No brand of chips seems better positioned to succeed among millennials with their ironic brand name than Fail Chips. Right there in their name in that meme font are the words, “FAIL CHIPS.” They’re advertising in Muni stations, which in my mind is one of the weirder places to advertise snack foods, but it’s not just not advertising in subway stations, it’s slick PR and nested articles in establishment food blogs. Indeed their own website makes it seem like the entire Fail Chips enterprise itself might just be a marketing gimmick for MailChimp. I would have left the topic alone if I hadn’t seen them at the corner store so they are at least, real.

Perhaps millennials will be duped into buying potato chip sweepings and bits collected from underneath packaging machines. I think maybe people aren’t supposed to buy these with a straight face. You walk up to the guy at the corner store and he’s like haha yeah we carry these now. And you’re like, haha yeah I saw Lena Dunham eating these on the red carpet you know, how could I resist? Haha, Fail Chips.
Now let’s say they’ve succeeded in getting the kids to try them they’re going to have to be so good their customers keep buying them and to pull that off they’ll have to be tasty. Not surprisingly they don’t have enough confidence in the actual chips themselves they have to have 3 different flavors, none of them just salt. It’s a neat trick, essentially making the chips nothing more than a conduit for whatever crazy flavors they have. All the talk and focus of their advertising, it’s all about these busted chips, yet for these, I sense the natural and artificial flavors are doing all the heavy lifting. That they have these flavors is mentioned but it’s not the focus of their ad campaign.

Their whole gimmick is just smashed potato chips, their pitch meeting probably went like:
Fail Chips Guy #1: Imagine if we sold busted potato chips
Investor Guy #2: Jesus
Fail Chips Guy #1: I know, right?
Investor Guy #2: No I mean I just found out my partner just got indicted for fraud.
Fail Chips Guy #2: That doesn’t mean you can’t invest in us though does it?
Investor Guy #2: I don’t know man, busted potato chips?
Fail Chips Guy #1: So that’s what happened to Investor Guy #1, he’s going to jail?
Investor Guy #2: Holy shit I just realized we could probably get Lena Dunham to eat these on the red carpet, let me crunch some numbers
Fail Chips Guy #1: Man I need this, my last credit was also unnamed and it wasn’t even a speaking role
Weird Guy Outta Nowhere: STILL ROLLING, GUYS
Investor Guy #2: You know what? I think we can do it.
Fail Chips Guy #1: We got a deal?!?
Investor Guy #2: We got a deal! We’re now majority shareholders of Fail Chips!
Fail Chips Guy #2: WE DID IT! WE’RE BACK GODDAMMIT!
Investor Guy #1: (bursts into the room) Sorry I’m late guys, what did I miss?
Investor Guy #2: We just invested 5 million dollars in a potato chip company
Investor Guy #1: Wait, are you kidding me? What’s their gimmick?
Investor Guy #2: (Putting his fist in a bowl of potato chips) THIS!
Investor Guy #1: (Starts weeping)
Fail Chips Guy #1: So, what’s prison like?
Investor Guy #1: Wait a minute, I just thought of something, what if we got
Investor Guy #1 and #2 (in unison): Lena Dunham to eat these on the red carpet?!?!
The rest as they say, is history.

I’m not planning on trying any weird Fail flavors I mean maybe if down the road if they come out with a plain chip I’ll try it but without that I’ll just have to take it on faith I’m not going to enjoy them, either as a snack or as a forward-thinking snack food concept. Saying I think their brand name will likely prove to be prophetic would be playing into their hand so I’ll just say Fail Chips doesn’t really think too highly of its target demographic, except with regards to their marketing prowess, which is how they made it this far. If Fail Chips really is just some really weird and elaborate way to market Mail Chimp I’d have to give them kudos, especially if they end up accidentally becoming snack food moguls as a result. But if you’re talking about a potato chip that might be entirely a marketing gimmick for an internet newsletter publisher it’s hard to take them seriously. And to take them seriously is to say, yeah a busted up bag of chips is totally worth paying for over another bag of chips not already busted.