Let’s be honest: potato crisps are a low-interest item until you’re standing around a braai or watching a rugby match. It’s an unwritten South African rule that the moment someone dumps a packet into a bowl, a guest will inevitably complain that their absolute favourite flavour is missing from the table.
Yet, snack aisles across the country are undergoing a quiet revolution. Food manufacturers are changing their recipes left, right, and centre. The latest giant to tinker with tradition is Simba, a household staple since 1957, which has rolled out a thicker potato slice with deeper ridges.
According to brand managers, this wasn’t a random whim. It is a calculated response to competitive pressures. Skeptics might wonder how a thicker, more heavily seasoned crisp saves money in a tight economy, but the strategic play is obvious: Simba is fighting to defend its territory against a relentless wave of supermarket house brands and nimble independent upstarts like Frimax and Chippies.
The official line is that deeper ridges retain more seasoning for a “louder” crunch. Naturally, snackers have split into two distinct camps. On Twitter/X, the digital vanguard praises the bolder bite.
Meanwhile, the nostalgia camp on Facebook mourns the classic, thinner slice, complaining that the new texture feels less crunchy and more stale.
It is not the first time our snacking habits have been engineered from above. Years ago, parent company PepsiCo stepped in to position Lay’s as the custodian of the plain salted crisp, leaving Simba to handle the eccentricities.
And Simba can certainly go rogue when it chooses. Back in 2010, its “What’s Your Lekker Flavour?” campaign birthed limited-edition anomalies like Vetkoek & Polony, Masala Steak Gatsby, and the legendary Snoek & Atchar, which I raved over having grown up in Cape Town.
Will this latest recipe tweak trigger a national crisis? Unlikely. In an increasingly health-conscious era, crisps are largely a weekend indulgence, usually drowned in a cream cheese or sweet chilli dip to mask any structural flaws.
Market forces have dictated the crunch. Facing pressure from all sides, Simba has put its chips on the table. Now we wait to see how the competition responds—and whether consumers will swallow the change.
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