40 Fun Facts About Pot Noodle

Despite the meaty names on its pots, every Pot Noodle flavour is suitable for which diet?

Vegetarian eaters can have any of them: the brand's owner says all Pot Noodle flavours are 100% suitable, and free of artificial colours and preservatives.

Which former MP's affair with John Major, revealed in 2002, inspired a limited-edition Pot Noodle flavour?

Edwina Currie had just published diaries revealing a four-year affair with the future prime minister, and the brand answered with an 'Edwina Curry' pot.

Pot Noodle's factory, its home since 1979, stands near the village of Crumlin in which part of Britain?

South Wales is where the pots are filled, at a plant reported to turn out about 175 million of them a year.

Which Pot Noodle flavour, named by the brand as its most popular, was first to be sold in a paper pot?

Chicken & Mushroom filled the first 500,000 paper pots in a 2023 supermarket trial, the biggest change to the packaging since the brand began.

A 2006 Pot Noodle advert joked that the snack was produced by which workers, played partly by factory staff?

Coal miners turned noodle miners: ten former pitmen who worked at the Crumlin factory went back underground to film the spoof in a disused pit.

Which consumer goods giant took ownership of Pot Noodle in 2000 when it bought the American food group Bestfoods?

Unilever got Pot Noodle as part of Bestfoods, a takeover that also brought it Knorr stock cubes.

Which Pot Noodle flavour is sold as an incredibly hot curry and comes with a sachet of fire chilli sauce?

Bombay Bad Boy joined the range in 2002, and the brand's own history dared fans to try it.

In which BBC space series is a Pot Noodle among the last scraps of food aboard the crashed ship Starbug?

Red Dwarf strands Lister on an ice planet in the 1989 episode Marooned, with little else to eat but mustard powder, water biscuits and a brown lemon.

Pot Noodle re-edited a TV advert with sounds such as a cat's meow after viewers objected to which noise?

Slurping put off enough viewers that the brand issued more than 50 alternative soundtracks, including a baby's laugh and football commentary.

Which takeaway favourite inspired a Pot Noodle flavour that comes with a sachet of hot fire chilli sauce?

Doner kebab arrived as a limited edition, with the same fiery sachet that goes into the brand's hottest curry pot.

Golden Wonder, the company that launched Pot Noodle in 1977, was already a household name for which snack?

Crisps came first: founder William Alexander began frying them in the 1940s to use spare capacity in the doughnut fryers at his bakery.

Pot Noodle's owner says the original idea of selling noodles in a cup came from which country?

Japan had cup noodles from 1971, six years before Golden Wonder brought the idea to British shops.

Pot Noodle has long been stereotyped as a staple food for which group of people?

Students were so tied to the brand that its 2006 relaunch advert was designed, a spokeswoman said, to appeal beyond giggling student boys.

What name does Pot Noodle give to the larger pots sold for some of its flavours?

King pots arrived in 2000, the year the brand says it went up a size to give bigger appetites a fuller meal.

Pot Noodle's Original Curry flavour comes with a small sachet of which Indian restaurant condiment?

Mango chutney, labelled sweet on the pot, is one of the sachets the brand has put in every Pot Noodle since 1992.

Which meaty-sounding Pot Noodle flavour was one of three on sale when the snack went nationwide in 1979?

Beef & Tomato was there from the start and still comes with a little sachet of tomato sauce to stir in.

Which Pot Noodle flavour was launched in summer 2014 to tie in with a major football tournament?

Brazilian BBQ Steak was pitched at the brand's core audience of 16-to-24-year-old men as an easy taste of the host nation's barbecue.

Pot Noodle's £10m relaunch in 2006 as a healthier snack cut levels of fat and which other ingredient?

Salt came down across the range in that relaunch, which also raised the vegetable content of some flavours.

Which inventor, hailed in a British obituary as Mr Pot Noodle, sold the first instant noodles in 1958?

Momofuku Ando was 48 when he perfected flash-frying noodles after months of trial and error, and he lived to 96.

A 1993 Pot Noodle television advert was banned after reports that it had caused what in some viewers?

Seizures in three viewers pushed the regulator to write rules on flashing images, the origin of the Harding test that adverts now have to pass.

What did the advertising watchdog do with hundreds of complaints about Pot Noodle's innuendo-heavy TV adverts in 2005?

Dismissed them: the watchdog called the campaign a little crude but harmless, and judged its after-9pm slot restriction appropriate.

Pot Noodle: The Musical, a show set in a noodle factory, was staged in 2008 at which arts festival?

Edinburgh Fringe audiences got a show dreamed up by the brand's own advertising agency, Mother, and paid for by the snack's maker.

Golden Wonder followed Pot Noodle with a similar pot snack based on which dried staple?

Rice in a pot came in flavours such as risotto and curry, and returned for a limited relaunch in 2018.

Besides noodles and dried vegetables, a classic Pot Noodle contains chewy textured pieces made from which crop?

Soya pieces give the pots their bite, and in 2007 the maker estimated that 300 Pot Noodles were being eaten in Britain every minute.

In 1995 Pot Noodle was bought by Best Foods, the American maker of which mayonnaise brand?

Hellmann's owner paid about $280 million for the pot snack business, then was itself swallowed by a bigger food group five years later.

When Golden Wonder went into administration in 2006, which snack firm bought the business, minus Pot Noodle?

Tayto, based beside a castle in Tandragee, County Armagh, took on the Golden Wonder name while Pot Noodle stayed with its existing owner.

Golden Wonder launched Pot Noodle in 1977 while owned by which cigarette maker?

Imperial Tobacco had diversified into snacks and held Golden Wonder until a takeover broke the group up in the 1980s.

Which comedy writer, later a co-writer of the film Borat, created and played Terry in Pot Noodle's TV adverts?

Peter Baynham found unexpected fame as Terry: strangers shouted the advert's catchphrase at him in the street.

In 2002, which regulator ruled a word in Pot Noodle's television slogan unsuitable for broadcast at any time?

The ITC, which policed commercial television before Ofcom, had received more than 300 complaints and first pushed the advert past the 9pm watershed.

Before its wider launch, Pot Noodle was test-marketed in autumn 1977 in which ITV region of England?

Granada viewers in the North West got the 32p snack first, and production reportedly could not keep up with demand.

Pot Noodle's tongue-in-cheek apology for a noisy TV advert made its debut during which music ceremony?

Brit Awards viewers saw the re-cut on 2 March 2024, with a caption admitting that some people had reacted badly to the original's sound.

Six years before Pot Noodle appeared, which company launched Cup Noodles, instant noodles sold in a foam cup?

Nissin sold the product in the United States as Cup O' Noodles, a name it kept there until 1993.

Super Noodles, which moved into pots in 2017 to rival Pot Noodle, is sold in Britain under which brand name?

Batchelors pots sold more than 13 million units, giving owner Premier Foods what it called its strongest growth in five years.

Katsu Curry and Chilli Chicken were among the flavours in which Pot Noodle range launched in 2021?

Fusions was aimed at demand for Asian-inspired flavours and followed an earlier range that had included laksa, miso soup and pho.

In 2026 Pot Noodle put its four best-selling flavours into which new pot-free format, aimed at evening meals?

Blocks weigh more than 110g each, a portion sized up on request, and come with the same wet sauce sachet as the pots.

Pot Noodle's paper pots still rely on one ultra-thin layer of which material to keep the water in?

Plastic film lines the paper so it survives boiling water, yet the pot can still go in household paper recycling.

The maker of Pot Noodle says devoted fans of the brand are affectionately known by which nickname?

Noodlers is the pet name the brand used in 2023 when it told fans its famous pots were being trialled in paper.

Pot Noodle's first paper pots went on sale in a 2023 trial exclusively at which supermarket chain?

Tesco shelves got an initial 500,000 of the new pots, the result of more than three years of development.

Which British group owned Golden Wonder from 1987 and sold its Pot Noodle business to an American buyer in 1995?

Dalgety took about $280 million for the pot snack business, eight years after picking up Golden Wonder in a conglomerate's break-up.

After losing Pot Noodle, the Golden Wonder name returned to pot snacks in 2009 under licence to which company?

Symington's used the name on The Nation's Noodle, a range pitched squarely against the brand Golden Wonder had created.