In the convenience stores around town they've been selling these cans of Frito-Lay products that are a complete rip-off. You've probably seen them - black plastic container with a curvy shape and a brightly-colored shrink-wrap label. In them, you might find Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, and a few other odd concoctions that have never been seen before.
I saw this container sitting on the shelf at Wawa, and thought that maybe it's time to take a closer look at what's going on with this new packaging.
What is the purpose of this new packaging? If you believe the commercials, the intent of the change in packaging is to better protect its contents. Although I did not perform a complete evaluation of this claim, it seems pretty sound. I did not find many crumbs at all in my Doritos can. However, this may be due to the first problem that I noticed with the package.
When I first saw the can, I had a question. "How do they fit Doritos in there?" My original thought was maybe the 3D doritos fit better in the container. But if you compare the diameter of the container to the size of a typical 3D Dorito, you would see that only maybe five or six doritos could fit in the container. Moreover, any automated loading mechanism would have difficulty loading the Doritos into the narrow mouth without massive breakage. This was the primary source of my curiosity and why I bought this thing in the first place.
Upon opening my container, I was shocked to find that they had miniturized the Doritos! Each 3D dorito is about a half inch in lengh. 
That would allow them to easily load the container and fit more in. I found that although the small size was disturbing at first, I got used to eating handfuls of small Doritos. It occurred to me that the low incidence of breakage might be related to the size of the Dorito being roughly the size of a typical Dorito crumb. So it might not be all to the credit of the packaging that they stayed mostly in tact.
Of course, I have neglected to mention why I hadn't tried this new container until just recently when it's been on the market for quite some time. If you look at the package, you'll see that the net weight is 2 ounces. The package is usually sold for $1.29. A similar bagged container of Doritos costs only $.99 and has a net weight of 2 3/4 ounces. Nearly a whole ounch more for 30 cents less! What a rip-off!
Suffice to say that the price of these containers at Wawa has recently dropped to $1, and I am comfortable buying one for experimentation purposes.
I should also note here that there are other foods that come in these containers, specifically the yummy Quaker Oats Cookies, which don't seem as much of a rip-off due to the fact that they're cookies and not Fritos. I have yet to attempt to compare the cookies to another bagged or boxed brand to check for quality or price.
I provide the nutritional information on the Doritos I bought just so you can see that I am getting my daily quantities of fat and sodium. Nearly 1/5 of my RDA in each case. Also interesting is that the serving size is 1, which is unusual for snack food. I would say that in spite of the single serving in the container, the Doritos within were quite filling (when eaten with Pop Tarts and a turkey sandwich).
Before you get on me about eating Pop Tarts at lunch, you should know that Pop Tarts are actually not that bad of a food. They're not that fatty, they're tasty, and they're easy to keep at work.
