I feel a bit silly introducing a company like Keebler. I'm sure you know them. You've seen the Keebler Elves on tv. Keebler is the largest cookie and cracker maker in the US, and has been around since the 1800s. They sell products under a slew of other brands, that I'm sure you also know: Cheez-It, Famous Amos, Town House Crackers, Wheatables, and many, many more. They are even one of the bakers for Girl Scout Cookies (the Little Brownie Bakers versions). Oh, and now Kellogg owns them, so, I guess the correct parent company is Kellogg, but, I'll restrict to just Keebler branded products for these snack reviews.
Cookies
"Let the Keebler™ Elves make your world a little sweeter. Explore the tasty goodness baked into every bite of Keebler cookies."
The Keebler elves are probably most known for their Chips Deluxe cookies. I remember always thinking they were dry, hard, and really boring as a kid. I have no interest in trying them now as an adult. I do recall liking the Fudge Stripes cookies though, I'm not really sure why, as, they too were hard cookies, and, I'm just not a cookie girl. I kinda remember liking Vienna Fingers too. Keebler also makes a slew of other types of packaged hard cookies too, like Sandies (shortbreads), E.L. Fudge, frosted animal crackers, Vanilla Wafers (no, no Nilla Wafter, those are Nabisco), and many others. But again, just hard cookies, not my thing.
I did however try one kind, marketed at kids.
Cinnamon Graham Bug Bites..
These were actually really tasty. And yes, they were just graham cracker snacks in silly shapes.
They had a strong cinnamon flavor. Nicely crunchy. Somewhat caramelized on the outside. They were good plain, but even better when dipped in Fluff. Or Nutella. Or both. Just sayin'.
Sadly, they have been discontinued, and are now only available as part of a variety pack with RIce Krispies Treats and Skooby-Doo! Graham Cracker Sticks.
Sandwich Crackers
Keebler has a large lineup of crackers, sold under the Town House brand. But they also have many different varieties of sandwich crackers, each with a different cracker and filling, sold just as Keebler items, no sub-brand. They are named simply, all flowing the "cracker name" + "filling name" model.
The offerings are pretty simple, crackers filled with peanut butter or cheese, but the shapes and flavors do change slightly. Most are fairly basic, but they have a few for the more adventurous types, like a Pepper Jack version.
All suffer from one common problem: way too little filling for the amount of cracker. Perhaps they need to be like Oreo and offer DoubleStufs?
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| Club & Cheddar. |
"Enjoy the signature buttery flavor and flaky, melt-in-your-mouth texture of these sandwich crackers made with real cheddar cheese and Club® Original Crackers."
I was in the mood for something cheesy, so I went for the "Club & Cheddar".
"Club" is the type of cracker apparently.
I was curious about the name, so of course I looked it up, and discovered that Keebler makes a variety of crackers in the "Club" line, as standalone crackers. They come in mini sizes for adding to soup, sticks for dipping, or standard cracker shapes. Described as "light, buttery, flaky crackers".
Anyway, these were square versions of their Club cracker, with a thin layer of totally fake, er, I mean "Real Cheddar", cheese in the middle.
The crackers were rich and buttery, and the filling tasted sorta like easy cheese (or, at least my memory of easy cheese). I actually kinda liked these, but ratio of cracker to cheese was all off, way too much cracker, too little “cheese”. I just wanted the cheese!
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| Toast & Peanut Butter. |
I was again amused by the name of the cracker. "Toast"? There was nothing toast-like about these. What is a "toasted cracker"? Where do they come up with the names?
Anyway, "Toast" were also rich buttery crackers, although actually pretty different from "Club". Sure, they were round instead of square, but they were perhaps even more buttery, more flaky, and reminded me of Ritz crackers. That might have just been because they looked just like Ritz though?
Inside was a thin layer of peanut butter. Far too thin. It wasn't particularly interesting peanut butter, not creamy, not chunky, just there. Good enough, and less fake tasting than the cheese.
These were also fine, and reminded me of the snack I used to eat with my dad in the evenings while we watched Star Trek together. He'd pull out a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter (chunky!), a knife, and a bag of Ritz (or sometimes Saltines), and we'd just sit there spreading crackers with a generous amount of peanut butter, munching away. Sometimes I did make them into sandwiches like this too, but usually left them open faced. The key is, I used more peanut butter on a single cracker than this entire pack of 6 had! I loved them, and these did actually make me nostalgic.
They also make a PB'n J version, that looks identical, plus some jam? I'm curious about those, but, really, I just want Ritz and Skippy now.
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