The Wild Branding History of: Pringles
The Story Behind Pringles’ Name, Mascot, and Memorable Marketing
“Pringles’ original intention was to make tennis balls... But on the day the rubber was supposed to show up, a truckload of potatoes came.
Pringles is a laid-back company, so they just said ‘F*ck it, cut em up!’”
Or so goes the joke by the late comedian Mitch Hedberg.
Pringles wasn’t founded by a tennis ball company—but it was created by a soap manufacturer. And the story only gets stranger from there.
In fact, Pringles might be the most over-engineered snack ever made: a lab-built chip developed in the 1950s by a chemist who, decades later, requested to be buried in one of its cans.
From a failed taste test and early competitor backlash over semantics that required the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to intervene, to a pre-fame Brad Pitt cameo and a Wikipedia prank that accidentally renamed its mascot, this is the bizarre history of one of the world’s most recognizable snack brands.
The Signature Shape
In the mid-1950s, Procter & Gamble—known mostly for soap at the time—tasked a chemist named Fredric J. Baur with fixing everything wrong with potato chips. He set out to create one that wouldn’t break so easily, wasn’t greasy, stayed fresh longer, and didn’t need to be shipped in a bag of air.1
At the time, P&G had just begun expanding into food and quickly became the world’s largest supplier of frying oil to chip makers. Making their own chip seemed logical. But by 1958, the project was shelved. Baur had nailed the shape and texture—but not the taste.
He was still so proud of the design that decades later he asked to be buried in a Pringles can. His family thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. When he died in 2008 at 89, they fulfilled his request.
In the mid-1960s, P&G revived the perfect potato project with chemist Alexander Liepa. But the machine that made Pringles possible came from a different kind of mind entirely: Gene Wolfe, a Catholic science fiction writer who also worked as an engineer at the time. Wolfe, best known for The Book of the New Sun and praised by writers like Neil Gaiman as one of the genre’s masters, helped design the system that baked the chips into their signature hyperbolic paraboloid shape.2
By 1968, after a few test launches, Pringles finally hit the market. But the road from development to market testing wasn’t easy.
The Origin Of The Name
The brand’s early challenges weren’t limited to the chips themselves. Naming the chip would prove to be a roller coaster ride as well.
There are a few competing stories about how Pringles got its name. The most credible comes from P&G itself. In a 1969 interview with the Chicago Daily News Service about a trademark dispute (more on that in a bit), the company said the name was pulled “out of a hat.”3 They liked that it sounded like a family name and felt familiar enough to make people less wary of their “newfangled” potato chips.
Another theory suggests the brand was named after Mark Pringle, an engineer who once patented a device in the 1930s that was later used in Pringles production.
And then there’s the story that two P&G ad guys came up with the name after driving past Pringles Drive in Cincinnati.4 Whichever story you believe, one thing’s clear: none of it involved the kind of brand strategy theater we’d see today.
Problems With The Name
When Pringles hit test markets, trouble started immediately—the name was already taken. General Foods had trademarked “Pringles” for a popcorn-based chip of their own.
P&G didn’t have much leverage. P&G had tested the product without filing a trademark, leaving them blindsided. The companies eventually settled, with General Foods renaming their product. P&G never accused them of espionage outright, but given the era’s snack wars, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think they locked down the name just to make P&G pay for it.
Ironically, decades later, Pringles toyed with releasing a popcorn version of their chip—a full-circle moment that never quite popped.
But the headaches didn’t stop there. At launch, the full name was “Pringles Newfangled Potato Chips.” Competitors quickly cried foul, arguing Pringles weren’t “real” potato chips since they were made from potato dough, not cut potatoes.
In 1975, the FDA agreed: Pringles didn’t meet the oddly specific definition of a “potato chip.” The brand was forced to call them “potato crisps” or include the disclaimer “made from dried potatoes” anywhere the word “chip” appeared.5
The label they fought to keep in the ’70s was one they’d argue against in 2008.
That year, the UK introduced a 17% value-added tax on “potato crisps” (the British term for chips) and any snacks made from potatoes. Pringles’ lawyers argued the brand shouldn’t qualify because the chips were only 42% potato and that their shape “is not found in nature.” The High Court actually agreed, but an appeal later overturned the ruling, and P&G had to pay up.6
“Once You Pop”
Pringles’ marketing history had as many false starts as the product itself. After a few weak taglines and failed jingles—including a 1989 ad starring an unknown Brad Pitt—Pringles struck gold in the ’90s with one of the most memorable lines in advertising.
What started out as “Once you pop, you can’t stop,” became “Once you pop, the fun don’t stop” by the late ’90s.
After the 2000s, Pringles went mostly quiet, pulling back on ad spend. Then in 2022, they came back loud—with their biggest budget in years. It was a perfect setup for nostalgia and resurrecting old brand cues. Instead, in true modern fashion, Pringles got restless and tried to fix what wasn’t broken with a new tagline: “Mind Popping.”
At the time, one expert posited to Marketing Interactive the change may have been because the old line clashed with today’s ”mindful eating concepts.”
Wow. I need a minute to process how far gone the ad industry is.
According Grey London, the agency behind the change, “Mind Popping” was inspired by “mind-blowing” trivia they uncovered about Pringles—like how sci-fi author Gene Wolf helped invent its baking machine, the universe supposedly mirrors its shape, and the chip “perfectly fits the tongue.”7
Despite being billed as Pringles’ new permanent tagline—not just a campaign line—“Mind Popping” was short-lived. Since then, the brand has bounced back with a few standout Super Bowl ads that leaned on the brand’s other strengths—the mascot and shape of the can. I ranked those spots #3 in my annual Super Bowl Winners and Losers lists in 2023 and 2024, and #7 in 2025. Still, Pringles hasn’t brought back its most recognizable line.
Mr. Pringle (AKA Mr. Pringles, AKA Mr. P, AKA Julius Pringles)
The Pringles mascot has been part of the brand since day one—first as a logo, then, by 1973, appearing in at least one campaign as a spokesperson named “Mr. Pringle.”
The logo was designed to depict an old-fashioned baker, matching the Pringles name, which P&G thought sounded like a family name. His head was shaped like a Pringles chip.
John Oliver once joked that Mr. Pringles looked like “a hard-boiled egg disguised as Tom Selleck.” And if you’ve ever wondered what the rest of his body looks like, Oliver did too.
After the comedian pressed Pringles to reveal his mysterious body, the company finally responded. I doubt John Oliver was impressed—they had a perfect setup and still managed to make it unfunny.
“Mr. Pringles” has largely stayed the same over the years. Things didn’t get truly interesting until 2013.
Before 2013, the Pringles mascot didn’t have a first name—he was just “Mr. Pringle.” The idea for a new name started in 2006, when two college friends, watching American football, joked about what the Pringles man might be called. When football player Julius Peppers came on screen, they cracked up imagining his name as “Julius Pringles.”
One of the friends, Justin Shillock, who was an active Wikipedia contributor, added the name to the Pringles page as a joke. The edit was caught and deleted a year later, but Shillock put it back. With his established reputation on Wikipedia, it went unquestioned until 2012, when Kellogg’s acquired Pringles from P&G and an employee began using the name “Julius Pringles” in marketing campaigns, unaware it was fabricated.8 By 2013, the company officially renamed their mascot Julius Pringles, though today he’s often called “Mr. P” (not to be confused with Master P).
After a brief moment in the spotlight in 2013, the mascot receded again—until 2020, when Jones Knowles Ritchie overhauled the logo, streamlining it for screens while keeping it instantly recognizable.
Recent Pringles Mascot Moves
Recently, Pringles has started leaning into their mascot more. In 2024, Chris Pratt starred in a Super Bowl ad as a fictionalized version of Mr. P—first joking that he looked like the Pringles guy, then eventually being cast by his agent to play the character in a mock movie about the mascot. It’d be fun if they made it a recurring thing, like KFC does with Colonel Sanders—rotating different celebrities in the role. Maybe, while they’re at it, they could finally embrace his first name and stop calling him “Mr. P?”
In 2025, Pringles brought the mascot back for the Super Bowl, this time featuring a gag where celebrity mustaches flew off their faces after someone who ran out of Pringles blew into the can.
Unfortunately, the ad probably didn’t land as effectively as intended. By coincidence, Little Caesar’s ran a similar spot where Eugene Levy’s eyebrows flew off, and with viewers’ attention divided, it’s easy to see how the two could be confused.
Pringles deserves credit for finally leaning into their logo and turning him into a playable mascot. Marketing scientists and mascot lovers should be proud.
Pringles didn’t start as a gimmick, a tennis ball, or a carefully orchestrated brand strategy—it was the product of chemistry, accidents, and a bit of chaos. From a chemist obsessed with shape, to trademark battles, FDA debates, viral Wikipedia pranks, and a mascot with more names than most people, the story of Pringles is as over-engineered and oddly fascinating as the snack itself.
It’s a reminder that some of the most enduring brands aren’t built with post-it notes and whiteboards—they’re built in laboratories, courtroom settlements, marketing misfires, and the occasional happy accident. And in the case of Pringles, all those quirks added up to a can that’s instantly recognizable around the world, proving that sometimes, the weirdest stories make the strongest brands.
Unknown. ”Pringles: Bidding Farewell To A P&G Original” P&G, 2012
Michel, Christopher. ”Before He Became A Legend, Gene Wolf Helped Invent Pringles” Food & Wine, 2025
Lazarus, George. ”Big Firm Wrestles Over Chips Name” Chicago Daily News Service, 1969
Trex, Ethan. “Where Did Pringles Come From?” Mental Floss, 2002
Unknown. ”Non-Crunch On Pringles” Time Magazine, 1975
”Pringles Lose Court Appeals Case” BBC NEWS, 2009
Lepitak, Stephen. ”Pringles Moves On From ‘Once You Pop, You Can’t Stop’ Slogan” AdWeek, 2022
Taubenfeld, Emma. ”Who is The Pringles Man? The History Behind Pringles’s Mascot” Reader’s Digest, 2025