Wise Potato Chips Updates Peppy the Owl – Unwisely

Remember Peppy, the owl mascot of Wise Potato Chips? That's the beloved feathery symbol of the company above. He was on the Wise bag for years; I remember him from when I was a kid.

Peppy's been featured on this blog many times, most recently when the retired mascot made a special appearance on a specially designed Wise Potato Chip bags in honor of the firm's 100th Anniversary in 2021.

Well, Wise Potato Chips has brought him back, just in time for the snack firm's Golden Prize Sweepstakes promotion, which has daily cash prizes and a big $10,000 Grand Prize Drawing. It runs from July 1, 2025 to August 29, 2025.

Unfortunately, someone thought it was a good idea to update Peppy's design. Feast your eyes on the 'new' Peppy. I'm not wide-eyed with enthusiasm over his new look.  

The design of the bags themselves, however, is quite nice. Here's the whole flavor lineup.

But I don't understand why the firm that did the redesign didn't use the original Peppy design as a starting point. Peppy had a very specific structure to his face and body, and the shape of his head. Why not streamline it and render it in a modern, appealing style instead of just trashing it? 

Unfortunately, that seems to be the trend. We saw it with Travelodge's Sleepy Bear and his unbearable makeover. And Kellogg's made a soggy mess out of its whole cereal mascot menagerie, redesigning all of them – poorly.

Peppy doesn't even appear to partake of his own potato chips, judging by his trim physique.

The funny thing is, Peppy was redesigned once before. Remember this version of him with a red, rad mohawk?

He may have looked a little odd, but we knew it was still Peppy. He probably didn't like it either and was just bullied into it by a know-it-all suit. Pep should have dropped a few owl pellets in the adman's martini when he wasn't looking.

Oh well. To me, this (below) will always be the real Peppy.

And a thumbs down to this impostor, posing appropriately in front of bundles of loot – which Wise hope to make from this caper. He needs to be hooted down.

Wise Potato Chips 100th Anniversary & the Return of Peppy

I was in the Amherst Drug Mart a few days ago, and saw something that I never thought I’d see again: Peppy the Owl on a bag of Wise Potato Chips! 

Of course I had to buy a bag, which turned out to be a Limited Edition retro design in honor of the company’s 100th Anniversary. It’s quite nice. (Strangely, I haven’t seen the retro bag on sale anywhere else in the area.)

Hey, I suggested that the company put the “original" Peppy bag on the bag in time for the anniversary back on this 2019 post. I also devoted a blog post to the 1957 Wise Potato Chip recipe book (featuring various concoctions containing crushed chips).

Anyway, it’s good to see a company celebrate its heritage and impressive 100 year accomplishment in such a wonderful way. Click here to visit the Wise Potato Chip website and read more about its history.

Welcome back (for a little while, at least), Peppy!

Peppy the Wise Potato Chip Owl Gets Pepped Up

Peppy as he looked back in the late 1950s when he was introduced

In yesterday's post about Wise Potato Chips, I mentioned that Peppy, the owl mascot, is semi-retired.

That's because even though he's currently not on the package, he's still around. Unfortunately, like many advertising mascots that have been around a long time, he's been regressed to a younger, "hipper" version. 

A quick stroll around the internet reveals that this new Peppy can found roosting all over the place.

Here he is on some window signage.

Courtesy homehealthandspirit.com

A costumed Peppy also makes personal appearances for Wise Snacks, wearing his "cool" baseball cap on backwards. (At least the cap covers up the un-owl-like mohawk.)

Courtesy momeefriendsli.com

Peppy also shows up on some web ads.

Courtesy nysnacks.com

Peppy was even made into a special nodder (or bobble-head if you prefer) that was a tie-in with a promotion for Major League Baseball's Mets. It's quite nice, actually.

Courtesy Worthpoint.com

Let's hope that when Wise Snacks celebrates its 100th Anniversary in 2021, the real Peppy is restored to his rightful place on the potato chip bag.

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Interestingly, Peppy was briefly replaced in the mid-80s with a different, more generic, owl. This feathery, bespectacled impostor was supposed to be Peppy, but we all knew better.

This version of Peppy was even made into a doll. I wouldn't be surprised if the owl doll came first, and the logo was based on it.

Happily, the original Peppy was back on the bags by the 1990s.

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Hey, I just remembered I had these: vintage Wise Potato Chip plastic soda bottle caps, featuring Peppy!

Ah, the good old days – when pop came in glass returnable bottles. And since we didn't guzzle pop back then, it was necessary to put a cap on the bottle to keep it nice and fizzy for next time. Fortunately, Wise issued these Peppy promotional caps to remind you to eat some thirst-provoking salty chips!

1957 Wise Potato Chips Recipe Book

Anyone who reads this blog knows I’m a big fan of vintage advertising mascots. So it probably isn’t a surprise that I like Peppy, the wise old owl that used to be featured on the front of the Wise Potato Chip bags and in its advertising.

That's him above in a Wise newspaper ad that ran in national newspapers in November 1959. Here's another newspaper ad (below), from July 1962.

Peppy has been semi-retired from the bags for a while now, although a closeup of his eye is now the symbol of the company. But in Peppy’s heyday, he was the star of a recipe book put out by the Wise Potato Chip Company that is copyrighted 1957.

The book is a lot of fun to look at. Besides the unusual recipes featuring ground up Wise potato chips as one of the ingredients, the book features plenty of illustrations of Peppy engaged in various activities related to food preparation (a sample is shown below).

Here are a few of the recipes.

And here’s that intriguing meat loaf recipe (called 'beef loaf' here) that I mentioned yesterday. 

Sooner or later, I’ll make this thing and post a photo of it, along with a review. If it’s good, it might even replace my other retro recipe, which is from a 1950s Quaker Oats container.

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The Wise recipe book has other interesting things in it besides the recipes. There’s a nice color photo of the Wise Potato Chip bag circa 1957 on the back cover.

Here’s how the same bag looks today. While the design is nice, it needs Peppy to pep it up a bit.

On the inside back cover, there's a nice rendering of the plant in Berwick, Pennsylvania where the snacks were (and still are) produced today.

For comparison, here’s a Google Maps aerial view. 

Although more than sixty years have passed since the publication of the recipe book, most of the original factory buildings shown in the rendering are still recognizable in the aerial photo. 

But it looks like the original office building (seen at the far left in the 1957 rendering) is kinda hemmed in these days, thanks to various additions over the years.