Less is moreMr Tidbit has long been complaining about the practice of introducing some slight variation of a food product at the same price (so it doesn't seem like a price increase) but with a smaller quantity (so it is a price increase).

He was about to do so again -- this time with reference to Pepperidge Farm's new Milano Minis (the darling half-size version of Milano cookies, in several flavors in a bag smaller than the 7-ounce bag of regular Milanos but at the same price) -- when he had the feeling that he had seen them before.

So he checked. Indeed, he wrote this nine years ago, about then-new Mini Milanos (yes, the name got switched around, but it's the same half-size cookie): "There's just one thing wrong: The 5-ounce bags of the new adorable little cookies carry the same price as the 7-ounce bags of regular-size cookies -- a 40 percent price increase. Cute." Today he would pass along this additional note: The bag of new Milano Minis isn't 5 ounces; it's 4.75 ounces, so they cost 47 percent more than full-size Milanos.

Oh, wait! It appears that, as we speak, the bags of some flavors of full-size Milanos are dropping to only 6 ounces.

Just peachy Mr. Tidbit also repeatedly pledges not to mention new food products that are merely new flavors of existing products, but he feels the need to break that vow yet again, as he is swayed to mention one of the two new flavors of Nabisco's old standby cookie, the Fig Newton.

To refresh your view of the Newton landscape, we already had, in addition to the original Fig Newton, a fat-free version, a whole-grain version, Newtons in both strawberry and raspberry flavors instead of fig, and mini-sized Newtons in fig and strawberry.

Now we also have Triple Berry Newtons (which Mr. Tidbit would not have mentioned) and Sweet Peach & Apricot Newtons, a flavor Mr. Tidbit thinks is sufficiently unusual in the cookie world to be worth noting. (FYI, a disappointed Mr. Tidbit thinks they taste like Fig Newtons.)

AL SICHERMAN