The Origin of The Tater Tot

Tomorrow we celebrate that golden brown nugget of salty/starchy goodness. Join us for the first ever Metal/Tot festival at the Dark Horse.

We recently sat down with members of some of the bands playing in the festival, to try and figure how the TOT came to be.

According to Eddie from Blessiddoom, the tot and metal are closely related as they each are the bi product of all the valuable stuff that didn't make the cut."

But the actual origin of the tot goes back to 1953 in Oregon.

According to Wikipedia

The product was created in 1953 when Ore-Ida founders F. Nephi Grigg and Golden Grigg^[1][2][3] were trying to figure out what to do with leftover slivers of cut-up potatoes. They chopped up the slivers, added flour and seasoning, then pushed the mash through holes and sliced off pieces of the extruded mixture. Thus, tots were born. The product was first offered commercially in stores in 1956.^[8]

Originally, the product was very inexpensive; according to advertising lectures at Iowa State University, people did not buy it at first because there was no perceived value.^{[citation needed]} When the price was raised, people began buying it. Today, Americans consume approximately 70,000,000 pounds (32,000,000 kg) of tater tots, or 3,710,000,000 tots per year.^[9][10]