chip mysteries

Target Is Apparently Selling These ‘Prongles’ — and Nobody Knows Why

Earlier this week, some mysterious images started to pop up in the more obscure regions of Reddit: cans of stacked potato chips that look at once familiar and seriously odd. As you can see in the photos, they are … Prongles, and they bear a striking similarity to the much more famous, similarly named chips.

From the horrid pig mascot, to the not-quite-right flavor descriptions (“Salt and Potato,” is perhaps a bit too on-the-nose), and a slogan that is apparently “Once you pop… THAT’S GREAT!”), these chips have it all. Even still, had Prongles appeared in some foreign market (like Mister Potato Crisps) where real-deal Pringles may not be available, they probably wouldn’t be too noteworthy. But according to the Reddit users who have found them, these Prongles have started showing up at Target.

Even stranger: They’re reportedly showing up in Target’s board game section. And this is exactly the kind of mystery that the internet lives for. One Reddit sleuth had already done some digging, first tearing off the label to reveal another label below for the Good Crisp Company, the Australian version of Pringles. More digging revealed actual clues: The acronym C.A.H. is hidden on each Prongles label, and the brand’s website is registered to the company that makes Cards Against Humanity, a.k.a. that game your married friends always want you to play after a dinner party.

So it seems this is not some ripoff of Pringles with a perfectly terrible food mascot but is perhaps some sort of strange marketing inception. So we reached out to both Cards Against Humanity, LLC, and Target to try to get an answer — but the mystery remains for now, because nobody’s gotten back to us yet.

In the meantime, if you see any rogue Prongles while doing your Black Friday shopping, know that they are almost certainly worse than real Pringles, but also far more intriguing.

No One Knows Why Target Is Selling ‘Prongles’