- [Narrator] Americans spend over $11 billion each year
consuming over 2 billion pounds of crackers.
- Today, when you're walking down a supermarket aisle,
there's millions of options when it comes to crackers.
- You will be spoiled for choice
because every possible flavor under the sun
can now be found in cracker form.
- [Narrator] But this wasn't always the case.
- In the 1800s, crackers have a lot of limitations.
They were worse than stale bread.
- [Narrator] It'll take a railroad entrepreneur
and a struggling father and son.
- What, you want to sell sandwiches?
- No, a cracker that eats like a sandwich.
- [Narrator] To break the doors
for the entire cracker industry wide open.
- The Cheez-It emerges
as arguably the first snacking cracker.
- Triscuit changed people's expectations
when it came to what a cracker could actually be.
- [Narrator] Then, America's new obsession with crackers
will fuel an arms race between two baked-goods juggernauts.
- Now you have a real rivalry between Nabisco and Sunshine.
- They were just shamelessly copying each other at times.
- [Narrator] Going head to head
in an attempt to dominate the national cracker market
and paving the way for snack food as we know it.
- The Ritz Cracker changed everything.
- [Narrator] These iconic brands
will spawn a $24 billion a year global industry
and give rise to the modern American snack food aisle.
- They're crispy, they're crunchy,
they are carbohydrate creativity in a box.
This is the story of the cracker.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] In the late 1800s,
Americans eat mostly fresh and naturally-preserved foods.
Without modern preservatives,
items like bread and produce spoil quickly.
But one simple baked good is built to last.
The cracker.
- Prior to the 1890s,
crackers were, in a word, super-duper gross.
They were hard, they were brittle, not usually flavored.
- The earliest crackers were really just sustenance food.
- It was really something that was indestructible. [laughs]
Mainly associated with sailors and other people
that were doing kind of common laborer work.
- [Narrator] At this time, crackers are produced locally
and sold without branding.
- The idea of this modern supermarket that has everything
did not exist.
Generally speaking, you would go to a general store,
and in these general stores,
there would be, quite literally, a cracker barrel.
- [Adrian] But at the bottom,
there were some unappetizing things, like soggy crackers,
insects, or even rodent droppings.
- That's where we get the expression,
"Scraping the bottom of the barrel."
- [Narrator] But in 1891,
a struggling railroad entrepreneur
is facing a very different problem.
[Henry sniffing]
- Smells like feet.
- Must be ready.
- Henry Perky was a former lawyer
who entered the railroad business
basically building rail cars.
- As it happens in business,
he fell on hard times, and at one point,
they actually say he was living in an abandoned rail car.
And he sort of developed some pretty intense stomach issues
and was looking for something to help ease his pain.
[pensive music]
- What is it?
- Boiled wheat.
- [Adrian] The science of eating,
the idea that food is medicine
really starts to gain a currency in the late 1800s.
- Doctors would prescribe different food
for people who were suffering from different ailments.
- [Robert] I mean, it was crazy things, like yogurt enemas.
[chuckles] But for real, they tried it.
- I want you to eat this three times a day for three days.
- By the late 1800s,
more and more doctors were thinking
that wheat was a cure-all.
So they were actually prescribing an all-wheat diet.
- Three days?
- But there's not really a great way to eat it.
There aren't wheat cereals like we have now.
There's bread, but there are a ton of additives.
So the only way people are eating
this medicinal health food is
boiled wheat porridge,
which is, to be honest, kind of gross.
- [Narrator] Perky eats boiled wheat for three days,
and the results surprise him.
- [Edward] Perky finds that this wheat product works for him.
It actually helps to settle his stomach down.
But it's not very tasty.
- It's slightly slimy from the actual husks of wheat
that are floating around in it.
- And he starts thinking,
"How can I make this more palatable for myself?"
- [Narrator] Perky uses his knowledge
of building steel cars for the railroads
and experiments with using machinery to process the wheat.
- He takes wrought iron
and he carves little grooves into it.
And then he takes those plates
and presses it down onto the boiled wheat.
[compelling music]
And what comes out on the other side
are these thin thread-like things,
kind of like really thin pasta.
- He took those strands of wheat
and he started to layer them on top of each other.
- So he looks at this finely shredded wheat,
[suspenseful music]
and he said, "Well, what happens if I bake this?"
- Then, of course,
what he comes out with is thin and crispy,
nutty, and toasted.
- [Narrator] Perky's innovation will not only birth
one of the most popular types of breakfast cereal
generating over $2.8 billion in global sales per year,
it will also lead to the creation
of a pioneering cracker,
which will bring in over $400 million in annual revenue
and strike the match
that will ignite the American cracker industry
for the next century.
But right now, Perky doesn't see the true potential
of his recent invention.
- Initially, his idea was to sell the machinery
that shredded the wheat.
- [Brooke] Perky's just invented
one of the most iconic food products of all time
and he doesn't even see the potential,
which is kind of crazy, if you think about it.
- [Narrator] Perky wants more people
to experience the health benefits of shredded wheat,
so he travels the country pitching his machine to hotels,
restaurants, and bakeries.
And he's now secured a meeting
with one of the most powerful figures in baked goods.
- [Adam] In the 1890s,
Joseph Loose is the head of the American Biscuit Company.
- It's a conglomerate
that has over 40 different bakeries nationwide.
- Henry Perky.
- At the time, when there weren't
national baking companies,
some of the local mom-and-pop bakers
decided to join with others
in order to withstand the competition
and improve their standing in the marketplace.
- How much?
- Well, I could sell you the machine for about--
- No, how much is the patent?
- [chuckles] I mean, the patent's not for sale.
- Look, what am I gonna do with one machine?
- [Narrator] Loose sees bigger potential
in Perky's innovative new creation.
- I'll need to produce these biscuits at a larger scale.
- [Narrator] If he can sell them exclusively.
- Sell the biscuits.
- Of course.
- What he realizes
is that no one really cares about the machine.
They're really after what he made with those machines,
the shredded wheat.
- [Narrator] Perky decides,
if anyone is going to profit from shredded wheat,
it should be him.
- $1 million.
- $1 million then is $30 million today.
And this is a totally unproven product,
so this is a very, very bold ask.
- Thanks for coming to see me, Mr. Perky.
- Perky says, "You know what? I'm going to sell
these baked, crispy shredded wheat biscuits."
- [Narrator] As Perky develops a new plan
for shredded wheat,
Joseph Loose makes moves of his own
by joining forces with a rival company.
- [Adam] They decided to create an incredible strategic alliance
between the American Biscuit Company
and the New York Biscuit company
to create one sort of monolith.
The National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco.
- [Narrator] The merger quickly makes Nabisco
the most powerful bakery conglomerate in the country.
- The idea behind Nabisco was for manufacturers
to be able to have more power through collective bargaining.
- [Jason] Their ability to buy wholesale now is increased,
and they can get a much, much better price
because they're buying at such huge volumes.
It was very smart and very ahead of its time.
- [Narrator] Nabisco envisions its logo
on products across America,
hoping to create a national baked goods empire.
Meanwhile, Henry Perky
has been quietly growing his shredded wheat business.
- So Perky starts selling his shredded wheat biscuits
out of a cart on the street,
and people cannot get enough of them.
- [Kate] As business picks up,
Perky transitions to a factory in Boston.
He then begins selling the product commercially in boxes.
- [Narrator] Perky encourages his customers
to eat shredded wheat at all times of day.
- He's thinking, "This is a health food.
This is to help people live healthier lives."
- [Narrator] But right now,
Americans are rethinking one meal in particular.
- The launch of shredded wheat is around the same time
as ready-to-eat breakfast cereals hit the market
in the late 1800s.
It really radicalized how people ate breakfast.
It used to just be leftovers from the night before,
but with these ready-to-eat cereals,
it came right out of a box.
- [Bill] So Perky starts taking advantage
of the ready-to-eat cereal trend,
and he starts marketing his products as a healthy breakfast.
Sales take off, and within the few years,
he can't even keep up with the demand.
- [Kate] By 1900,
Perky is selling shredded wheat on a national level.
This is pretty wild when you think,
10 years ago, Perky was in the railroad business.
He had no experience in the food industry.
- [Narrator] In 1901,
Perky builds an enormous factory in Niagara Falls.
It's one of the earliest in the nation
to be powered by electricity.
- The Niagara Power Company,
which is located in Niagara Falls,
is one of the first companies to harness hydroelectric power
and to advertise that cheap power to corporations.
- [Narrator] But Perky's new project
requires him to take out massive loans.
- We got another letter.
- [Narrator] Against the advice of the company lawyer,
William Hamlin.
- We owe 1.4 million.
The board's planning to take control
until the bonds are paid off.
- So he went from establishing a new factory
to now fighting for control of the entire company.
- [sighs] I'll find a way of increasing the sales.
New product?
- New products cost money.
What can you make for no money?
- Perky thinks, "What can I use
to make something where you need this any time of day,
you can put anything you want on it,
and it's really versatile and really portable?"
[pensive music]
- Toast.
Everybody loves toast.
We'll make a shredded wheat version of it
using the equipment we already have.
- [Narrator] Though he doesn't know it yet,
Perky's idea is about to invigorate
one of America's most overlooked staples
and put his company on a collision course
with a rising giant.
- That's crazy.
Some might even say it's crackers.
- [Narrator] In 1902,
Henry Perky has an out-of-the-box idea.
He wants to create a shredded wheat product
that can be a substitute for toast.
- Perky knows he cannot be tethered to breakfast,
so he's thinking, "what else can I serve Americans
at all times of the day?"
- These just got sent up.
- [Adrian] Perky was looking for something
that would last longer than bread,
but you could still do everything with it
that you would do with bread.
You could put cheese on it, you could put jam on it, jelly.
- [Narrator] Perky tries flattening
the shredded wheat strands
before baking to create a thinner, crisper texture,
but it just falls apart.
So, Perky must rethink his process from scratch.
[pensive music]
- [Edward] So what he does
is he takes the shredded wheat that comes out,
and instead of rolling it and pillowing it up,
he crisscrosses it, layers it,
and then sort of presses it down and flattens it.
- [Narrator] Perky then bakes them into thin,
crisp, toast-sized rectangles.
- [Adam] What he's ultimately created
is a very large wheat cracker.
And though he's set out to enter the cereal market,
he's now entered a completely different one.
Crackers.
- [Narrator] In the early 1900s,
a national market for crackers is just emerging,
and it's led by Nabisco.
- When they first formed,
Nabisco came up with this product called Uneeda Biscuit.
- [Jason] In addition to giving the country
its first standardized cracker,
they create the first, what they call the inner seal,
which is basically an inner wax wrap
that keeps the crackers fresher longer.
- [Narrator] Able to be shipped long distances,
the Uneeda becomes America's
first nationally-branded cracker,
but it's the packaging, not what's inside,
that makes it special.
- The Uneeda cracker itself wasn't anything revolutionary.
It was plain, it's basically just a saltine.
- [Narrator] Perky's shredded wheat cracker
will have a completely unique flavor and texture.
- [Adam] Because this idea of a mass-produced biscuit
baked by electricity is so novel and so groundbreaking,
he wants that to be at the center
of the marketing campaign.
- How's...
Electricity Biscuit?
- A bit wordy.
- [Henry] Electrobiscuits.
- He decides he is going to combine the words electricity
and biscuit, and create...
- Electro...
Triscuit.
- The Triscuit.
- [Narrator] In May of 1903,
Triscuit is first sold in Niagara Falls.
By that fall, they roll out nationwide,
proudly advertised as the first cracker
baked by electricity.
- Triscuit changed people's expectations
when it came to what a cracker could actually be.
- We don't just have to be utilitarian kind of flavorless;
we can have more textures and more flavors for crackers.
- [Narrator] But while consumers are intrigued,
they're also wary.
- When Triscuit first hits the market in 1903,
nobody knows what to do with it.
- It was literally enormous.
It was supposed to be a healthy substitute for bread.
You literally had to break it up to eat it.
- It's not exactly a runaway hit.
- [Narrator] Perky hoped that the Triscuit
would get the Shredded Wheat Company out of debt,
but his gamble didn't pay off.
- The board realizes, "We need to improve sales."
- Starting next month, we add a coupon inside.
- But they aren't approaching this
in the same way that Perky did, where it was all about health.
- With all due respect, these are health foods.
- Health foods don't pay the bills, Henry.
Sales do.
- So Perky's vision and the investors' vision clashed.
- But Perky's shares in the company at this point
are so watered down
that his opinion does not carry that much weight.
- Now, his title might be president,
but at this point, the board has all the power.
- [Narrator] In 1904,
the board calls for Perky's retirement,
nominating lawyer William Hamlin to take his place.
- [Kate] Perky's spent 15 years building this company
and this product from the ground up,
and now he's just completely lost control.
- [Erin] When Perky leaves the Shredded Wheat Company,
he decides that he wants to start a school
that teaches farming and domestic science,
but unfortunately,
he passes away before the school can come to fruition.
- [Narrator] As the maker of Triscuit moves forward
without its founder,
Nabisco keeps its hold on the cracker market,
selling tens of millions of Uneeda boxes a year.
And it starts pouring resources into cookies,
with products like Fig Newton and Barnum's Animals.
But a competitor with a grudge is about to emerge.
- [Brooke] Joseph Loose is betrayed
by one of his lawyers at Nabisco
and basically forced out of the company.
- So, Loose, his brother, Jacob,
and their brother-in-law, John H. Wiles,
found a competing mega bakery,
the iconic Sunshine Baking Company.
- [Narrator] Sunshine soon releases
their own Uneeda knockoff,
the Takhoma,
and then turns their focus to cookies as well.
- There was no question
that Sunshine and Nabisco were competitors.
Not only were they always trying to better one another
with new innovations,
but they were just shamelessly copying each other at times.
- Sunshine developed
a number of successful cookies and crackers,
including Hydrox,
which Nabisco ripped off to create the Oreo.
- Both companies have versions of animal crackers.
There's lots of similar and competing products.
- But both of these companies,
they're still playing it pretty safe
when it comes to crackers.
They only have your run-of-the-mill graham crackers,
soda crackers, nothing out of the ordinary.
- [Narrator] Yet by the late 1910s,
Nabisco and Sunshine still dominate
with their low-cost crackers,
thanks to a scale no small independent bakery can match.
[pensive music]
Like the one run by the Green family in Dayton, Ohio.
- [Adam] J.W. and Weston Green
were father and son from Dayton, Ohio.
Now, Dayton, Ohio, at this time,
was home to a business called the Wolf Bakery.
And when Mr. Wolf died, father and son bought this factory.
- [Narrator] The Greens sell a cracker
named after their hometown.
- The Dayton cracker becomes a sensation
in a very small area of Ohio.
It's not the most tasty cracker,
it's a dry, hard butter cracker.
And even though it's incredibly popular
in the center of the United States,
most of the country has no idea who they are.
- [Narrator] During World War I,
the Green & Green Cracker Company
survives on government contracts,
shipping biscuits and hard tack overseas.
But as the war comes to an end,
they're struggling to make ends meet.
- New shipment is packed and ready.
- [sighs] The store canceled their order.
- Green & Green,
they were relying on the government contract for so long.
Now, in peace time, what are they going to do?
- We need to give them something new.
- Like what?
- [Brooke] If the Greens wanna be successful
in this post-war market,
they need something innovative.
They need something that's gonna stand out
and get people to notice them.
But all their ideas keep falling flat.
[pensive music]
- [J.W.] What have you got there?
- Just Welsh rarebit.
- Welsh rarebit is one of my favorite things to eat
when I go over to the UK.
It's essentially an open-face, gooey, grilled cheese,
and it has a wonderful toasted cheese flavor.
[pensive music]
- That might be an idea.
- What, do you want to sell sandwiches?
- No, a cracker that eats like a sandwich.
- [Narrator] The Greens don't know it yet,
but they're about to create
one of the most recognizable crackers in America.
Their one-of-a-kind cheesy square
will generate $1 billion in annual revenue,
kicking off a new era in flavored snacks
and paving the way for the American snack food industry.
- [Adam] Green & Green, they know where they want to go,
but they have no idea how to get there.
And one wrong turn on this journey
could spell disaster for the entire company.
[pensive music]
- [Narrator] In 1921,
the Greens have an idea for a cracker
that doesn't need a topping.
They're trying to make one with cheese built right in.
- Crackers, up to this point,
had just been flavored with salt, honestly.
There was no real flavored cracker on the market.
- [Narrator] If they succeed,
they'll have one of the first crackers built for snacking.
- [Kate] You have some sweets in the market,
where you have Fig Newtons, you have caramel corn.
But salty snack foods, as we know them today,
just do not exist in America yet.
- Even flavored potato chips,
those don't come out for another 30 years.
- [Brooke] Remember, this was before anything like Cheetos,
or Fritos, or Doritos.
This was revolutionary at the time.
- [Adam] Initially, the Greens first try melting cheese
on a super-duper large cracker,
but it's not sustainable.
The texture is gross.
- [Erin] With the Greens decide to do
is to take cheese and put it in the dough.
So, this is like totally flipping the script.
- [Narrator] But the cheese is difficult to work with.
[tense music]
- Why so puffy?
- Cheese has a certain level of moisture,
and so if you put the cheese into the dough,
once you bake it, the water turns to steam
and causes the the cracker to puff up.
- [Weston] Can we cut back on the cheese?
- [Chef] We're using as little as we can already.
- [Brooke] Green & Green are really trying to invent themself
in this post-war world,
and they don't have the capital
to keep failing at this recipe over and over again.
If they can't get it right, they will go bankrupt.
- [Narrator] While the Greens
struggle to create a product that can sell,
the Shredded Wheat Company
struggles to sell a product they already have.
- Sales of Shredded Wheat are actually quite good.
In fact, they're steadily increasing.
However, the Triscuit,
even though it's been around
for a considerable period of time,
it's really not selling at all.
- [Narrator] For over 20 years,
the Triscuit has been marketed as a substitute for toast.
Now, Hamlin begins to consider a makeover.
- [Erin] So the original Triscuit is harder
and denser than the product that we know today,
and it doesn't have any flavorings or salt on it.
- It's also one of the largest crackers on the market.
People don't know what to do with it.
- You wanted to see me, sir?
- Tell the team I wanna make the Triscuit smaller.
- They decide it's no longer going to be the size
of a piece of toast.
Instead, it's gonna be
a two inch by two inch little cracker.
They also start adding a vegetable spray
with a little bit of salt in it to make it taste better.
- [Narrator] In the late 1920s,
the Shredded Wheat Company relaunches the Triscuit.
- [Bill] The Triscuit was always a cracker,
but it was literally enormous.
So now, in the 1920s, they wanna make it more portable,
so you could literally eat it anywhere, anytime.
- The Triscuit was the first cracker
that was something different.
It had a different texture, it was hardier,
and it really showed that there was room for growth
and innovation in the cracker space.
- [Narrator] Just as the Triscuit gets smaller
and more flavorful,
the Greens also try new sizes and techniques
as they try to perfect their cheesy cracker concept.
- I have some more samples for you to try.
We used docker holes to reduce the puffiness.
[pensive music]
- Docker holes are something
that's been around for centuries in baking.
- [Edward] Do you see those little holes
in the middle of saltines?
Those are docker holes, they're steam holes,
they're vent holes,
and they allow this buildup of steam an easy way to exit.
- The cracker's small, we just went with one hole.
- Some people think it's a design choice,
some people wonder why there's only one.
- Oh, heck.
I could eat these by the handful!
- Well, the truth of the matter is,
that little tiny hole was truly a hole in one.
- What do we call it?
- So, because their inspiration was Welsh rarebit,
the Greens called their new cracker...
- Baked Rarebit.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] In 1921,
the Greens put all their hopes into their new cracker.
And it's a flop.
[pensive music]
- Maybe it's the name.
- The Greens realize, "We have a good cracker.
We just have a terrible name.
Let's think of a new name."
- [J.W.] Cheesebit.
- Short and sweet.
- How's Cheese Toasty?
- We could do Zesty. - [J.W.] Zesty?
- I'm trying to come up with something fun, you know?
Something that rolls off the tongue like Triscuit.
- Triscuits. - It's fun,
easy to say, one-of-a-kind.
[suspenseful music]
Cheese-It.
- [J.W.] What do you think?
[compelling music]
- "Cheese it" used to be an expression
that meant like, "Knock it off."
Like, "Cheese it, the cops!"
You know, or, "Cheese it, the teacher's coming."
And they took that expression
and made it to the name of their cracker,
which is pretty distinctive.
- [Narrator] With its new name,
the Greens relaunch their cheese-flavored cracker.
This time, the Cheez-It takes off across the region.
- The Cheez-It emerges
as arguably the first snacking cracker ever in existence.
No one had ever seen anything like this before.
- The idea of a cheese-flavored cracker,
I mean, it was way ahead of its time,
and it was a major game-changer.
If I could flavor crackers with cheese,
well, what else could I use as amazing flavoring?
The sky was the limit at that point.
- [Narrator] And it won't be long
before the industry's biggest players take notice.
- [Narrator] In 1921, a small orange cracker explodes
onto the American snack foods scene.
- People in Ohio absolutely love the Cheez-It,
and pretty soon, it's expanding across state lines.
- [Narrator] As Cheez-It slowly grows across the Midwest,
the Shredded Wheat Company
is selling their new and improved Triscuit nationwide.
- Instead of just being that combination of flour and water,
that shredded wheat opened way
for actual flavor and texture in the cracker.
- [Narrator] But as both companies
see an increase in sales,
they are still dwarfed by the bakery behemoth Nabisco,
which is now bigger than Heinz, Campbell's,
and even Hershey's.
- Nabisco has national visibility at this point,
and they have a lot of cookies like Oreo and Lorna Doone.
- [Narrator] But while they have countless cookies on offer,
their cracker repertoire hasn't changed in years.
[pensive music]
And their new president has no interest
in ceding territory to their rising competitors.
- Roy Tomlinson is the new head of Nabisco
after the death of the founder, Adolphus Green.
- Tomlinson, he's a lawyer.
He's used to fighting cases in court and litigation,
and he wants to win.
And for him, that means everyone else has to lose.
- [Narrator] Looking to strengthen Nabisco's hand,
Tomlinson makes an unexpected move.
He reaches out to a rival, the Shredded Wheat Company.
- Mr. Hamlin.
[tense music]
I wanted to give you fair warning
that we're coming out with our own shredded wheat products.
- Why are you telling me?
- I'm giving you an opportunity.
I could go to all the trouble of making my own shredded wheat,
or I could just buy your company.
- [Jason] So Tomlinson wants to buy the Shredded Wheat Company.
And an extra benefit from buying the Shredded Wheat Company
is he's also gonna get the Triscuits brand.
- At this point, Triscuit is doing well in the marketplace.
It's become a unique option in the cracker aisle.
And it's exactly what Nabisco needs
to round out their cracker lineup.
- [Narrator] In 1928,
Nabisco acquires Shredded Wheat and Triscuit
for $35 million,
more than 650 million today.
- [Jason] For decades, Nabisco has been the undisputed king
of the bakery section in your grocery store.
- And now, they've got Shredded Wheat
and Triscuit in their stable and they seem unstoppable.
- [Narrator] Yet Nabisco's dominance won't go unchallenged.
- Tomlinson knows he has a very talented
and very motivated competitor nipping at his heels:
Sunshine.
- [Narrator] By now, Sunshine has factories
all across the nation,
and it's second only to Nabisco.
- This is a textbook case
of competition being great for the marketplace
because they both had to one up each other,
which resulted in a lot of delicious cookies
and crackers being made.
- [Narrator] After the death of Joseph Loose
and his brother,
Sunshine is now in the hands of John Wiles.
But while there's been a change in leadership,
Sunshine's drive to beat out Nabisco hasn't wavered.
- [Jason] So, Wiles sees what's happening with Nabisco,
look, they've already made copies of their Hydrox cookies,
and now he sees Nabisco getting into the shredded wheat game
and they've acquired Triscuit,
and he does not wanna fall behind.
[knocking] - Come in.
- So they decide that they have to make a big acquisition
of their own.
- Ah, Mr. Green.
Weston. Have a seat.
- And the battle lines are drawn.
- [Narrator] In the late 1920s,
the Cheez-It is one of the most unique crackers
on the market,
but few people outside of the Midwest have heard of it.
One who has is John Wiles of Sunshine Biscuits.
- I'm still not really clear on what you're looking for here.
- Hmm, well...
I'd like to acquire your company.
[pensive music]
- Why would we sell to you?
- You're already successful in the Midwest,
but with our marketing,
everyone from Boston to the Pacific
will know the name Cheez-It.
- [Narrator] In 1929,
Sunshine acquires Green & Green Cracker Company,
and Wiles makes a bold move
to launch the Cheez-It on a national scale.
- Sunshine, when they get Cheez-Its,
they're being sold in these sort of pale green
and white tins and canisters.
They could be easily, you know,
confused from medical supplies.
They realize, "Okay,
we gotta immediately change up the branding on this."
- Sunshine realizes it's not enough to have a cracker
that stands out in the marketplace.
They need a package that stands out on the shelf.
They need something bright and eye-catching.
So, they create this amazing bright orange, red,
and yellow packaging to sort of evoke cheese,
but also to grab the customer by the collar and say,
"Buy this."
- [Narrator] In 1929,
the Sunshine Cheez-It is released nationwide.
- People go bonkers for them.
It just sets Sunshine's success into the stratosphere.
- The Cheez-It really took off after that point.
I don't think it's really looked back since.
- [Narrator] Sunshine now owns the only mass-produced
flavored cracker on the market,
giving them something Nabisco doesn't have.
But they also want a product
that will directly challenge the Triscuit,
so they funnel all of their resources
into developing a new kind of cracker.
- In the 1920s, the cracker
really starts to take center stage at parties.
You begin to see cracker trays,
where you can put together little combinations
to make the perfect bite.
Cookbooks even have recipes
for what you can put on your crackers,
from pimento cheese to anchovies.
- [Kate] So now, in the 1930s, Sunshine is starting to think,
"Okay, how can we make crackers the centerpiece
of the American dinner party?"
- No, no, no, the texture...
The texture's all wrong.
- So Sunshine now gets deep into R&D,
coming up with this brand-new product.
- Mm.
And buttery.
And mild.
Mm, perfect crumble.
- It's a rich, round, buttery cracker,
which they hope will be the next big thing.
- Yeah, this is it.
This is the Hi Ho.
- Sunshine comes out with a real big hit called the Hi Ho.
- [Adam] Now, this particular cracker is really unique.
It's perfect for hor d'oeuvres,
but it's also really delicious on its own.
- [Narrator] Soon, Sunshine's newest cracker
is showing up at dinner parties across America.
But with great success comes attention.
- [Jason] Tomlinson sees what Sunshine is doing.
He sees the meteoric success of Cheez-Its
and he sees what they've just rolled out with the Hi Ho.
- [Adrian] Nabisco realizes, "This is a real challenge
to our market share,"
and so they have to come up with something
that answers that challenge.
[knocking]
- Come in, come in.
- They're ready.
- So Nabisco's scientists actually develop a cracker
that's a good answer to the Hi Ho.
[suspenseful music]
- This?
- Except it's exactly like the Hi Ho.
- I can ask the bakers to make some changes.
- There's no time for that.
We're set to launch next month.
- People that are testing and tasting
Nabisco's imitation to the Hi Ho cracker
feel that they're pretty much the same.
They're both buttery, slightly salty,
have a crumbly, flaky sort of eating experience.
- So, the way Nabisco
is now going to have to get through to people
and establish that this is something different,
they're gonna have to do it with the branding.
[pensive music]
[door clicking]
- Look at this.
- Is it a Hi Ho?
- Exactly.
- So Sydney Stern, he was trained as an artist,
he went to school for it,
and he accepted a job at Nabisco
working on their cartons and packaging.
- What makes it different?
- That's up to you.
- At this point, Stern has a reputation.
A few years ago, he rebranded Barnum's Animal Crackers
by adding a string,
so the box itself ended up becoming an ornament.
He was literally thinking outside of the box.
- Apparently, the boxes all sold out almost immediately.
- And now, Nabisco's challenge for him
was to do that magic trick one more time.
- You have until Monday.
- [Erin] Stern really has his work cut out for him.
He needs to take this new cracker and make it seem unique
and better than the Hi Ho,
and he's only got a weekend to do it.
[intense music]
- [Edward] Sydney Stern happens to take off his hat
and he looks down inside,
and inside the rim there's a gold seal
with the name of the hat in it.
That was his great inspiration.
[compelling music]
- [Narrator] In 1934,
branding expert Sydney Stern has one weekend
to come up with a marketing plan
for Nabisco's newest, buttery, decadent cracker.
- [Adam] Now, this particular cracker
has these little ruffly edges.
Its flaky, its delicate, and Sydney Stern wonders,
"Maybe the key is to sell this cracker
and to market it
as an affordable taste of the good life."
- [Kate] But we're in the Great Depression.
If you're saying that this is so luxury,
and fancy, and nice,
like are people gonna be annoyed
that this is what you're shoving in our faces
when we're all struggling?
It's a big risk.
[suspenseful music]
- Picture this.
You're home from work,
dinner is the same old boiled cabbage.
Then you remember...
[intense music]
Ritz Crackers.
- Ritz.
Like the hotel?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Cesar Ritz is a Swiss immigrant
who comes to the United States,
and he gets into the hotel business,
and he becomes well-known for creating luxury hotels.
- [Jason] And so, Stern wants to deliver people
the idea of elevation,
of something special,
of something they can't normally get.
- We're in the midst of an economic crisis.
People are suffering.
- I know, I know times are tough.
But with Ritz, anyone can afford a taste of luxury.
- In the halls of Nabisco,
they're not sure at all whether consumers
will appreciate the reference to the Ritz
or whether they'll find it offensive.
- The Ritz Cracker.
- [Narrator] But with no other options,
Tomlinson approves Stern's marketing plan.
And in 1934, Nabisco releases the Ritz Cracker.
- And sells like gangbusters.
- [Adrian] People went crazy for these crackers,
and it shows you the power of marketing
because it was a time of aspiration.
People were going through hard times,
but they wanted a taste of the good life.
- [Bill] The success of this cracker cannot be overstated.
After three years, they're making 29 million every day,
making it the best-selling cracker in the world.
- [Brooke] So, the Ritz quickly eclipses the Hi Ho.
And the truth is, Nabisco just has better marketing.
They have farther reach
and they have more money to get their product out there.
- [Narrator] Throughout the 1940s and '50s,
Nabisco continues to expand the snack aisle
with savory new products,
like a new take on the shredded wheat cracker
known as Wheat Thins.
Sunshine will continue to challenge them
in the cracker landscape,
with Cheez-It leading the way as their flagship product.
- The funny thing about rivalries is, you know,
the best rivalries push both parties forward.
So much of what we love about Nabisco
was created as a reaction to what Sunshine was doing.
Without the two of them, there would be no Oreo,
there would be no Ritz Cracker.
But no doubt about it,
these two companies were the cracker kings
for the entire 20th century.
- [Narrator] In 1996, Sunshine, along with Cheez-It,
sells to Keebler,
which eventually gets acquired by Kellogg.
Today, Cheez-It alone pulls in over $1 billion
in annual revenue.
Meanwhile, Nabisco's impressive cracker empire,
including the Ritz, Triscuit, and Wheat Thins,
continues to bring in over $1.5 billion per year.
- [Adrian] The American genius
when it comes to these baking companies
is they took something that was pretty utilitarian,
very basic,
and they turned it into something beloved today.
- There are core American memories
that we've created around crackers,
whether it's having them alongside a bowl of soup,
something you had when you weren't feeling well.
- You can use crackers
as the centerpiece for your cheeseboard.
They've really paved the way
for the entire snack food industry.
Today, we wouldn't have Cheetos, Funyuns, Bugles,
or any other flavored snacks because crackers did it first.
- And I think that's the beautiful thing about it.
This strange, brittle, carbohydrate-laden food stuff
really changed the way Americans eat forever.
[dramatic music]