Did you know that we have one Yugoslavian immigrant to thank for introducing Canadians to kettle cooked potato chips in the 1990s?
It’s true.
Marcus Nalley moved to Tacoma, Washington in the 1920s and started making chips in his kitchen at home while working at a local hotel.
He started a company called Nalley’s foods which became massive - at its height they produced 1,300 different products.
In 1976 Nalley’s launched in Canada, and in the early 1990s they introduced Thunder Crunch chips, which they billed as being “revolutionary,” and “the crunchiest chip you’ve ever eaten!”
They were the first brand of kettle-cooked chips to be mass-marketed here, and by the end they came in nine different flavours.
They stopped making Thunder Crunch in the early 2000s, but not before laying the groundwork for all of the other kettle chip brands that followed them.
The memory of these chips lives on in some retro t-shirts we just got printed at a local screen printing shop in East Van! You can order one now from our online store.
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@bcisawesome The crunchiest chips ever? #bchistorywithbobk #britishcolumbia #1990s ♬ original sound - BC Is Awesome
