ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 18, 1996 TAG: 9610180032
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: COLUMBUS, OHIO
SOURCE: PAUL SOUHRADA ASSOCIATED PRESS
WILL IT SWEEP YOU off your feet, or perhaps just off to the bathroom?
Paula Maynard has heard the jokes, read the product warning label and listened to the debate on the evening news.
And still she's willing to give Fat-Free Pringles a try.
``I'll try anything that's fat-free,'' said the Johnstown, Ohio, resident as she scanned the snack aisles at a Kroger supermarket. ``If I want something to snack on, it has to be fat-free. If it bothers me, I won't buy it anymore.''
That's the chance The Procter & Gamble Co. was willing to bank on when it began its massive campaign to introduce Fat-Free Pringles, containing the fat substitute olestra, to Columbus consumers this fall.
``We expect that Pringles, in total, will grow behind this,'' brand manager Casey Keller predicted. ``We're now going to be attracting and appealing to people who have taken themselves out of potato chips because they don't want to get all that fat in their diet.
``It's the No. 1 unmet consumer need. Consumers are really asking for it.''
P&G officials won't say how much they're spending on the rollout, though some estimates put the cost at close to $10 million.
``It's the biggest launch in Pringles history since the introduction of the original product in the early '70s,'' Keller said, adding that 500,000 cans of Pringles were shipped into nine central Ohio counties to start the test.
Frito-Lay Inc. test-marketed its Max chips made with olestra this summer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Eau Claire, Wis., and Grand Junction, Colo.
The fat-free snack is the Holy Grail of the $15 billion-a-year salted snack industry. Health-conscious consumers want to be able to have their chips and eat them, too.
P&G, the consumer products giant with annual worldwide sales of $35 billion, spent more than $200 million over the past 25 years to develop olestra.
Olestra, marketed under the trade name Olean, is a synthetic chemical made from sugar and vegetable oil. It looks like real fat, but its molecules are too large to digest, so it passes through the body unabsorbed, leading to some complaints about digestive problems.
Critics, most notably the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, contend that P&G is minimizing olestra's health consequences.
Ultimately, the Food and Drug Administration required P&G to add a warning on the label that the product may cause ``abdominal cramping and loose stools.''
Because of that warning, olestra has been the butt of jokes on television talk shows and editorial cartoons since the FDA gave it market approval in January.
None of that is likely to dissuade consumers, predicted Harvard marketing Professor John Quelch.
``There's a tremendous interest by consumers in controlling fat intake,'' Quelch explained. ``And most consumers are not going to perceive the risk of a one-time trial purchase as especially great.''
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Cecelia Fernandez tries Fat-Free Pringles at aby CNBColumbus, Ohio, store. color.