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What's that mango?
I was reading about Spaghettio's last night doing a deep dive because that is how I spend most of my wednesdays.
Yeah, what else would you do?
Nothing? Of course? But did you know that Spaghettios, which came out in the nineteen sixties, wasn't the first spaghetti in a can? I did not. It's so bizarre to be Apparently, for a few decades before, you could get a tin of saucetuff spaghetti, but it was always super mushy and no one could get the consistency right to last on the shelf. That is until Campbell's figured it
out in the nineteen sixties. And once they had this new pasta technology, they combined it with the popularity of cheerios so that kids could eat their pasta in a spoon, which was a brand new novelty food for the world.
You know, if there's one thing I feel like my kids have missed out on is the fact that they've really not experienced things like Spaghettios and those little raviolis and all the different forms of Chef Boyardi treats. I definitely had my share of them as a kid. But actually, I'd never thought about Teios being an inspiration for Spaghettios. But I guess they both have o's in the name, so now it all makes sense.
I know, there's a whole world of like, I don't know, my kids haven't had like Hamburger, Helper or like all these other.
Right, like yeah, yeah, what are we doing.
The funny thing is about how Spaghettio's was marketed, and the ads are pretty great. Campbell's claimed Spaghettio's would finally end the trauma of eating long stranded spaghetti, which I think is just so perfect, and they declared it the greatest invention since the napkin. WHOA, I don't know why the napkin is getting so much praise. It feels like if your hands are dirty, you just wipe it on
leaves or something. It wasn't like that much jumped to move the clot But the most interesting thing about the article to me was that even though Spaghettio's was meant to be this convenience food snackstack, this newsletter puts it the contents of the can get dumped into a bowl which gets shoveld into your mouth and whether or not
you heat it up is up to you. But because Julia Child became popular around the same time that Spaghettio's was getting popular, Campbells tried to have it both ways, and they tried to make spaghettios not just a convenience food but also something you could make fancy. So they released all these like gourmet recipes, including a recipe for bacon, onion and green bean Neapolitan spaghetti, I guess, and they said, either you can use spaghetti and cheese, or you can
use spaghettios and you'd serve it cor at a dinner party. Anyway, I had such a good time on the Snackstack website learning about everything from why rc cola is so popular in Tajikistan to the romantic reason why goldfish crackers are shaped like goldfish, and I thought, why not invite the author, Doug Mack, onto chat about snacks today, So that's what I did.
That is awesome. Doug is such a fascinating guy. I cannot wait to hear this interview.
Yeah, I can't wait for you to hear it too. So let's dive in Hey, there are podcast listeners. It's Mongish Articular aka your pal Mango, and I have a special guest in studio here today. He is a wonderful writer. We've had on the show a long, long time ago. His name is Doug mac. He wrote this book I Loved the not Quite States of America, and since then I have been absolutely obsessed with this newsletter and website he runs. It's called Snackstack. You can find it at
snackstack dot net. And he delves into and solves all these great mysteries about food there, including a snacking secret we talked about a few weeks ago, the story of where gummy worms come from and how it inspired a whole trend of deliciously disgusting candies. But I am so thrilled to have him in the studio chatting with me today. Doug, It's a pleasure to have you here.
Hello, Thanks for having me and really looking forward to this. I'm always happy to talk about snacks and stack adjacent things.
So I come from a family of inveterate snackers, like we would rather snack than eat meals. For the most part, we love Bombay street foods. The Super Bowl was a big event in my house, just because it was sort of like a snack buffet that constituted dinner. But I'm curious, where is your fascination with snacks coming from.
I mean, I am also a big snacker. Sola comes because he doesn't love snacks, right, But from a journalistic point of view, I think that I was just interested in learning those stories because these are things that we so often take for granted, Especially in food journalism. Stacks are usually seen as junk food, right, or instant gratification, perceptions that they don't have a rich history or the soul of some elaborate meal it takes hours to cook,
or has centuries of tradition and symbolism. But I think that's wrong. Snacks can embody all of that too. They have their own story to tell in their own terms. Before I got into food writing, I was a travel writer for about fifteen years. I've always loved looking at the little details of a place and using them as a lens into personal stories or broader issues of culture in place and politics. You know, stacks are such an
embodiment of everyday life. There are a lot of stories embedded in these little things that we kind of graze on the rect the day, but also I do love to snack, and snacks are just enjoyful things, right, It's fun to eat them and it's fun to learn about them.
When we started Mental Flaws, I learned about this writer that you have referenced, Clementine Paddleford, and how she wasn't given these opportunities that most people, most men would get, and so she was given food and just used food as this prism to see the world and tell the most exciting stories. In that way, using snacks as a prism to see and understand cultures is just something I really really love about your work.
Yeah, thank you. And she was such an influential writer in the mid century. It's such a shame that her name has been largely forgotten because if you go back through magazine archives from that era, she's everywhere, and she's supporting from across the USA. Her writing is sharp, her insights are great.
She had a piper cup plane that she would fly all over and then like tell stories of how they made brownies and submarines, like it's unbelievable.
She's just an amazing, amazing woman. I hope that Netflix or HBO or some staping service would make a show about her because her life is just incredible.
Yeah, so tell me. I used to do this when I would go places. I've got two kids, and I would just pick up different flavored potato chips or crisps. When I was in England, where if I was in Asia, I'd get all these types of candies for the kids to try. You've got two kids, what sorts of stuff have you been adventurous with them with? And what have you brought them that is either delighted or disgusted them.
We were actually just in the UK ourselves over the summer, and the first thing we did when we landed at Heathrow was we're all hungry. We went down to the shop. I said, look, you see all of these there's a whole wall of potato chips here. Call them crisps, you know, explaining that it's the same thing. Don't be too intimidated. Here. We just got a few different bags and we just stood there with our luggage piled on a cart of tissues as our napkins for greasy hands, and we just
ate some of these crisps. And I said, okay, now, but do you like is there anything that's different. Hey, I didn't want to be too analytical about it. We're on vacation. Oh god, Dad's going into a museum guide good already, But it was a way to remind them, like, we are in a different place, but there are some similar things. Let's kind of think about that in a way that is approachable and fun. You know, my kids
are not super adventurous eaters. I wasn't when I was a kid, and so I sort of try to empathize with that. But snacks, I think, are a really good way to nudge them in a new direction because it's
just one little bite. I'm not expecting you to eat a plate of something unfamiliar, and usually it's it's either from like a street flud vendor or it's from a crakily bad Just like at home, there's a certain level of familiarity to the experience, and you know, Offen their falty sweet snacks are really hitting all of the basic things. They seem like universal favorite labor profile, and so that was a good way to get them to try some
new things while we are traveling. Whenever I am traveling without them, I usually do try to bring back, even if it is just a bag of potato chips or a candy. My wife and I were in Japan a year ago, just the two of us, and we brought back so many candies for the kids, even if it's just a different kind of melon flavor that they have never had.
So tell me you've got this wonderful newsletter called snack Stack, Like, how are we defining a snack?
I take a pretty expansive view. It's not really like a physical characteristic, but it's more of a sense of informality. Right. It's not a full meal, It's just a pause in your day as represented by food. It's often something that you will eat quickly on the dough, like a bag of chips from the gas station, or maybe a little treat from the ice cream truck or a bakery if you're walking around, or it could be something that you're
eating absent mindedly. Why doing something else. You're just munching on a bowl of nuts watching TV or popcorn and movie theater classic snack experience. I think there are a lot of foods there you might say are snack adjacent or become a snack depending on circumstance. Like I wouldn't say that pizza is a snack. But if you're eating cold pizza out of the box the next day, that is a snack. Right's not dignified, And that's part of their charm. I love that.
So tell me, I know you've traveled to like far flung places and found these incredible snacks that you probably can't get in the States. What are some of the snacks that are worth traveling for?
So, there are a bunch of baked goods bakery items in Portugal. Lots and lots of countries have a bakery culture, but Portugal it seems kind of like it's off the charts and things that I just haven't really seen elsewhere. The two places that I really want to go and eat all the snacks are Portugal and Indonesia because they both seem to have higher than concentrations of different kinds of stacks, different flavor profiles, just to really vibrant snacking cultures.
And they've also both been like crossroads or have there. Like Guy said, in the case of Portugal, it's more outgoing colonialism imperialism. But they both have a lot of connections to a lot of other places throughout history, which means that they're pulling in other flavor profiles or ingredients. There's just a lot that's being combined in these places, and a lot of rich history. And so I would love to go to Portugal and Indonesia and just eat all these stacks that I've been reading about.
My dad grew up in Goa in India, which was a Portuguese territory colony, and Indonesia. You think about all the languages that are there, and like how interesting it is that you see the mix of cultures reflected in the foods of these places.
Yeah, and I think if you only know a few words of the language, you don't know all the nuances, but you can get buying conversation. And I think that snacks are sort of like the equivalent to that. They're the basic couching to ten of foods. It's an easy entry point.
I'm curious, you're from Minnesota, what are some must try snacks In Minnesota?
I will say we have an amazing state fair, like I think is the best state fair on a daily attendance basis. It's the largest state fair, even larger than Texas in Iowa, and there's always a lot of great food, a lot of new foods and one of the things you'll see a lot here at the fair, and spried cheese curds, which I always thought were just like a common thing because I'm from Minnesota, and then I started traveling elsewhere and I would mention deep fried cheese skirts
that people like, what are you talking about? And they are delicious, especially when they're hot out of their fire. They're so tasty. I will also say that the University of Minnesota created a lot of the most popular apples out there, including honeycrisp. There's a big apple program development
there at the state Fair. Every year there's a University of Minnesota apple booth, and if they have a new flavor that they're coming out with, you can go get a preview of the next big apple and people line up. They will stand in line for quite a while to taste a new apple.
I would stand in line to try a new apple.
I mean absolutely. You can obviously get honey crisps and a lot of the other varietiers developed here all over the country, all over the world, but they started here. So if you come to Minnesota, you certainly have to have a honey crisp or two.
That's really cool. You do this great origin story of pop rocks and how it led to all these fears, And I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about that.
It's hard to imagine it now in the twenty first century, but when they first came out, you know, pop rocks, it's a really weird experience to have in your mouth the first time you do it, right, because you're like, why is this thing exploding inside of me? This probably shouldn't be happening, like even now when I have poprops and like, something is very wrong, but also I don't hate it, right, So this was nineteen seventy five that
a lot of parents were kind of terrified. They test marketed them in Ontario before bringing to the US market, and they're a big hit in Windsor, Ontario. In nineteen seventy five, people in Detroit were driving across the border purchasing sixty boxes at a time. It was like this forbidden thing, and so people were like, well, I want to have that. But it comes to the USA finally in nineteen seventy six, and a few test markets again, and then nationwide in nineteen seventy seven, and even right
at the beginning nineteen seventy seven. There are unsubstantiated rumors about pop Rocks killing kids or sending them to the hospital. They have been available for purchasing Tacoma, for example, for one week. Within one week, they were already reports in newspapers that like, we heard a rumor that somebody's cousins, friends, dog sitter, you know, this sort of thing. Obviously, there's plenty of urban legends now with the intern, but also you can fact check things if you're diligent. But back
then there's this new project. Nobody knows what's going on. It makes you feel really weird. Some parents thought that it was a gateway for hard rocks, and these rumors just fly all over you, right.
That it wasn't just pop rocks. They also made like a crushed version of it called like space dust.
Yeah, exactly, there was a powdered version of power. Sorry, but there are probably were kids who were snorting that. Let's just put that out there, because I think that's where where all of our minds are heading anyway. But yeah, and that's the thing is, right, once you have pop rocks, which a is a big success, what's your spin off, Well,
let's just crush them into a power sure. But there was this kid named Mikey who was famous from the Life Cereal commercials in the early in nineteen seventies, and somehow this rumor started that Mikey had died because he drank pop rocks and soda at the same time, and you know, chemical reaction, lots a bubbles, bang. He is fine. Mike is fine. But there were so many rumors.
Wait, Mikey's still fine. Have we checked it?
I haven't. You know what, I haven't googled him. We should do that. We assume he's fine. So by nineteen seventy nine, there were so many rumors that the manufacturer General Foods took out full page ads in forty five different newspapers around the USA with a personal message from the guy who invented pop rocks, I named William Mitchell. And he's basically like, look, I'm a nice guy. I love kids. I wouldn't do anything to hurt your kids. Pop rocks are fine. There's a photo of him with
a bunch of kids, looking very wholesome and grandfatherly. They sent him on a lecture tour to schools. They sent out fifty thousand pamphlets to principles. They set up a toll free number people could call for more information and assurance that you know, no kids are dying from these. It makes your mouth feel weird, but not going to kill you. There were also rumors at the same time that pop rocks had spider eggs, also not true. So
they're just trying to dispel a lot of nonsense. It didn't really help, is the thing, And so in nineteen eighty General Foods pulled pop Rocks from the market and it wasn't until nineteen eighty seven that a different company bought the rights to pop Rocks and started producing them again. And now they're still around. But there was a gap there for about seven years because people were so terrified that this is going to kill our kids. It was this actual moral panic that is so crazy.
Don't go anywhere. We've got more snacks secrets right after this break, Welcome back to Part time Genius. But we're talking all things snacks with Doug Mack. So another thing I am always fascinated by is what takes off in other countries. When cable first came to India, one of the first sitcoms that was aired there in English was
Small Wonder. I don't know if you remember, it was like this eighties sitcom about this robot girl and it's not a very good show, and yet that this was the first sort of American export that was like sent and somehow was what would persist in India for a bit. It made me think of your piece on RC Cola, like, how do some of these American things end up in places around the world.
God Arcy Cola is one of those brands that I'm sort of aware that it exists in the USA, but I haven't seen it in the store.
I do.
I just remember seeing it in store.
It's like Shasta or like these old brands that did exist at one point but you don't see anywhere.
Yeah, exactly, like it's been around for a long time, but it's an icon that is also sort of forgotten. And so yeah. One thing that I really love to do, both for when I'm writing stories for Stacksack but also just when I'm trying to kill time is I love just dropping into a random city on Google street View and just looking around. Right, It's the whole travel writer thing.
Even if I can't teleport there in person, I can kind of look around this treescape like try to get a sense of the energy, what's being sold here, what does the architecture looks like? All these different things. So one day I was poking around Tajikistan, as one does, and I saw a corner shop with a big sign that said arc Cola over the door, and not just like a piece of paper, but like an actual bolted to the building, new looking sign like this is serious business,
like we sell ourc Cola. We really want everyone to know that. I was like, I wonder, is this just a one off? Because sometimes it is who knows? And I quickly found out that not only is it a thing in Tajikistan, but it's bigger than coke and pepsi.
It's the thing. It is the thing.
It is the American cola, if not the American brand in Tajikistan. And I was like, that doesn't make any sense. But as soon as I say that doesn't make any sense, that my brain goes, well, it probably does, but why does it make sense? That's a better way of saying that. What's let's be curious about this, you know, be curious, not judgmental. I love that line from ted Lasso, and
I think about it a lot. And so I started going down this rabbit hole, and pretty soon I was using Google Translate to look at the bottler's website in Tajikistan, and I ended up on like international development white papers from the nineteen nineties that were scanned in the far reaches of the Internet and really rainy PDFs and things
like that. And basically what happened is in the early nineteen nineties, the Soviet Union that's falling apart to Jikistan becomes independent in nineteen ninety one, and there is this bottling company that sets up shops. It's a new new country and new economy, like, let's do something here, right, so bobbling company called obi Zulo, which I'm sure I'm not pronouncing right, but they're bottling mostly water and comes from this mountain stream and it's supposed to be a
little bit sweet. It's very good water. They're advertising all that stuff. At the same time as the Soviet Union is collapsing, Americana has like extra potency as a brand like McDonald's opens in Moscow, Marlborough starts putting up billboards in Poland. Levi's jeans are becoming a fashion statement but also a political expression. And back then in the early nineties, ARCI Cola is a bit more of a thing in the USA, not as much as CO Cola, but it
was certainly more so than now. So bottling company into Jikistan, strikes a deal with somebody. My best guess is whoever the rc Cola rights guy was, just happened to shake hands with the guy who had the bodily rights. And then Tajikistan falls into a civil war, and much of the rest of the nineteen nineties nothing is really happening with the bottling company. Then right around two thousand, they kind of get back on their feet as a nation
and as an economy and as a bottling company. They already have this deal struck with rc Cola from a decade earlier, and so they run with it and it becomes really interestingly it's both a symbol of Americana. If you look at the ads, a lot of them have pictures of the wild West. But if you go to like their Facebook page and their socials, you can also find a lot of images of like specific national holidays.
Like there'll be a picture of a tank, and then the graphic is like arc Cola is celebrating whatever the national holiday is. And so because it's also a symbol of economic growth, and we know our countries but simultaneously, like the brand is Americana, but the company that is bottling it here is a symbol of our national might. Coke just recently few years ago started making inroads there.
But last I heard, RC Cola is still the main cola in Tajikistan because they got their first due to the political circumstances of the early nineteen nineties.
You said this wonderful line from Ted Lasso about being curious but not judgmental, and I think you and I had somewhat similar experiences with Carab growing up, where it was talked about as this like chocolate replacement. I'm curious about how your views on carib evolved and what the learning's were.
Yeah. So for anyone who doesn't know about Arab, who hasn't been blessed with its upbringing, Arab is a tree that grows primarily around the Mediterranean. It has these large pots which have seeds and pulp inside. You can process
that season pulp and make it edible. It's kind of brownish sweetish, And I would guess that most Americans who know Carab are most familiar with it as a kind of fake chocolate, because that's how it was promoted in health food stores and magazines and sort of Hippi adjacent American culture, especially in the nineteen eighties. I grew up going to a very crunchy, cooperatively run preschool in Minneapolis, and it was like a staple treat for us, you know.
I was like rice cakes and carib loves. The school hated Carab because it was billed as this tastes like chocolate, right, because again, it's kind of sweet and kind of brown. I was reading an article in The New Yorker a few years ago by a writer who had an experienced very similar to mine. He said that Carab traumatized the generation and how it was like, yeah, thank you for saying that I was traumatized. I should go to therapy
about this. But then I was doing my re search as a duke, and I was like, wait, no, this is all backward. Obviously it isn't chocolate. We can't expect it to be chocolate. It makes no sense for me to hate care because it doesn't taste like chocolate. It's like going on a carousel and then being mad because somebody told you it would be like going on a roller coaster. It's not the carousel's fault that it's not
a roller coaster. So in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, where cab originates, it's mostly just like a sweet flavor to enjoy on its own terms, as we do with most flavors, like this is the thing that you should enjoy because this is what it is, not because we're trying to trick you and makes you think that it's the thing you actually want. And that reminded me that, of course my experience isn't universal. It didn't traumatize a generation.
It traumatized a very specific generation of people who have this experience in the nineteen eighties. But the people who are most familiar with carab outside the USA, like, they're just having it because it's delicious on its own. And so I think that that's a really important thing to remember, is that, you know, just get out of the way, let careb or anything else, just sign on its own
terms without trying to fool people. Because did you tell somebody that something tastes like chocolate, It better be chocolate, right, because otherwise, yeah, it is inherently going to taste different because it is not bad thing.
It's funny. I studied abroad in Nepal and Tibet, and you would often receive butter tea, you know, as a beverage when you're welcomed into someone's house or like a monastery or that type of thing, and it was so hard to drink as tea. But then someone said, oh, if you think about it as a soup, it's a very different experience. And it's true that like reframing of something, it's not told to you. It's a chocolate equivalent, like it's a much better experience or a much different experience.
Yeah, exactly. You should enjoy in the way that's meant to be enjoyed.
You know. One of the things I loved reading about on your site was that pizza roles actually come from a guy who had started making egg rolls and realized that they could put pizza fillings in the egg rolls. And that origin blew me away. What's another snack origin story that I can use to impress people at a party?
Yes, I am so much fun at parties because I have endless snacking anecdotes.
Do you stand right by the snack exactly before you have the charcouterie.
Let me tell you the history. No, I do try to avoid that, although there is often a monologue in my mind, and I can try to keep internal, huh, because I do often think like, oh, I know about that. I've got two that I think are especially good and will impress people at parties for sure. So one is gold dish crackers, you know, iconic Pepperidge Farm product, now available in at least ten thousand different flavors and sizes and everything. I think we have three different bags right
here in my house right now. They actually originated in Switzerland. You can still get them there, the original goldfish crackers, And the reason they have that shape of the gold dish is that the creator wanted to honor his wife. Her astrological sign was pist seats, so white way fish. Yeah. So the whole history of snacking, right, the whole history of snacking would be different if this guy's wife had been born at a different time of the year, like
if she'd been a cancer. We might have three different bags of crab crackers in my house right now.
That's amazing. I did a show on astrology, and the whole point of it was like whether or not you believe in astrology. It's happened to you because like Reagan used astrology for nuclear deep proliferation, or like, uh, the ways astrology is around you without your noticing it is crazy. But the fact that it's in my snack cabinet is not something that I figured out yet.
A particular in mid century Switzerland happened to be born in a peticlar toniner, and therefore we have cold fish crackers. My other favorite food origin story is a much lesser known food called coba, which is from Madagascar. It's street food that you would often find in like a train station, bus station, that kind of place. And to make it, you take rice, flour, mashed banana, honey, and peanuts, mix them all up, put them in a banana leaf, and you steam them. So it's kind of like our very
sweet tamali. You cut into slices and you sell it by this slice, very very dense, very sweet, very full of sugar, sounds delicious. That's in Madagascar, But it turns out that there is an almost identical food in Indonesia and the island of Borneo, and actually in a specific part I think it's southern Borneo, which is about five thousand miles away, right, But that also happens to be where the original inhabitants of Madagascar came from. They sailed
from Borneo, we think about twelve hundred years ago. Scientists have dunge genetic analysis between the two places and so that they've confirmed that's the origin story of the human settling of Madagascar. Even if you're not a scientist studying DNA, you can make the connection by looking at some of the similarities in language and boats and other things, including cooba.
So if you go to the bus stop in Madagascar and somebody is selling this sweet snack, it's really a symbol of these ancient seafares from millennia ago and the incredible journey they undertook, And you can use that particular snack to trace the roots of an entire society to a specific region across an ocean.
More with Doug Mack right after this break, Welcome back to part time is where we're talking all about snacks today. So, Doug, before we end, I was amused by your stating on the record that you're skeptical of viral novelty foods. First, like, how are you defining viral novelty food, And then secondly, what is it about them that makes you so skeptical?
So viral novelty foods? I would say that these are corporate foods. I'm not just talking about somebody making your recipe. That's fine, no problems with that, Go have your fue love it.
I'll probably try like state fares, right, Like state fares are full of like sort of knowledge.
I don't mind the crazy foods at state fairs. The Minnesota State there, which which I truly love, that is held at the end of August, beginning of September and in early July. Every year. It's this big media event when they announce all the new foods and people are posting on it on social media, their stories in the newspaper, on TV, all this stuff. I love that because those
typically are independent vendors. They're trying to catch attention, but often they are just bringing in ingredients that haven't been at the fair or cultures that haven't really been represented the fair. So those and those became sort of big viral advance, at least locally because everyone's like, oh, it's
a new fair food. But the viral foods that really bug me are the ones like when Taco Bell or some other big company is like, Hey, we've got this new crazy thing that you're going to want to post about on Instagram, and that I think is really really what it's about is it is internet content. And I see those as less like a joyful expression of like, hey, we want to share this thing.
It's like a cross commercial opportunity.
Yeah, exactly right. It's this cynical effort to take your sense of wonder and surprise but commodify it in a way that I just find really off putting because these things are not just being in bold and flavorful, but they're supposed to give you bragging, right, And it's this corporation that's like forcing this sense of play on you, but you're supposed to be entertained on their terms, and
I just find that a little bit exhausting. There's this like cheese it front trap was one of the big things from Taco Bell recently, and if somebody just made that in their own kitchen, I would think that was really fun and cool. When it's Taco Bell, it's just like hammering you over the head and being like, aren't you entertained? Isn't this fun? No? No, thank you?
No, are there any snack trends that you're seeing right now that are curious or fascinating to you.
Yeah. That trend that I'm starting to see and that I would love to see more of, is just even more variation within chips, in particular potato chips. Obviously there are a ton of flavors already, but in other countries they also have their own flavors. You can certainly find some of those risk from other parts of the world here in the States, but it's not always easy. I think that some of those are gonna start to hit it big and be available, you know, in every convenience store.
Do you have a specific example of mine.
I don't have a specific example, but I do have a specific example of packaging. When I was in Japan a year ago, you could get various snacks on the train, and Japan also has an amazing snack and culture. There was a brand I think it was called Star Chips, I want to say, and you could get them everywhere. They're sort of sold them a little kidister much like Pringles, but the version that you could buy on the trains
had this really cool graphic design. It was like a version of the Great waves of the famous painting, only available limited edition on the trains. I bought the snacks just for the packaging, and I would love to see like Kringles or Fredo Lay or some more snack companies just really get some really artsy snack packages. You know, maybe that's not necessarily about the place, but I absolutely
would go all in on that. I would be the guy driving from state to state to get the limited edition Texas or Washington version of whatever packaging or whatever flavor. I think that'd be kind of cool.
Yeah, it feels like an easy win for someone. Yeah, So one last question. Chex mix is such a big thing in my family. My dad always baked up Chex mix for holidays, from Thanksgiving through the New Year. I had never really thought about the evolution of it and how first of all, how it came about, and then like how it changed, And I was curious if you could tell a little bit of that story.
Chex Mix is something that's emblematic of a broader trend in stacking. The first version of Chex Mix, as far as I can tell, wasn't like a prepackaged thing. It was a recipe that appeared in Life magazine in nineteen fifty two. The idea was that this is something that you can make to entertain. You know, this is targeted toward the post war housewife. Americans are having a little bit more money, a little bit more leisure time. There is much more of like a dinner party and informal
hosting at your house kind of energy in society. The entertaining vibe has gone from you we have to have find china and find silverware and all that stuff too. Yeah, we can just have people come over for drinks and snacks, but there's still certain expectations of what you're gonna have.
Some thought and care has to go into it. So the idea with this recipe was, hey, housewife, here's a fun recipe that you can combine these different cereals probably have on hand and other ingredients, and then you can present it to your friends. And that's kind of nice, right, that's a little bit fancy. It's an entertaining food. And then over time the companies start to package it together and it becomes more of just like it in any time kind of thing. It's not just for parties. Now
you can snack on it anytime you want. You can see the same trend. For example, an easy change the sprayable cheese in a can, which started out at about the same time. It was presented to women hosting parties as like, here's a way to just put some cheese on crackers. You can make it into little designs. It's really fancy. It's convenience food, but it's also kind of classy.
It feels very mad Men, right, like you can imagine those tits.
Yeah, very mad men, very much geared toward like this is a nice thing that you give to your guests. It's not an everyday thing for family, but it's also super easy. And over time, again as with checks mix, easy chase just becomes a little bit more ubiquitous. It's now it's become sort of like a stunt food, but it really wasn't a stunt food when it originated. It was a convenience food, but it was something classy that you serve at your fancy cocktail party.
It was basically like a revolutionary convenience food. Right. It feels like cutting edge technology almost to be able to save your time and present these crackers.
Oh yeah, absolutely, it's very yeah, mid century view of the future, like, look, you can put your food in a can and spray it out well.
Doug, thank you so much for being here with me. The newsletter is Snackstack. It is so good.
Yeah, people can look at snackstack dot net or I'm sure if you google it you will find some listings, and I hope I'm at the top of those listings.
I couldn't recommend it more.
Well.
As predicted, that was an awesome chat with Doug Mango. He is such an interesting guy and you know now I really want to organize and tasting where we do like somosas from around the world. There are different types of crazy candies and just have him talk us through all the tasting notes and origin stories. We got to get this on the book sometimes.
It would be so fun. I actually talked to Doug and he's promised me that he'll come back to do a special on Super Bowl snacks. So maybe we can do a ridiculous tasting with that. Perfect That's it for today's episode. We'll be back soon with a brand new show, but from Gabe, Mary, Dylan and me. Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongais Chatikler, and research by our good pal
Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.