Tag: snacks

Choc’ Full and Wheat Thin

Chocolate aficionado that I am, the recent headline of the possible buyout of The Hershey Company instantly grabbed my attention. Hershey has been around for well over a hundred years; the American brand most associated with chocolate (no matter what you think of their products). But one detail caught my attention even more than the chocolate. Mondelez, the purported buyer of Hershey, also makes Wheat Thins snack crackers. Suddenly this announcement is downright riveting.

If you don’t have a box of them in your pantry right now, you’re at least familiar with Wheat Thins.  The flat, square, unashamedly crunchy crackers have been around forever (that is, if 1947 is the same as forever).  Wheat Thins are packaged in the bright yellow box with the distinctive red Nabisco logo in the upper corner.  The box top encourages you to “Open for 100% Awesome” and boy do I ever.  I sometimes wonder whether Nabisco has baked more Wheat Thins or Oreos over the course of their respective existences.  As a kid I would’ve hoped that winner would be Oreos.  These days I nosh more like an adult and prefer the ultimate snack cracker.

Imposter crackers

Here’s where you come at me with your own “ultimates”.  Maybe your pantry is stocked with Cheez-it crackers instead of Wheat Thins.  Maybe “everything sits on a Ritz” in your house.  Or you like Premium saltines because they’re, well, saltier.  Are you’re one of those inexplicables who actually prefer table water crackers?  You must’ve really liked communion wafers as a kid.  Nothing says “Styrofoam” like the taste of a table water cracker.

Frequent companion

Wheat Thins was (were?) introduced to my palate at a very young age.  My dad was obsessed with them.  I can’t think of a time I entered our pantry where the big yellow box wasn’t present.  My dad would eat them right out of the box instead of bothering to pair with cheese or dip.  My dad was never one to talk with food in his mouth, but I swear I can still hear him holding conversations with my mother while simultaneously crunching a mouthful of Wheat Thins.  Apparently obsessions are hereditary.

Wheat Thins are described as “100% Whole Grain”, which is a sly way to throw you off the canola oil, sugar, cornstarch, and other garbage you’ll find on the ingredients list.  Admittedly there were several years where I strayed from Wheat Thins.  At the time our pantry morphed into a collection of decidedly more healthy options, and many, many boxes of Wheat Thins gathered dust on grocery store shelves.  We indulged in almond, baked, and organic wheat crackers instead, as if any of them held a candle to Wheat Thins.

King of snack crackers

I can’t say exactly when they made their comeback, but suddenly Wheat Thins is a pantry staple again.  Probably because I missed their “indescribably delicious taste”; a spot-on advertisement because I can’t describe what makes a Wheat Thin so delicious.  Whatever the attraction, the recommended serving size of “16 pieces” is laughable.  Heck, I grab that many in one handful.  On that note, I’m eternally grateful to Nabisco for creating a “Party Size” box of Wheat Thins (and I’m perfectly content to be the only one at the party).

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

To be clear, we’re only talking about the “original” here.  I was horrified to learn there are over twenty spins on the taste of Wheat Thins, including “lime”, “chipotle”, and (gag) “dill pickle”.  Then Nabisco went completely off the rails and created sweet versions of Wheat Thins, including “honey” and “lightly cinnamon”.  Those last two have been discontinued because, c’mon, did they really think the king of sweet crackers – the graham – could be dethroned?

Like a lot of food products I was raised with, Wheat Thins are not as “original” as they claim to be today.  They just aren’t.  I can’t say how many of them I’ve eaten in my life but let’s go with a billion, shall we?  That makes me an unquestionable Wheat Thins expert.  And I’m here to tell you the taste may be the same but the consistency is suspect.  Wheat Thins are a little crunchier these days than they used to be.  If they’d just let me into their factories I bet I could figure out exactly which ingredient they swapped out (in the interest of profit margin, of course).

If I were you (wait… reverse that; if you were me), keep an eye on Mondelez.  You know them by their former name: Kraft Foods.  Mondelez is quietly consuming the entire snack aisle.  Chips Ahoy, Triscuit, Sour Patch, Toblerone, Dentyne, even Tate’s Bake Shop (another “thin” delight) all belong to this foody conglomerate.  Hershey Kisses (and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!) may soon join the list.  But if someday we all wake up and finally realize these products are terrible for us, I hope the one cracker Mondelez is still making on the day it closes its doors is Wheat Thins.  I’m not sure I can live without them.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Hershey’s stock explodes higher on report Mondelez offered to buy it”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Don’t Mess with Jack!

This week, the original junk food Cracker Jack introduces a new look to its packaging, and – brace yourself – no more “prize inside”.  The tiny toys synonymous with the brand since 1912 have been replaced with QR code stickers, which connect to games on your phone when scanned.  Farewell to those temporary tattoos, finger-sized comic books, and decoder rings; – another slice of Americana is gone.  Check out Facebook’s Cracker Jack page if you want a sampling of the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the news.

41 - click bait

Cracker Jack’s announcement shamelessly reduces the “toy surprise inside” to mere click bait.  Akin to so many Facebook posts, the allure of click bait is to discover the rest of the story.  In the process you get a healthy dose of advertising.  Click bait never gets my attention, nor will Cracker Jack’s QR codes.  The thrill of the prize is gone.

Cracker Jack has a special place in my heart.  My great uncle became synonymous with the treat when he showed up at family gatherings with enough boxes for his dozen grandnephews and nieces.  More significantly, I hid my wife’s engagement ring inside the prize packet of a box of Cracker Jack just before my proposal.  She used to be a Crunch ‘n Munch fan until she opened that particular “toy”.

Cracker Jack is another link to the past that has suffered never-go-back changes.  The boxes are smaller now (in fact, the latest packaging is not even a box), and the ratio of peanuts to popcorn has increased.  It’s the typical product manipulation that has you thinking you’re consuming the same thing you did ten years ago.  Like ice cream, where brands are now sold in smaller containers designed to look like the standard half-gallon.  Or fast-food “quarter-pound” burgers that are no longer as big, yet still qualify by definition.  Perhaps the most obvious example: Oreos have less filling and thinner cookies than the originals.  Ironically, today’s “Double-Stuff” are probably more like the “singles” from a generation ago.

Changes like Cracker Jack hit me hard, not only because I’m paying more for less but because the tampering seems like an injustice.  Why not keep the original and charge more?  I’d pay.  And I’m not alone.  Wikipedia claims the New York Yankees tried to replace Cracker Jack with Crunch ‘n Munch at home games ten years ago, but the public outcry forced them to switch back within a matter of days.  Don’t mess with Jack!

Speaking of baseball, Cracker Jack is immortalized in the lyrics of “Take Me Out To the Ballgame”, sung in the middle of seventh inning stretches.  I wonder if today’s generation knows what they’re singing about with “…buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack”?  Even if they do they’re singing about a different product now, including the updated images of mascots Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo.  No doubt Cracker Jack’s founder had that in mind before he passed away in 1937.  The original Sailor Jack is carved on his tombstone.  Now there’s something they can never change.