Is cracking open a can of Miller Lite Pringles the perfect way to jump into summer?

When I was in college, I worked at a CVS with two of my buddies. Short of counting pills back in the pharmacy, we did everything. Ringing out customers. Developing photos. Cleaning the bathrooms. Unpacking truck.

That last task taught me some very valuable lessons when it comes to buying Pringles. For some reason, our CVS’s backroom was designed in a way that required us to stock a ton of food in a loft. I’m sure the person who designed the backroom of the CVS envisioned a team of patient employees carefully moving items from the floor, up a ladder and safely into the loft.

Unfortunately for this CVS — and I’d imagine pretty much every other CVS — we were a team of 20-something-year-olds making a few bucks over minimum wage. Our store was understaffed. And we didn’t have time to handle boxes of Pringles tubes as delicate merchandise when we were frantically unloading totes.

Boxes of Pringles got chucked into the loft.

My time working at CVS taught me that you never buy a tube of Pringles without first giving it the rainstick test. If you’re unfamiliar with the rainstick test, it’s when you put a tube of Pringles to your ear and turn it upside down. If you hear a solid shifting of potato crisps, they’ve been handled with care. If you hear a cascading of shattered Pringle bits, you’re gonna want to pick out a different tube.

When I found Pringles x Miller Lite Grilled Beer Brat and Pringles x Miller Lite Beer Can Chicken at our grocery store, they were thankfully on an end cap display. And they had been treated gently before they made it to the store floor. But is this new partnership between Pringles and Miller Lite worth that level of care?

Where I found it

My Harris Teeter had both flavors of the Pringles x Miller Lite crisps.

What I paid

A tube of Pringles is normally $2.99, but my store had them on sale for $2.

My thoughts

This is my first Pringles review for Popculturology. Before the days of publishing this newsletter, you better believe I found and ate the Spicy Chicken Sandwich and Baconator flavors that we got thanks to a previous partnership with Wendy’s. Make fun of those flavors all you want — there was something wonderful and weird about eating a chip that tastes like a bacon cheeseburger.

With both the Grilled Beer Brat and Beer Can Chicken flavors, I expected to experience a much stronger smell to invoke those foods when I peeled the seal of each of the tubes. Those Wendy’s Pringles immediately reminded me of the fast-food chain’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich and Baconator when I opened them. The Miller Lite chips lacked that punch.

Like most Pringles flavors, the amount of seasoning on a crisp varies from piece to piece. The Grilled Beer Brat chips had some darker seasoning on them, and when I took a bite, they reminded me of some kind of BBQ variety. (I guess you can’t go wrong with a BBQ chip.) According to the folks behind Pringles, this variety promises “that smokey grilled brat flavor you know and love, with notes of black pepper, caramelized onion and brown spice.” Hmm. Nothing about these Pringles, though, reminded me of the smokiness that you should get from grilling brats. Those grill marks on the package are a lie.

How about the Beer Can Chicken Pringles? The seasoning on these chips had a bit more color than their Miller Lite counterpart — but the taste was pretty much nonexistent. As I mentioned before with the Wendy’s Pringles, I’ve had chicken-flavored Pringles that accurately — and oddly — packed some kind of chicken taste. And despite being advertised as combining “the flavor of savory roasted chicken complete with notes of garlic and onion with the authentic flavor of the Original Light Beer,” the Miller Lite ones don’t do that.

Final verdict: MIXED

Maybe I’m being too hard on the Pringles x Miller Lite chips. After all, the bar isn’t very high for your average tube of Pringles. If you’re interested in a twist on what’s basically a BBQ chip, pick up the Beer Brat Pringles. I can’t recommend the Beer Can Chicken ones, though.

Our daughter, on the other hand, offered rave reviews for both varieties.

There’s also a third flavor, Beer-Braised Steak, that’s exclusive to Walmart. While I’d love to try them, there’s no way I’d trust a tube of Pringles shipped to my house to pass the rainstick test.