestra can't be digested, there's no way for the body to absorb the substance — meaning the only way out is through. And as many unfortunate consumers discovered after eating WOW chips, olestra leaves your body in a hurry — especially if you eat a whole lot of the chips at once, which you might do if you're eating a famously addictive snack that you've just been told is now a health food. There were thousands of complaints of diarrhea, gas, and cramps after eating the chips. About 3% to 9% of the complaints also reported something called "anal oil leakage," a disgusting turn of phrase we wouldn't wish on the debut album of our worst enemy's crustpunk band.

From there, the bloom quickly came off the oleaginous rose. Sales came in well below optimistic projections over the next few years, and eventually, a warning would be put on bags of WOW chips letting consumers know about the possibility of gastric distress. A few years later, the warning would be taken off the bags, but the damage was done, and after an attempted rebrand, the chips were discontinued in 2010. Lay's, however, remains a potato chip juggernaut, reliably selling tasty wares and providing interesting new international flavors.