Cheez-Its offer up a sandwich

The world of cheesy lunchbox snacks has a new entrant: Cheez-It sandwich crackers.

The standby brand here, Lance, has been around forever, although many people who buy the cello-wrapped six-packs of little cheese or peanut butter cracker sandwiches singly or in boxes of eight might never have noticed their name. Keebler was already in this business, with a number of cheese/ peanut butter sandwichettes including some on little Club crackers. Nabisco’s Ritz is in this business too, with cheese, peanut butter and cream cheese fillings, and Frito-Lay’s many Munchies extend to a peanut butter and chocolate item.

But Keebler’s CheezIt entry, while not stepping out of the cheese category, makes it much more particular with Italian 4 Cheese, in addition to Spicy Queso and Classic Cheddar.

Ever the skeptic, I verified that the filling in the Italian 4 Cheese version contains Cheddar, ricotta, Romano and mozzarella.

At one store, the Lance 11-ounce boxes of eight cello-packs are $3.39 (31 cents an ounce), the same size boxes of Keebler’s Club cracker sandwichettes are $3.19 (29 cents an ounce), the essentially same size Ritzes are $2.99 (28 cents an ounce) and the Munchies are only $2.29 (21 cents an ounce). The box of Cheez-Its contains only six 1.48-ounce packs, totaling just 8.9 ounces, and at that store sells for $3.59 (40 cents an ounce).