Kasper’s Chips

Street artists have never been shy about using their name and image as a marketing tool for themselves or others. Melbourne street artists have sold their names and art for advertising rags, booze and real estate. So, the Doritos Street Art Collection should come as no surprise. I’m currently eating and reviewing Lukas Kasper’s “Fire and Fury Pizza Flavoured Corn Chips.”

Doritos Street Art Collection was launched in April 2023 with “The Kingpin Burger, Mayhem Kebab, and Fire and Fury Pizza.” Kasper designed all three packets. And this week they were on special at the supermarket. Doritos Street Art Collection has expanded to include more artists and more flavours.

Quoting from the chip packet:

“Starring local Aussie artists and tasty street inspired flavours, the Doritos Street Art Collection celebrates the fearless self expression of street art.”

“Overcoming his fears of judgement Melbourne based street artist Lukas Kasper found that bold self expression was his key to success. By morphing monster imagery and surrounding inspiration in his work he explores themes of mental health, animals and the environment and brings these to life with intense colour usage and bold line work.”

“Now he’s unleashed this unique style on this pack inspired from memories of skateboarding, street art & graffiti.”

“Now Doritos Dares you to be bold!”

The text eschews hyphens for unknown copy editing reasons, and the message from the packet appears to be something like: Don’t judge the taste of the chips or the artists; be bold like Melbourne’s street art.

In my long life, I have tried many chip flavours. My friends and I try to find the strangest chip flavours: lemon chicken, hot dogs, garum masala… I have tasted many chip flavours. I am sure there was a dinosaur flavour once, but then I was stoned at the time, and I don’t remember what they tasted like.

Some of the chip flavours are remarkable in their accuracy, but I have learnt to avoid flavoured chips like bread products. Potato or corn chips flavoured like a pizza base is a mistake because carbohydrates flavoured to taste like other carbohydrates are like having tomatoes flavoured like carrots. So “Fire & Fury Pizza” was a mistake to start with, but given the rest is just chilli and paprika (the “fire & fury”) with hints of herbs and tomatoes. If this is pizza flavour, where is the cheese? I kept asking myself with every crunch.

I first read a cultural analysis of chip flavours in Renyer Banham’s essay “The crisps at the crossroads” in Art and Society (edited by Paul Barker). Banham describes the taco corn chip as “a cheerfully synthetic product, not notably derived from sliced spud, it flavour patently sprinkled on, not bread in, the taco chip comes on in equilateral -triangle format, about two inches on the side, handsomely tanned and only slightly wrinkled.”

 Given that it was published in 1977, it is difficult to imagine the range of chip flavours that there was. Art and Society widened my understanding of art and aesthetics and included essays by John Berger, Angela Carter, Dennis Potter and Michael Thompson, whose book, Rubbish Theory, expanded on the ideas outlined in his essay and brought in ideas from early chaos mathematics.

Art and Society marked the end of my art snob thinking; everything, from street art to corn chips, could be critically examined.