Walkers explains why its cheese and onion crisp packets are blue and not green

Walkers has answered one of life’s greatest mysteries by revealing why their cheese and onion crisp packets are blue and not green.

Cheese and onion is one of the UK’s most beloved flavours of crisp, with more than six billion packets of the snack coming out of Walkers’ Leicester-based factory every year.

The crisp company itself has even confirmed that cheese and onion is its most in-demand flavour, saying it is so popular that it’s included in the ‘meaty multipack’, despite it not being a meat flavour. 

Despite its popularity, however, there has been an ongoing debate as to why Walkers’ cheese and onion crisps come in blue packets and not green.

These days, many brands use blue packaging for salt and vinegar flavoured crisps, and green for cheese and onion.

Walkers, on the other hand, seal their cheese and onion crisps in blue packaging, with many people believing they changed it from green a couple of years ago. 

However, this isn’t actually the case, and it’s all because Walkers are the original cheese and onion pioneers – the brand released its iconic cheese and onion flavour way back in 1954, eight years before Golden Wonder.

As a result of this, rival confectionery companies decided to avoid replicating Walker’s colour scheme and went with green for cheese and onion instead.

Walkers confirmed the news on its website: “Our Salt and Vinegar and Cheese and Onion flavour crisps packs have always been the colours they are today.

“Contrary to popular belief, we’ve never swapped the colours around, not even temporarily. We’ve no plans to change these designs, as they’re signature to our brand.”

The blue packet could also be a tribute to the Midlands, where the flavour originally hails from, with a 2014 YouGov survey finding that the Midlands was the only region to vote in favour of the current colour scheme.

YouGov noted: “This is likely because Walkers is a Midlands company, founded in Leicester in 1948, and was still primarily a regional brand as late as the 1980s.”