There are various suggested origins of the potato crisp, all of them with lots of supporting evidence, but I am guessing that as with so many things, the idea of frying extremely thin slices of potato until they were ‘crisp’ happened in many kitchens, in many countries where potatoes were eaten.
I remember Smiths crisps; they were the only make of crisps I ever saw when I was little, and they weren’t as universally available as now, and they were only in a plain flavour, with salt in a screw of blue waxed paper in the bag so you could salt them yourself. Sometimes here were two little blue screws of salt… which seemed very lucky for some reason! However, although I didn’t know it, Joe Murphy who was the founder of delicious Tayto crisps, first came up with the idea of adding a flavour to his product. His first three flavours were salt and vinegar, barbecue and cheese and onion! How every many hundreds of flavour are available now? It seems that a crisp can be flavoured with almost anything, and even some fantasy flavours such as squirrel and hedgehog!
Crisps are universal now… but do crisp sandwiches feature anywhere other than Britain?
Lois Elsden 
I remember the crisps with the blue bag of salt in them when I was a kid in England. In Canada we call them chips and your chips we call french fries. The potato chip was invented in Saratoga New york. In Canada on a Saturday night after playing hockey on an outdoor rink my brother and I had to get home because my Mom and Dad were going out dancing. They would get us Saratoga potato chips and Neapolitan ice cream. How come everything tasted better when you were young? I guess it was a bribe to get us home on time and it worked. Such wonderful memories. By the way my favorite flavor now is Barbecue and I hope they taste as good in England if you have them there.
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You’ll remember that when we were kids, pubs were not for children at all! My dad went to a pub called the New Spring which was just by the river and very occasionally we all went, and we were allowed to walk through the pub to get to the back garden where we could sit and eat our Smiths crisps and drink Vimto – do you remember Vimto? I used to say that when I got married I would have Vimto instead of wine… times change!
I like plain crisps and cheesy crisps… I must try barbecue again, it’s ages since we had any, and I’ll let you know what I think!
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I don’t remember Vimto. For me it was Dandelion and Burdock or Gingerbeer. What I remember most was the orange popsicles my Mother would buy us when she took us to the movies. She was so pretty in her white dress with red polka-dots and I was so proud of her.
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