When I read about Calbee’s new microwaveable potato chips on SoraNews24 the other day, I was stoked. Home-fried potato chips aren’t my favorite, but a warm honey butter chip? I’m down. I considered giving it a shot—before quickly remembering, to the relief of everyone in both my home and office building, that chip bags have foil in them. (That’s a no-go, duh.)
Calbee got around that, of course, by making their newest potato chip bags purposely microwaveable. Bags of chips in Calbee’s Renji de line have a “This side up!” marker and a tear line. The chips launched on February 19 in a butter and soy sauce flavor, and they’re meant to go into the microwave for about 40 seconds, after which they apparently taste extra buttery. To my extreme jealousy, taste testers concluded that they tasted and smelled “absolutely amazing.”
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As of today, however, I don’t have to be jealous, because nobody will be able to try the warm coins of butter and soy sauce chips, or the pizza-flavored chips that were set to roll out in a few weeks. Just three days after their launch, a reported 160,000 bags of Calbee’s microwaveable chips have been recalled. In news some people might have seen coming, the microwaveable potato chips, while innovative and apparently delicious, are also a fire hazard.
The microwaveable chips have allegedly resulted in reports of smoke and flames—and presumably, unexpected fright for some poor suckers who just had to give into the munchies. SoraNews24 suggested that those problems might have resulted from user error, or because everyone’s microwave works a little differently, since Calbee allegedly spent two years developing the chips.
You don’t have to trash your dreams of a warm, microwaveable potato chip entirely. Following a video from Tasty, you can make yourself potato chips from scratch in the microwave—although, yes, you still have to cut them and oil them, and according to a reviewer, they do still “burn fast.”
On second thought, maybe you should just buy a bag of Lay’s and accept that a cold, greasy chip is all you really need anyway.
