Pringles is a brand of potato- and wheat-based snacks originally developed by Procter & Gamble. Pringles are sold in more than 140 countries and have yearly sales of more thanUS$1 billion. In April 2011, P&G agreed to the $2.35 billion sale of the brand to Diamond Foods of California, a deal which would have more than tripled the size of Diamond's snack business. However, the deal fell through in February 2012 after a year-long delay due to issues over Diamond's accounts. On February 15, 2012, the Kellogg Company agreed to buy Pringles for $2.7 billion.The sale is expected to be completed by summer.Pringles brand potato crisps were first sold in the United States in October 1968, and distributed internationally by the mid-1970s. The original Pringles television commercials were written, produced and directed by Thomas Scott Cadden (composer of the original Mr. Clean jingle) in 1968, while working at Tatham-Laird and Kudner Advertising Agency in Chicago.There are several theories behind the origin of the name "Pringles". One theory refers to Mr. Mark Pringle, who filed a US Patent 2,286,644 titled "Method and Apparatus for Processing Potatoes" on March 5, 1937. Mr. Pringle's work was cited by Procter & Gamble (P&G) in filing their own patent for improving the taste of dehydrated processed potatoes. Another theory suggested two Procter advertising employees lived on Pringle Drive in Finneytown (north of Cincinnati, Ohio), and the name paired well with potato.P&G chose the Pringles name from a Cincinnati telephone book, having been inspired by Pringle Drive in Finneytown, Ohio, due to its pleasing sound.P&G wanted to create a perfect chip to address consumer complaints about broken and stale chips, and air in the bags. The task was assigned to chemist Fredric Baur, who, from 1956 to 1958, created Pringles’ saddle shape from fried dough, and the can to go with it. Mr. Baur could not figure out how to make the chips taste good, though, and he eventually was pulled off the Pringles job to work on another brand. In the mid-1960s, another P&G researcher, Alexander Liepa, restarted Mr. Baur’s work, and set out to improve on the Pringles taste, which he succeeded in doing. While Mr. Baur was the true inventor of the Pringles crisp, according to the patent Pringles was invented by Alexander Liepa of Montgomery, Ohio. Gene Wolfe, a mechanical engineer-author known for science fiction and fantasy novels, developed the machine that cooks them. Their consistent saddle shape is mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid. Their design is reportedly aided by supercomputers to ensure safe aerodynamics while packaging.Pringles have only about 42% potato content, the remainder being wheat starch and flours (potato, corn, and rice) mixed with vegetable oils and an emulsifier. Contrary to a popular misconception, Pringles crisps are fried, not baked.They were originally known as "Pringles Newfangled Potato Chips", but other snack manufacturers objected, saying Pringles failed to meet the definition of a potato "chip". The US Food and Drug Administration weighed in on the matter, and in 1975, they ruled Pringles could only use the word "chip" in their product name within the following phrase: "potato chips made from dried potatoes". Faced with such an unpalatable appellation, Pringles eventually opted to rename their product potato "crisps" instead of chips. However, this later led to other issues in the United Kingdom, where the term potato "crisps" refers to the product Americans call potato "chips".