The Liberation of Animal Crackers

Hello, Kids and All Readers,

I hope each of you is enjoying a fun, festive holiday season in whatever manner makes you happy!

Do you have any favorite December holiday traditions? I do! Have any inspired you to discover their history? Yes!

When my daughter was a little girl in the 1980s, I always tucked a small wrapped box of Barnum’s Animals Crackers in among her gifts. She was so happy seeing those circus animals decorating the small red, yellow, and white box and came to expect–and receive!–the treat each Christmas. (“Barnum” refers to the nineteenth-century showman and circus entrepreneur, Phineas Taylor “P.T.” Barnum. See image.)

I have continued sending those treats to my grownup girl each December. For many years, I have included four boxes: one apiece for her, my son-in-law, and my two grandchildren.

But have you noticed? The boxes have changed over the past few years! How and why? Please read on to discover the answers.

Becoming the researcher that writing necessitates, I decided to investigate the history of animal crackers and found thirteen interesting facts to share with you:

Animal crackers were first imported from England by the United States in the late 1800s.
Due to the crackers’ popularity, Stauffer’s Biscuit Company in York, Pennsylvania, started making them domestically in 1871.
The National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) began producing them in New Jersey in 1902, and named them “Barnum’s Animals” in honor of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. The small, circus-themed boxes sold for five cents and showed animals looking through the bars of their circus-wagon cages.
That same year, a string was attached to each box’s top so they could be hung on Christmas trees. Those strings are still on today’s boxes with 8,000 miles of it used annually!
There have consistently been about twenty-two crackers per small box.
In 1948, Nabisco officially changed the treat’s name to “Barnum’s Animals Crackers.”
Fifty-three animals have been represented since 1902. The current crackers are the bear, bison, camel, cougar, elephant, giraffe, hippo, hyena, kangaroo, koala, lion, monkey, rhino, seal, sheep, tiger, and zebra.
To celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2002, Nabisco held a public contest and added the winning animal–the koala–to the menagerie.
Depending on the manufacturer, the crackers come in various flavors including plain vanilla, chocolate graham, cinnamon graham, pink and white-frosted with rainbow sprinkles, chocolate covered, and cotton candy.
Nabisco produces more than 40 million boxes of its animal crackers a year for sale in the United States and exports them to seventeen countries worldwide.
In addition to US companies and the UK’s Cadbury’s confectionary, animal crackers are produced in Germany and New Zealand.
In 2017, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus ceased operation. So, in 2018, Nabisco responded to requests from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and released new package art displaying the animals liberated from their circus boxcar cages. The beasts now roam freely in natural habitats! (See image.)
Animal crackers appear in popular culture, including the 1930 Marx Brothers’ movie, Animal Crackers; and the 2017 film Animal Crackers, where magical animal crackers turn people into the beasts in the boxes.

So, get a clue, my friends. I am pleased that those animals no longer gaze out from behind circus-wagon bars but are free to roam at will! What holiday traditions have captured your interest lately?