It's that time of year again. I'm not talking about the holiday season or the fact that there is a whole new array of winter vegetables in the produce aisle. I'm talking about the fact that late fall is when Nabisco puts out Mallomars again. Mallomars are a cross between cookies and candy, with a fluffy marshmallow topping a crispy cookie, all covered in a thin layer of dark chocolate. It is the chocolate layer, which hasn't been replaced with a chocolate-flavored, heat resistant substance, that makes Mallomars so vulnerable to destruction in warm weather. They are at the top of the snacking pyramid for marshmallow lovers and, as they are only readily available for a few weeks each year, they are quite the hot item, despite the fact that they can only be sold when the weather is cool.

They have been around since 1913, so they have nostalgic appeal in addition to generally being appealing to new, younger audiences. The place where Mallomars are the most popular is New York, which Kraft/Nabisco says makes of 70% of its annual sales of the treat. Not only that, but some of the vendors that carry it say it is their best selling cookie all year - probably because people are stocking up for the off season.

Just when it seems that we'll never get any decent food on an airplane again, Southwest Airlines has introduced a special on-board snack. Produced by Nabisco, "golden airplane-shaped crackers" mark the airline's 35th anniversary. The unique crackers come in commemorative packaging.

Since Nabisco makes Ritz crackers, which already come in various non-circular shapes, Southwest's crackers will probably be very similar to them. The last time I flew Southwest, they were serving mini-pretzels, which I quite liked for an airplane snack. I'll be sad to see them go, even though Ritz are tasty, too. I'm just hoping that they decide to go with mini-airplanes, because the only thing sadder than not getting a snack on a plane is getting one lone Ritz cracker.

This summer, Oreos are changing their classic, round shape for six weeks. The new Oreos, called Dunkers, will be oblong, stretched out to enable easier dunking. Apparently, the most popular way to eat Oreos is to dunk them in milk, but most of their advertising has focused on the "twist" and "lick" aspects of their "Twist, Lick and Dunk" theme. Additionally, instead of having the "Oreo" logo printed on the cookies, they will feature new slogans, like "Dunk Me," "Milk's Favorite Cookie" and lines that indicate suggested levels of dunking. The campaign's success, when it is launched in June, will determine whether the classic cookies will make their shape-shifting permanent.

AdJab doesn't like the idea of the shape change because they're not big fans of the dunking concept. I could go either way as far as dunking is concerned, but I suspect that the "twist" part of the Oreo-eating process will be made much more difficult by having an oblong cookie. As the twist is my favorite part of eating Oreos, I think I'll be in favor of sticking to the traditional shape.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal described the difficult position that 100 calorie snack packs find themselves in. According to the WSJ, the problem is that if they taste too good, consumers will eat multiple packs at a sitting, so the companies have to make them taste just good enough to motivate customers to finish the bag. If the product is too bad, consumers might not be likely to purchase it in the future, so companies only have to keep people from spitting out their snacks. This is an industry niche that is not filled with award winning goodies by any means. A taste test done by staff picked out some of the best and worst options in a group of determinedly average candidates. Overall, Vitalicious products were preferred to other brands in taste and had overall fat contents lower than their competition, but here are the rest of the picks:

Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs

• Best: Planters Peanut Butter Cookie Crisps
• Worst: Chips Ahoy! Thin Crisps

Keebler/Sunshine Right Bites

• Best: Fudge Shoppe Mini Fudge Stripes
• Worst: Mini Cheez-Its

Vitalicious

• Best: VitaCake
• Worst: Muffin tops