Ore-Ida Funky Fries: Chocolate Fries, Cinnamon Fries, and Blue Fries, Because a Focus Group of Eight-Year-Olds Apparently Ran the Company
French fries in flavors and colors that made them look like food from an alien planet — discontinued within a year because french fries are not candy
In 2002, Ore-Ida — America's most trusted frozen french fry brand — looked at the french fry and decided it wasn't enough. The golden, crispy, salted perfection of a french fry — a food so universally beloved that it has survived every food trend, every diet movement, and every attempt to replace it with sweet potato or jicama — was, in Ore-Ida's estimation, insufficient.
What the french fry needed, apparently, was chocolate.
Ore-Ida Funky Fries launched in five varieties: Cocoa Crispers (chocolate-flavored), Cinnamon Crispers (cinnamon-sugar), Kool Blue (blue-colored with blue ranch dressing flavor), Sour Cream & Dives (sour cream and chive, the only sane option), and Crunchy Rings (onion ring-shaped). The line was marketed to children with packaging that looked like it was designed by someone who had recently discovered neon and couldn't stop.
Let's address each crime against potatoes individually.
Cocoa Crispers were french fries dusted with cocoa powder and sugar. Chocolate french fries. The flavor of a brownie applied to the shape of a fry, producing a food item that satisfied neither the desire for chocolate (eat a brownie) nor the desire for fries (eat fries) and instead occupied a deeply uncomfortable middle ground where your taste buds couldn't decide whether they were eating a savory side dish or a confusing dessert. The chocolate fry is the centaur of the food world — two things combined that didn't ask to be combined, neither fully one thing nor the other, just... confused.
Cinnamon Crispers were french fries coated in cinnamon and sugar. This is churro logic applied to a potato, and the result is: not a churro. A churro works because the dough is light, fried, and designed for sweetness. A potato is dense, starchy, and designed for salt. Putting cinnamon on a potato is like putting a hat on a fish — technically possible, cosmically wrong.
Kool Blue were french fries that were blue. Blue. The color blue. On a french fry. The fries were dyed blue and flavored with "blue ranch dressing" — a flavor description that contains two words that should never be adjacent. Blue ranch. BLUE RANCH. Ranch dressing is white. Ranch dressing has been white since the invention of ranch dressing. Making it blue doesn't make it better. Making it blue makes it an alien condiment from a cafeteria on Mars.
The Glorious User Experience
Literally Every Parent, 2002 — ★☆☆☆☆
"My child saw the box and screamed with joy. My child ate three chocolate fries and declared them 'weird.' My child returned to regular fries. The Funky Fries box sat in the freezer for four months, untouched, a frozen monument to the gap between what a child thinks they want and what a child actually wants. I paid $4 for four months of freezer space. One star."
Trevor from Omaha, NE — ★☆☆☆☆
"I tried the blue fries. I put them on a plate. The plate looked like it had been prepared by someone who was either very creative or very unwell. Blue french fries on a white plate looks like food from a Tim Burton movie. My wife entered the kitchen, looked at the plate, and said 'What happened?' Not 'what are those?' — 'What HAPPENED?' As if the fries had experienced a medical event. One star."
Jackie from Dallas, TX — ★☆☆☆☆
"The chocolate fries tasted like a potato that had walked through a Hershey factory and picked up some residue. The chocolate wasn't committed. The potato wasn't committed. Neither flavor showed up to work. The result was a food that tasted like compromise — the flavor of two ingredients that each wished the other wasn't there. One star."
Ryan from Seattle, WA — ★☆☆☆☆
“The line was marketed to children with packaging that looked like it was designed by someone who had recently discovered neon and couldn't stop”
Click to Tweet"I ate cinnamon fries and regular fries side by side. My brain short-circuited. The signals were: 'This is a fry. Fries are salty. Wait, this fry is sweet. Sweet fries are wrong. But this is a fry. Fries are salty. But this one—' My brain looped. I experienced a flavor infinite loop. The cinnamon fry created a cognitive error so fundamental that my taste buds filed a bug report. One star."
Emma from Chicago, IL — ★★☆☆☆
"Two stars because Sour Cream & Dives was actually fine. It was a fry with sour cream and chive seasoning, which is a flavor that makes sense on a potato because sour cream and chive is a POTATO TOPPING. It's a baked potato in fry form. It worked. It was the only Funky Fry that understood the assignment. Two stars for the one employee who did their job. Zero for the rest."
The Truth: The "Kids Eat Weird Things" Fallacy
Ore-Ida's logic was: kids like weird food. Kids eat gummy worms, blue raspberry candy, and pizza-flavored everything. If you make fries weird — funky colors, funky flavors — kids will eat them.
The logic fails because kids' tolerance for weird food is category-specific. Kids will eat a blue gummy worm because gummy worms are candy, and candy is allowed to be weird. Kids will not eat a blue french fry because french fries are dinner, and dinner is supposed to be normal. The weirdness budget for candy is unlimited. The weirdness budget for dinner is zero.
Funky Fries sold initially on novelty — the same curiosity-driven first purchase that drove Orbitz, Crystal Pepsi, and every other visually novel food product. Kids wanted to try the blue fries. Once. They tried them. They confirmed they were weird. They returned to regular fries. The novelty curve peaked at one bag and declined to zero within a month.
Ore-Ida discontinued Funky Fries within approximately a year, returning to the product line that had made them America's fry brand: golden, crispy, salted french fries that look like french fries, taste like french fries, and are not chocolate, cinnamon, or blue.
The french fry didn't need innovation. The french fry IS the innovation. Humans took a potato, cut it into strips, fried it, salted it, and produced one of the most perfect foods in history. The fry is done. The fry was done before Ore-Ida existed. Funky Fries was an attempt to improve on perfection, and perfection's response was: no.
The Verdict
Ore-Ida Funky Fries are chocolate fries, cinnamon fries, and blue fries from a company that already makes perfect regular fries and decided, inexplicably, that perfection needed funkification. The chocolate was confused. The cinnamon was misguided. The blue was a hate crime against ranch dressing and the color spectrum simultaneously.
The french fry is not a canvas. The french fry is a masterpiece. You don't put a mustache on the Mona Lisa. You don't add chocolate to a fry. Some things are finished. The fry is finished.
We rate it 1 out of 5 normal fries.
If you want fries that look and taste like fries — because fries are already great — see our alternatives below.
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✅What to Buy Instead
Ore-Ida Extra Crispy Fast Food Fries
Regular fries that taste like fries. Golden. Crispy. Not blue. Not chocolate. The bar was always this low and Funky Fries still limbo'd under it.
Alexia Sweet Potato Fries
If you want a different fry experience, sweet potato fries take the proven upgrade path — different potato, same shape, no food coloring required.
McCain Quick Cook Fries
5-minute crispy oven fries. Not dyed blue. Not dusted with cocoa. Not sprinkled with cinnamon. Just fries being fries. Revolutionary normalcy.
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