Dear Frito-Lay Empire,

I have long admired your work. Kudos, especially, on the extra-wide Frito corn chip, which really does yield an optimal dipping experience. I wish I could tell you that this letter is only to laud you for your place of leadership at the vanguard of snack food excellence. Unfortunately, it is my sad duty to be the one to tell you that lately you have begun to miss a step. Not all cylinders are firing. There's a few bulbs out in your tree. Whatever corporate pseudo-metaphorical business-speak works for you.

The point is, Frito-Lay Companies, you have become a love 'em and leave 'em kind of snack food conglomerate. First, you hook me on your delicious Barbeque flavored corn chip, a staple of movie-watching for years in the Woodlief household. Then you introduce the Chili Cheese Frito, Barbeque's flashy cousin from Albuquerque. Sure, Chili Cheese drives a nice car and always leaves you with that breathless special on-top-of-the-world feeling, but after a while you realize he's all smile and no impact, all powdery initial taste but no lingering substance.

So I admit I flirted with the Chili Cheese Frito, but only for a while, and then I was back with my steady Eddie Barbeque Fritos, happy as a transfat cell snuggled up nice and close to a favorite artery wall.

But then I noticed the Barbeque Frito wasn't around so much any more. I would go to my favorite grocer, and see only a row of Chili Cheese Frito, flashing his big-city grin and revving his engine. Now finding a bag of Barbeque Fritos is like finding a lucid statement from Michael Moore -- you know they must exist, but you're darned if you can locate one.

You've let me down, Frito-Lay Corporation, plain and simple. You're like, oh, I don't know, let's take a purely hypothetical and totally made-up example, a wife who buys some slinky little lingerie number in a festive holiday theme, but only wears it the one time. It's not right, Frito-Lay Megalith, it's simply not right.

And now let me address my real complaint, the one that has really frosted my cinnamon buns. That's right, I'm talking about the Guacamole Potato Chip.

First, let's get one thing straight right off the bat. Don't even bring that nasty, stick-in-your-throat Dorito Guacamole disaster up in here. Don't even, Frito-Lay Behemoth. That's weak.

I'm talking about the delicate yet powerfully tasty Guacamole Potato Chip. The one we bought numerous bags of, funding who knows how many lucrative stock options for top Frito-Lay Corporate Chieftains. The beautiful Guacamole Potato Chip. The flavor-filled Guacamole Potato Chip.

The entirely absent Guacamole Potato Chip.

What really hurts, Frito-Lay Colossus, is that you didn't even warn us. We could have stocked up. We could have taken the time to linger over those last greasy delicious morsels. We could have mourned, we could have prepared ourselves.

But no, you just murdered the Guacamole Potato Chip, and then to add insult to injury, you pretend on your colorful uninformative corporate Website that he never existed.

Et tu, Frito-Lay?

So tell me, why should we trust you now? Say you manage to compress the tasty flavor of a bag of peanuts poured into a Coca-Cola, and spread it onto a savory pita chip? Why should I grow attached to a new offering from you? Why should I let myself love again, after you've wounded me so? I ask you, Frito-Lay and Associated Subsidiaries, why should I give my heart to you again?

Do you think I like buying off-brand chips, Frito-Lay Leviathan? Do you think I enjoy cheapening myself in that way, closing my eyes and pretending that the Kroger barbeque chips are really my beloved Barbeque Fritos?

Well, I most certainly do not. So here I am in this beautiful season of excess, and I am eating popcorn during movie time. Popcorn, Frito-Lay. It's a net calorie loss, by the time you count all the fishing around at the bottom of the bowl for those kernels that are hard enough to fight back, but not too hard to chip a molar.

I thought I meant more to you than this, Frito-Lay and Affiliated Entities. But I guess I do not. I'm just another statistic.

But this statistic has a heart, Frito-Lay. He has a big, overlabored, cholesterol-inhibited heart. And thanks to you, that heart is breaking. Goodbye, Faceless Frito-Lay Corporate Giant. Goodbye.