Meet the Small Potatoes talking head interviews with the band’s friends, manager Lester Koop (McDowell), and man on the street interviews with the band’s fans (all of whom are potatoes). The Small Potatoes’ trajectory roughly follows trends in American popular music through the second half of the 20th century: The Potatoes start as a country and western band in Idaho in the 1940s, before finding popularity first as rock and roll and then doo wop singers in the 1950s. They reach the peak of their popularity in the 1960s as a British invasion style act, followed by their experimenting with psychedelic rock after a
Instant mashed potatoes particular have been freeze-dried since at least the time of the Inca empire, in the form of chuño; another example is in Japanese Ainu cuisine. , titled "Dehydrate Potatoes and Process of Preparing the Same", and describing a product that was to be reconstituted in hot water, was applied for in 1905 and granted in 1912. Flake-form instant mashed potatoes date back at least to 1954, when two United States Department of Agriculture researchers were issued a patent for "Drum drying of cooked mashed potatoes" (), which describes the end product specifically being "as a thin sheet or flake". In