"Scrabble Junior" news and stories

I am a game addict. Within arms reach of me right now are Connect 4, Quarto and a chess board. Cranium is tucked lovingly under our entertainment center next to our original Nintendo Entertainment System, and you don't even want to know what would happen if I opened the cabinet doors above that. Game explosion!

But my all-time favorite game is Scrabble. Anyone who's ever scratched the Scrabble surface -- either by playing competitively themselves or learning about the game through a book like Word Freak or movie like Word Wars -- knows that Scrabble players are an odd bunch who take their anagramming and Triple Word Scores dead seriously.

I am slightly less of a snack junkie, but when I do snack, I take it equally as seriously, and when it comes to snacking, nothing beats the Cheez-It. The crunchiness, the big cheese flavor, and if I happen to find a couple burnt ones in my box, I'm in snack food heaven.

So imagine my excitement when my mother called to tip me off to her discovery of Cheez-It Scrabble Junior crackers in a grocery store near Seattle. This product hasn't hit any shelves near me in Brooklyn yet; if it had, you can guarantee I'd already have a box. According to Kelloggs, the new snack crackers were introduced on January 1st, so hopefully it won't be long before I find them.

From what I can surmise, they're basically regular Cheez-Its with different letters stamped into them, kind of like a cracker version of Alpha-Bits (which alarmingly, I just discovered, appear to be R.I.P.). Since Scrabble is an adult game, I'm not sure what is so "Junior" about this particular product, except maybe the notion that adults grow out of eating cheesy snack crackers. Or the childish feeling I'm getting of looking forward to playing with my food.

Has anyone had these yet? Do I need to grow up?!