Cheese Nips
 | |
| Brand | |
| Industry | Food |
| Headquarters | East Hanover, New Jersey, United States |
| Owner | Nabisco (Kraft Foods until the present) |
| Website | |
Cheese Nips are small cheese-flavored crackers manufactured by Mondelēz International under its brand, Nabisco. They are similar to Kellogg's Sunshine Cheez-It.
Kraft uses cheese of its own production to make these crackers.
Cheese Nips are made in Cheddar, Reduced-Fat Cheddar and Four Cheese (Cheddar, Parmesan, Romano, Mozzarella) flavors. They were once made in extra cheddar flavors. The Four Cheese flavor contains half a gram of trans fat per serving.
Cheese Nips are also known for selling versions of their product that are shaped like cartoon characters, such as Avengers, Despicable Me, Angry Birds, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Catdog.
Portion-controlled[1] packages of Cheese Nips are also sold under the name Cheese Nips Thin Crisps 100 Calorie Packs (Thinsations in Canada), to appeal to the health-conscious market. Similar to the discontinued Cheese Nips Air Crisps, these Nips are slightly smaller and thinner than regular Nips, but are also hexagonal in shape.
Nips also appear along with other varieties of snacks in mix called Nabisco Cheddars, Yo Cheese, and Bits 'n' Bites.
Cheese Nips (originally stylized as Cheese-Nips) were introduced in 1955 and positioned in the 1980s as a competitor of Sunshine Cheez-It. By 1999, the box was given more of a contemporary look, with the slogan "100% Real Cheese Taste Explosion". Since the Kraft/Philip Morris merger of Nabisco in 2000, Kraft Cheese Nips and all other Nabisco cheese-related products are made with Kraft Cheese. Crackers shaped as characters from the Nickelodeon show CatDog were produced to further market the snack.
Kraft uses cross-promotions with other products and events to sell Cheese Nips. In 2003, it sponsored a NASCAR Chevy driven by Steve Park. In return for financial sponsorship, Kraft was allowed to place its logo for Cheese Nips (as well as Fig Newtons) prominently on the back of the car, where it was likely to be seen by spectators of races. The car was then sold as a toy, in miniature form, as a collector's item.