100 calories, 200, 300 ... The current wave of 100-calorie packs of snack foods is now completely out of hand. Mr. Tidbit pledges that, after today, he won't mention new entries unless they are interesting on their own -- or even more outrageously priced than usual.
To illustrate the problem, here are the Nabisco 100-calorie packs he found at one store. In this case, almost none of the 100-calorie packs' contents bears a strong resemblance to the named product (they are Oreo thin crisps, not regular or even tiny Oreo cookies, etc.): Cheese Nips thin crisps, Mini Teddy Grahams, Honey Maid thin crisps, Ritz toasted chips minis, Ritz snack mix, Wheat Thins chips, Lorna Doone shortbread cookie crisps, Barnum's Animals choco crackers, Alpha-Bits mini cookies, Oreo thin crisps, Chips Ahoy! thin crisps and Planters peanut butter crisps. The total weight of a box (six 100-calorie bags) of any of these varies slightly among them, but is about 5 ounces. All are $2.98 at one discount supermarket, about 60 cents an ounce.
At the same store, regular Nabisco cookies and crackers, in boxes or bags in the 14- to 18-ounce range, are typically between 18 and 23 cents per ounce -- about one third the per-ounce price of the 100-calorie packs.
And now there are five new 100-calorie packs -- of products that exist in no other form: Oreo and Chips Ahoy! candy bites (cookie stuff inside a candy shell), and Oreo, Chips Ahoy! And Nutter Butter chewy granola bars.
Micro-muffin Well, it's already a judgment call (are these interesting on their own?): Hostess has introduced three new 100-calorie packs of tiny muffins, like the tiny cupcakes introduced last year. Each of the six 100-calorie packs in a box holds three teeny-weeny (10-gram) streusel-topped muffins, each about the size of a squeezed cherry tomato, in blueberry, cinnamon or banana. (You can imagine the size of the blueberries.)
