You've been calling Fig Newtons by the wrong name!
So… what's the proper term for these tasty snacks? The answer may surprise you.
Fig Newtons have had a flavorful journey from their creators' imagination to becoming one of
the most popular American snacks. However, many Americans are under a false impression when it
comes to these fruit-filled cookies. It's a strange but true fact that might shock fans
of the iconic snack. The surprising truth has nothing to do with the cookies being named after
famed scientist Sir Isaac Newton — even though a town in Massachusetts is the actual namesake,
according to ThoughtCo. The big secret also has nothing to do with the fruity filling.
"This is the one and only fig newton."
ThoughtCo. also says that while manufacturer Nabisco isn't divulging the recipe,
the likely culprit is dried mission figs. TasteAtlas shares how those are among
the most common varieties of figs, so that checks out and shouldn't shock most people.
No, it turns out, the huge reveal is all about how you've probably referred to them over the past
decade. As it turns out, you should’ve dropped the "Fig" in the name from your daily vernacular
back in 2012, because that's when Nabisco rebranded the cookies to simply "Newtons."
So why were the cookies rebranded? Well, Nabisco wanted to draw attention to the fact
that it also sold Newtons in other flavors, such as strawberry and raspberry — not just
fig. Dropping "Fig" from the name was also part of an effort to modernize the snack food.
But this wasn't the first rebrand for the cookies, either. Some consumers today might
remember when Nabisco marketed them as "fruit and cake" instead of cookies prior to the 1980s.
"A cookie is just a cookie but fat free newtons are fruit and cake."
But if you believe that you've seen packages bearing the name "Fig Newton" since 2012,
that was a pure fig-ment of your imagination. It also turns out that there's something to Nabisco
once marketing Newtons as "fruit and cake." As ThoughtCo points out, the likely inspiration
for creator Charles M. Roser’s Newtons was the classic British fig rolls. ThoughtCo
explains that British immigrants in the United States made the fig rolls as homemade treats.
Fig rolls are a simple food composed of a pastry with a preserve-like fig filling.
The homemade version of the treats remains popular in the United Kingdom today. In fact,
The Great British Bake Off offers up judge Paul Hollywood's recipe for the pastries.
If you ever want to get a taste for the work Roser put into creating Newtons,
checking out Hollywood's recipe would be a great place to start.
Roser gets the credit, though, for creating the specific recipe for Newtons and then selling
his recipe to the Kennedy Biscuit Company. So enjoying a fig roll or a Newton isn't among the
ways you've been eating figs wrong. However, it does represent a bit of American history.
If you've shopped a cookie or cracker aisle at a store recently,
you might have noticed all of the products bearing the Nabisco brand name.
That's the result of a popular business strategy that not only brought Newtons under
the Nabisco umbrella but also put significant marketing resources behind the cookies.
Company Histories relates the story of how the National Biscuit Company was created in
1898 through a merger of two bakeries. The New York Biscuit Company and the American Biscuit
Company were, at the time, conglomerations themselves. According to Company Histories,
one of the products they acquired in that process was Newtons.
The new conglomerate controlled much of the bakery market, and it wasn't afraid
to spend on advertising. In fact, through its first decade of operation, it spent an
unheard-of amount of $7 million on marketing its products such as Newtons nationwide. Thus,
Newtons went from a take on British fig rolls to a household name.
No one is probably going to blame you if you continue to call these cookies Fig Newtons,
though, and Nabisco likely doesn't care what you call them as long as you buy them.
But now you can impress your friends with your Newtons knowledge — and,
who knows, maybe these facts will come up in the next trivia game you play.