Cheez-It: Your July 4 Cracker

photo by Christina Staalstrom

​It's a holiday weekend and time to hit your local grocery store to stock up on party supplies. For most Americans, July 4 means burgers, hot dogs, ribs, coleslaw, and ice cream. And it seems everyone is jumping on the holiday discount bandwagon. A visit to a few local grocers showed an opulent display of cookies, coolers, steak sauce, mustard, mashed potatoes, and... Cheez-It crackers?

We love cheese, and we love crackers. With a little digging, we found that Cheez-It considers itself the "ultimate American snack cracker." The first Cheez-It was sold in 1921 in Dayton, Ohio, and since then has continued to crunch the American dream as it has shifted hands from Green&Green to Sunshine Biscuit to Keebler to now Kellogg's. The crackers are clearly confident and self-centered. Just check out their tag lines: "The Big Cheese" (arrogance), "Actual Size" (delusions of grandeur), and "Get Your Own Box" (egomaniac).

But we let this slide. The Cheez-It is close to our hearts. It brings back memories of sunny holiday barbecues where we stuff our faces full of these crisp, salty babies and then lick our fingers. The holidays are here.