Finally a Bag You Can Breathe Into

By Megan Bonner

Staff Reporter

Tostitos has made a bag with a breathalyzer on the outside and chips on the inside.

According to Frito Lay’s website, this product was marketed to this Super Bowl LI.

The Tostitos’ Twitter page was pumping out tweets promoting the new bag, urging people to take to pledge to play safe and drive safe.

The Frito Lay brand, Tostitos invented this black bag of chips to help lower alcohol-impaired driving fatalities. When you blow into the breathalyzer, it will either light up green or red.

If your bag lights up with a green steering wheel, you’re safe to drive home. If your bag lights up with a red steering wheel with the words, “DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE,” you should not be behind the wheel of a vehicle.

Some students don’t think that the bag will actually do any good and that it’s only a marketing scheme.

“I think the bag is completely pointless. I don’t think it’s going to serve its purpose of getting people to stop drinking and driving. There’s really no correlation between the two, so I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said senior Ellen Nighbor.

In 2015, 29% of total of vehicle accidents were due to drinking and driving, as stated in Responsibility.org. 35,092 people died in car accidents in the United States during 2015 according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Out of that number an estimated total of 10,265 people were killed in a drunk driving incident with a driver who had an illegal BAC (Blood Alcohol Content) of .08 or greater.

The bag contains not only chips and a breathalyzer, but a Near Field Communication (NFC) tag.

You can tap your smartphone to that tag and the bag will order an Uber to pick you up at your location as well as give you $10 off your ride.

Many students are buying into the whole breathalyzer bag, especially since Tostitos is offering the Uber discount.

“It’s definitely interesting, new and a little bit weird but I mean, I like the concept of it. The biggest attraction of the bag, to me, is the $10 off the Uber,” said sophomore Chelsea Sedlar.

Tostitos, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Uber have teamed up together to create this product.

Not only did Tostitos post on their social media accounts prior to Super Bowl LI that if you buy a Tostitos bag of chips you’d get $10 dollars off of your Uber ride, but they also promised fans on Super Bowl Sunday that they’d be giving away 25,000 free Uber rides.

Even though Tostitos is giving people $10 for the Uber, the price of the bag is still a concern for some students.

“I would buy the bag depending on the price. If the bag is expensive though, say $50, I wouldn’t buy chips that expensive for $10 off an Uber. That wouldn’t make sense finance wise,” said Sedlar.

 

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