Years ago, when this blog was active during the heady days of personal blogging, I remember waxing philosophical about a bag of Andy Capp's Hot Fries. For any of my loyal readers who stumble on this (yeah, right), brace yourself to feel old. Checking ye olde Wayback Machine, that post was made in 2005. Twenty-one years ago. (I need a minute) You couldn't see me just now, but my head was in my hands for a solid ten seconds.
Anyway. It seems like the fine folks at (checks notes) ConAgra Food Service (really guys? that is not an appetizing name) have kept the brand going for a new generation. My younger son (Matthew) loves to get random snacks at the gas station and recently picked up a bag of these.
Twenty-one years later this snack still raises philosophical questions. I mean, I don't know what the Andy Capp license costs are for (double-checks) ...
ConAgra Food Service. But in 2026, surely there is no value to the Andy Capp branding? It's a comic strip that started in 1957 for fuck's sake. Einsenhower was president! (I had to look that up) And it already seemed like a relic when I was a kid. It's not that my son's generation doesn't know who Andy Capp is. They don't know what a Sunday comic is. You might as well call them "Rotary Telephone Hot Fries". At least that wouldn't come with license costs.
Trigger warning: AI image generation was used to make this joke.
Also, alternate versions of this joke that were considered and rejected:
- RealPlayer Hot Fries
- Pop-Up Video Hot Fries
- GeoCities Hot Fries
- The Learning Channel Before Reality TV Hot Fries
Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a subtle genius in the marketing. Maybe the absurdity of using a 70-year-old comic strip character to market snack food in 2026 is exactly what gets people talking. I mean, I'm here talking about hot fries, keeping them relevant in a weird way. I'm not sitting here unpacking the cultural significance of a bag of Doritos.
Okay, enough talking about snack foods. Somehow Andy Capp has become a recurring theme across two distinct eras of my adulthood.
