I ate the one and only box of General Mills Potato Crisps I ever ate on a Saturday evening in 1968. I know this because for some reason, I remember trying them out and not liking them as I watched the final episode of The Prisoner. General Mills Potato Crisps were advertised as having "a taste like french fries" and their commercials even suggested you dip them in ketchup to get that full, wondrous french fry flavor. So I had my mother get a box and then I emptied a glump of ketchup into a little dish and took both out into the living room to watch the grand finale to Patrick McGoohan's odd spy series. I knew that if things went anything like they usually did, it would be Monday's hot topic of discussion at my high school, and everyone (myself, included) would be pretending we understood precisely what had happened in the episode.
And sure enough, the following Monday, I did a decent job of bluffing and double-talking…enough to have a semi-intelligent conversation about the show with friends who weren't entirely sure what they'd seen, either. (Only months earlier, we'd all practiced by feigning some comprehension of the ending of 2001.)
Oddly enough, I recall more about the Potato Crisps than I do about The Prisoner. Though made from an odd array of ingredients including a smidgen of potato flour, they did taste vaguely like french fries. Or at least, they did in the sense that almost anything that's edible, salted and crunchy tastes a little like french fries if you dip it in enough ketchup. Overall though, I was disappointed…enough to never again try them. And my mother, sensing my disappointment from the next room, came in and lovingly offered to make me real french fries if that's what I wanted. I told her no. What I wanted was a ready-made snack food that tasted like french fries…and obviously, the package before me proved that this was still and perhaps forever beyond the reach of Science. Not long before, they'd put a couple of men on the Moon but the important stuff still eluded them. Ever since that evening, when friends mention The Prisoner, I think of General Mills Potato Crisps. There's some sort of metaphor there between show and snack but I've never quite figured it out. Or, for that matter, the end of The Prisoner.