Spyke

EDIT: Actually I think @[email protected] figured it out. Link to their comment.

EDIT II: Please upvote their comment instead of mine, thank you.


Tostitos is a brand so it may be a branding thing and attempt to distance themselves from actual tortilla chips?

They want you to say Tostitos, not "tortilla chips" because to them their brand messaging matters more than your reality.

"Hun can you pick up a bag of tortilla chips?"

"Hun can you pick up a bag of Tostitos?"

The purpose is to get you saying the latter without even thinking about it.

Like all facial tissue being called "Kleenex" and all internet searches being called "Googling."

Also Juantonios (formerly known as Juanitas) fucking flames these lame chips asses. Juantonios best tortilla chip, fight me.

48
lemmy.ca

That's a very generous assumption for a company whose "flavoured, uhhh, triangles" can't pass the legal threshold of the word "chip" or "snack", let alone "tortilla".

8
lemmy.blahaj.zone

That part I was unaware of. Can you provide evidence for this, because a quick search only surfaces that they were sued for not actually including natural lime flavor in the "hint of lime" chips. They were extensively referred to as "tortilla chips" in those articles. I have yet to find anything saying that they don't meet the legal definition of "tortilla chip."

EDIT:

They're still described as tortilla chips, just not on the front of the bag. The ingredients are literally just corn, oil, salt, and added flavoring on the flavored ones. I don't know how that "doesn't meet the legal definition."

18

Can you provide evidence for this

Oh, no, we're in lemmyshitpost, so I was just talking shit about the absolutely insane marketing choice to try to sell them as "triangles".

But here we are talking about it, so fuck me, it's working.

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burgersc12reply
mander.xyz

I wouldn't think the website would be as highly regulated like the outside of the packaging. Maybe I'm wrong tho

3
lemmy.blahaj.zone

Ingredients lists aren't tightly regulated? Most of these chips only have three ingredients listed: Corn, Oil, Salt. That's from the bag of Restaurant Style.

I think you're just reaching, there's not a lot of evidence to support your assertion. There wasn't much to support my assertion either, which is why I think @[email protected] had the right answer.

Helps to make sure you're talking to the right person.

2
burgersc12reply
mander.xyz

What, I said they are regulated. Just pointing out websites aren't regulated by the FDA

2

Woosh. If the only ingredients are corn, oil, salt, then how do they not meet the legal definition for tortilla chips

Helps to make sure you're talking to the right person.

3

Read my first comment again, not sure where you're getting the idea that I think they do not meet the legal definition of tortilla chip? They probably do, but I have no idea one way or the other.

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4amreply
lemm.ee

People who read into product labels as if they’re secretly discovering that we’ve all been being fed sawdust and Soylent green instead of real food this whole time are like the sovereign citizens of marketing.

“KFC changed their name because there is no chicken in it anymore and they’re get in trouble legally! It’s just breasts grown in a lab genetically!”

2

It's like when you see a "cheese product". It is kinda cheese. So these are kinda tortilla chips I bet.

2

I mean a lot of companies are like "stop it we don't want to be a generic trademark!" because it can cause them problems.

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LGTMreply
discuss.tchncs.de

Wouldn't this make them lose their trademark (or whatever the appropriate term is) because it goes into commom use? I swear that happened with another company

4

There's a couple of surprising ones in there. "Dumpster" was changed for other reasons, but I didnt know it was a name brand.

1
fedia.io

Cool link. Lots of surprising ones. Hovercraft? Linoleum? Thanks!

3

It's one of my favorite Wikipedia articles. I check it out every here and then. Glad you got a kick out of it!

2

Not exactly, that is a thing but it would be kind of the opposite of this. Let's say a company was the first to ever make tortilla chips, and tortilla was the brand name. Then other companies started making something like tortilla chips with a different name, but then the name tortilla became so common that the first company lost its trademark so then everybody could call them tortilla chips.

1
VitoRoblesreply
lemmy.today

Shit. I say Tostitos instead of tortilla chips, because Tostitos taste differently to me. My wife and I love Tostitos and salsa. But I also prefer regular tortilla chips with cheese.

I've been indoctrinated.

2
lemmy.world

I just noticed the Juantonitos instead of Juanitas thing in the store tonight. And I felt like I was being gaslit. Like a Bearenstien bears gag. When did that happen? I would have thought I would have heard about it because they've got a factory in the next town over.

2

It's been a slow changeover since 2022 when they lost a trademark dispute with another company that owned the name "Juanita's" trademark and also made Mexican food.

The website even got updated with the new name, which is a mashup of the names of the original Juanita and her husband Antonio. I personally love the new name, I think it's sweet.

https://www.wweek.com/restaurants/cheap-eats/2022/12/31/juanitas-chips-now-sold-nationwideas-juantonios/

https://www.juantoniossnacks.com/

Sasser, one of the founders of Untitled Goose Game publisher Panic, followed up with the answer in a few days, via a post from The Trademark Lawyer: California-based Juanita’s Foods, a maker and distributor of canned Mexican food products, had filed suit in federal court this August against Juanita’s chips parent company Dominguez Family Foods, alleging it was violating the terms of an agreement to use “Juanita’s” only on products sold in the Pacific Northwest (defined as Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming).

“Plaintiff could have filed a trademark infringement lawsuit and shut down Dominguez” in the late 1980s, the lawsuit claims. “Instead, Plaintiff gave Dominguez the benefit of the doubt. It offered Dominguez an opportunity to continue using the Juanita’s mark, subject to very specific restrictions that were intended to avoid any consumer confusion between their brands.”

4

Thanks for the info. I'm stoked that they didn't get buried by the lawsuit. They employ a lot of people in my community and their Chilipeño chips are the bomb!

2
deegeesereply
sopuli.xyz

Don’t put your local chip maker on a pedestal, it’s such a simple food.

Anyone can make great chips using only nixtamalized corn and cottonseed oil and salt.

0
deegeesereply
sopuli.xyz

I’m m sure those chips are great. I doubt they’re any better than my local chip maker.

0
4amreply
lemm.ee

“Don’t put your local chipmaker on a pedestal”

Does sopuli only consist of trolls?

2
lemm.ee

maybe it's to distinguish from all the other funky shaped tortilla chips you can get these days? like, there's ones that are little strips, or whole round tiny tortillas, or weird little bowl shapes.

27

I had this thought, too. In fact, other bags of Tostitos seem to back that theory up with the names on each bag.

Restaurant Style, Bite Size Rounds, Flavored Triangles, Thin & Crispy, Cantina Traditional Yellow Corn, Crispy Rounds, their own trademarked "Scoops!" and so on.

There's even "Lightly Salted" that says "50% Less Sodium than Tostitos Original Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips."

The Original Restaurant Style may not say "Tortilla Chips" directly on the front, but the Lightly Salted bag definitely says that Original Restaurant Style are tortilla chips.

EDIT: I think you're 100% correct, actually.

15

Followed by a Mariachi band playing the original Legend of Zelda theme.

5

dunk the rabbit into the fusebox to short the tunnel of love.

that's today's hint of lime

3
lemmy.world

Give it a couple of iterations and it'll just say 'things'

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EmoDuckreply
sh.itjust.works

Holy shit, I love things. Some of my favorite things are things

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Vinny_93reply
lemmy.world

If you enjoy things, just you wait until you discover stuff

7

Maybe they no longer satisfy the governmemt definition of tortilla chip? Like "cheese product" or frozen dairy treat".

11
lemmy.world

Eeww, those are horrible. Like whatever they put on them feels like it is eating your tongue and they just feel fuzzy. Plus they make your fingers feel even more gross than nacho or ranch doritos.

Hint of lime my ass, they are a full on assualt on the senses.

5