Would you like a lump of unsalted, uunflavored starch? No? What if we slice it open and dump in a lot of heavy flavor ingredients and spices? That way you can overwhelm your taste buds in the first few forkfuls, and the remaining unflavored mass will taste even blander by comparison!
Who invented this and what did they have against dicing the potato in appropriately sized chunks to absorb and distribute the flavor?
You may have had terrible potatoes. Homegrown potatoes are anything but bland or tasteless.
They were definitely not homegrown.