Wednesday, June 11, 2008

New product Wednesday, at Dallas-area stores: True North nut snacks

By Teresa Gubbins

True North is a new line of nut-themed snacks which, if you spotted on the shelf with its minimalist design and dearth of neon colors, might look like it comes from an independent of some kind, instead of a big corporation such as Plano-based Frito-Lay.

But it is Frito-Lay, who announced the new line last fall as part of an effort to lure health-conscious consumers looking for a snack with protein. It includes plain nuts; nuts with crunchy savory and sweet coatings; nut clusters; and nut crisps.

The irritating thing about companies like Frito-Lay is the fact that they rarely enter a realm such as this without some other innovator having first paved the way. The only time they seem to take any risk is with something awful for you like that gross oil Olestra.

Nuts, obviously nobody can patent. But the nut clusters would be familiar to anyone who's previously bought nut clusters by companies such as Mrs. May's (founded in 2002) and Sahale (founded in 2003). They're nuts bound together in a crunchy base, occasionally (not here) with flavoring added, and then cut into squared-off little bites. The ones from True North don't seem to add anything new (other than massive marketing and shelf space hogging); even the shape of the bag itself clones the other guys'.

The one item in the line that seems unique are the nut crisps. Companies such as Diamond have previously added pulverized nuts to crackers, but True North’s crisps have a novel texture, for lack of a better word. The nuts are little chips that form a kind of mosaic in the cracker, or maybe more like a stained glass window. Anyway, the little bits of nut are uniformly spread throughout, giving the whole cracker a neat crispness. There's a richness but the crackers are still light, not oily.

The weird thing about this line is that even the name mimics the name of an ad agency, the one that absorbed the Dallas-based Leiner Temerlin/Bozell. At one point, Frito-Lay even retained True North's services. Isn't it kindof weird that they ended up giving this line the exact same name?

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• Food and Drink

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