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.
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.
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.
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).
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”.
Life In A Word 