The rise and fall (and rise?) of SnackWell's.

Was very surprised to see this in the store:

What the heck...?

SnackWell's, for those of you old enough to recall, was the biggest name in cookies, at a time when Clinton was the president and the Internet was still commonly called the "World Wide Web" (complete with quotes). Nabisco's magic lightweight cookie, heralded in 1994 by the New York Times as "The Cookies that Ate a New Market," was huge. Commercials featuring a hapless "cookie man," the SnackWell's truck driver, being pursued by three hungry women of a certain age, were staples of TV advertising. The brand expanded to have a number of varieties at its peak, including the popular Devil's Food and various sandwich cookies.

And then, suddenly... they were gone.

Brands rise and fall, we know that, but the disappearance of SnackWell's was so abrupt and complete that I often wondered what happened. But until this box appeared suddenly -- without the Nabisco logo, note -- I never bothered to find out.

Well, now I found out, thanks to Karen Corday's story from last April in Tedium. In a nutshell, the story goes like this: SnackWell's was created as a low-fat treat in response to the famous (and perhaps disastrous) Food Pyramid that demonized fats and lionized carbs. People dove for their fat-free guilt-free goodness. But the whole thing cratered in the early aughts as it became clear that we were getting fatter and that maybe carbs without fat was not the way to healthy eating. It didn't help when a bad food trend got named for the brand: the SnackWell Effect showed that when people thought something wasn't as unhealthy they would consume more, erasing the possible benefits. Sales dropped precipitously. So Nabisco got rid of SnackWell's.

But now it's back.

B&G is a New Jersey-based company that has made its own cottage industry by buying defunct, once-huge brands and relaunching them. These include classics like Green Giant, B&M, Clabber Girl, Underwood, Cream of Wheat, Sugar Twin, and who could forget Molly McButter? And that's in addition to their own B&G-branded pickles and whatnot. The new SnackWell's is no longer fat-free; these devil's food cookies have 3g of fat per serving, as well as 120 calories, and that's just for two cookies. They do say that it has "40% less fat than the leading brand of fudge and marshmallow cookie," meaning Mallomars, which have 5g of fat per serving but 10 fewer calories. In any event, SnackWell's still ain't Atkins.

All right, but how do they taste?

I have to tell you -- they taste as much like nothing as any cookie I have ever eaten.

I'm serious. The flavors of chocolate and marshmallow in this SnackWell's cookie are mild to the vanishing point. I was chewing the cookie and wondering what on earth it was, because I couldn't taste hardly anything. It was like slapping yourself on the cheek when you've had Novocain, wondering at the lack of feeling, except with flavor.

I did try SnackWell's in its heyday and I don't recall them being so flavorless. But it is possible. We know that fat is the great conveyor of flavor, so the originals might have even been worse. And maybe that's the real reason for the SnackWell Effect -- you wind up eating more of them, trying to build up some amount of flavor in your mouth.

Sorry, B&G; I love you as a rescuer of brands (and brand mascots), but I can't recommend this product.