Dallas, Texas—In a surprise move this morning, snack giant Frito Lay introduced a new and improved Thunder Bag, the latest leap forward in noisy packaging. Not satisfied with the obnoxiously noisy Sun Chips bag introduced into stores last January, company officials claim this new package will end all arguments about who has the loudest chip bags on the market.
“When customers reported back to us that opening the old bag only registered 95 decibels, we knew we could do better,” said Senior Vice President of Package Innovations and lead engineer, Dennis Wheeler. “I mean, that’s the equivalent of a subway train at 200 feet. It takes prolonged exposure to cause hearing loss at that level. We wanted something a bit more noticeable.”
And noticeable is what the Sun Chips team delivered. The new bag reportedly registers 125 decibels when opened—the level at which sound becomes painful.
When the previous incarnation of the bag was introduced, sales began to fall. “We heard reports that customers weren’t buying the new bags. And immediately we knew it was because they simply weren’t loud enough,” replied spokesman James Bates, when asked why the company was introducing the new bags now. “Customers don’t just want to wake their children with a late night snack. They want to wake the whole neighborhood!”
Where the older bags were made from a plant-based material called polylactic acid, the new bags are made from a newly developed polymer code named “deafenium”, with an even higher glass transition temperature, the root of the bag’s loud crackle.
When asked what the future of loud packaging held, Wheeler promised even more exciting advances in the months to come. “My job as an engineer is to constantly improve all our packages. We’ve barely scratched the surface with this new bag. The loudest noise ever recorded was 194 decibels, so we can still do better. We want a package so loud it can be heard in the middle of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.”
Greg Dacyshyn, Senior Vice President of Creative at Burton, the uniform sponsor, who was present for the announcement, said, “We’ve had really good results from our initial tests and will be testing ‘the belt’ with a few select riders in competitions in the coming months.” He expected wider adoption after the initial test phase.
The new equipment is designed to fit around the athlete’s waist and support his trousers. It leverages the performance benefits of GORE-TEX® fabric, the official fabric of the 2010 U.S. Snowboarding Team’s Olympic outerwear. One of the members of the women’s team was actually seen sporting “the belt” in the Olympic competition this year.
The athletes appeared enthusiastic about this revolutionary advance in equipment. Scott Lago, who won the Bronze medal with a stunning performance of the double cork, modeled the new equipment and noted, “I was skeptical at first. I mean, my dad wears one... it seemed so useless. But after I tested it, I noticed less snow in my ass when I would fall.” Seth Wescott, winner of the gold medal in the Snowboard Cross competition agreed. “It helps keep my pants right at mid-thigh height when I ride. No more pulling my pants up from my knees on a particularly gnarly crash.”
When asked what’s next for the equipment engineering team, officials were notably secretive, but one engineer let slip that the team was studying the use of a new item code named “suspenders,” saying someone got the idea from watching old Mork And Mindy reruns. The team is thinking the rainbow pattern might go really well with the plaid coats unveiled just before competition this year. He continued, “The result will be a progressive and fresh look that challenges the former conservatism of the Olympics.”
This is one model of the revolutionary new equipment called “The Belt” under consideration for use by the U.S. Olympic Snowboard Team.
