Was this a regional thing? In my memory, they were all dyed green.

We used to get the red ones around Christmas. I just thought they were decorative for the holidays, like Hersey's kisses changed to Christmas color wrapping

Pistachios are native to Iran, and until the 1970s Iran was the world's largest exporter. They dyed their exports with a food safe red.

They were dyed because they were hand picked and oils from the pickers hand would cause discoloration. The red dye covered that up.

Machine harvested pistachios didn't have that problem.

Fun fact, the ketchup chips in Canada were inspired by these

/s

I'm 34 and have never heard of these.

I'm 31 and I've never in my life seen red pistachios in the UK and I've been eating them all my life. What kind of fuck-ass pistachios did you Americans get wtf?

US defaultism

this is mostly a US thing

Hey bud I've got some bad news for you.

What number do you see in this circle?

On my phone at least I don't see a number

I'm pretty sure this is a prank because I've gotten tested for colourblindness, but this is a hilarious prank.

Yet pistachio ice cream has always been green...

this is only a Posnia thing.

1. Is that good? Did i get it right?

When I was a kiddo in the 80s, pistachios and other shelled nuts were commonly a winter holiday thing and I rarely ate whole nuts otherwise. I think peanuts, almonds and cashews are the exceptions, but they were almost always without shell. It's been a few decades, but I remember having red and green (default, I guess, but maybe dyed green as well?) pistachios at Christmas and having to fight with the shells to get them out. They were the tastiest and I didn't care much for walnuts, chestnuts or pecans.

Searching about 'red pistachios' also suggests it was a way to hide lower quality nuts. I'm not fully convinced about that, though, because I remember red dyed things tasting terrible as a kid. I don't think most modern red food coloring tastes bad, but it used to. The amount of dye that made it on to the edible portion may not have affected the nut's flavor too much, though.

All that to say: It could have been a marketing gimmick?

It's OK I ain't seen em either

Nope. I've seen them in other countries.

red story; https://www.thespruceeats.com/red-pistachios-overview-1807049

32, American, never seen a red pistachio

It’s a 7

Ate them in Canada for many years, am not American.

Red-dyed ones were all over the middle east when I was a kid, but I've never once seen them in the US sold this way. I think it just depended on what exporter importer your region mainly used.

IT'S PIKACHU!