Tidbits: New, by Jingos!

New, by Jingos! Pepperidge Farm has a new line of little baked snack crackers that comes complete with a trademarked phrase: "Bold flavor, snappy crunch." They're called Jingos! (the exclamation point is part of the name, not an indication of Mr. Tidbit's level of excitement), and they are wavy-shaped little guys, small enough that a 30-gram serving (a tad more than an ounce) is 23 of them. There are three bold flavors: Parmesan garlic, Fiesta Cheddar, and lime & sweet chili.

Maybe it's only Mr. Tidbit, but he finds the name Jingos unfortunately remindful of the term for saber-rattling nationalism. Indeed, the top three results of a Google search on "jingo" are one for these crackers (presumably Google was paid for this high ranking), one for a Chinese restaurant in Columbia, Mo. (ditto), and one for the Wikipedia article on the term "jingoism."

That said, Mr. Tidbit does not have a winning record when it comes to seeing problems with product names. In 1992, he predicted that the then-new General Mills cereal Berry Berry Kix would be a sensational flop because it shared its name with a nutritional-deficiency disease. ("If somehow Berry Berry Kix catches on," he added, "we might one day see Kellogg's Rickets Krispies and Scurvy Cap'n Crunch.") Twenty years later, Mr. Tidbit is semi-retired and looking seedy, but Berry Berry Kix is still selling very nicely.

M&M's mixes Mr. Tidbit apparently hasn't been keeping close tabs on new M&M's products (the apostrophe is part of the name, not an indication of how Mr. Tidbit would prefer to punctuate a simple plural), but probably he would have ignored the debuts of dark chocolate mint and dark chocolate raspberry M&M's (in 8-ounce bags): They're simply new flavors.