Nabisco's latest is another version of Wheat Thins crackers. It's Wheat Thins Flatbread, long rectangular crackers (with a sprinkling of grains other than wheat), in Tuscan Herb or Garlic & Parsley flavors. Mr. Tidbit has several things to say:

First, be careful in comparing nutrition information: A serving of regular Wheat Thins is 16 crackers, weighing 32 grams, and a serving of Wheat Thins Flatbread is two (much larger) crackers, weighing a total of 15 grams. That's half the size of the serving of the regular crackers, so although the Flatbread's calories, fat, sodium, sugar, etc., per serving all look much lower, only the fat content really is.

As with virtually every new version of an existing grocery product these days, Wheat Thins Flatbread costs much more per ounce than regular Wheat Thins. The 5.5-ounce box sells for the same price as the 10-ounce box of regular Wheat Thins, so it's 82 percent more per ounce.

The packaging seems designed to obscure the amount within, if not to be outright deceptive. The boxes are the same size, but while the regular crackers are loose in a bag, the Flatbread crackers are in a tray.

The tray might be needed to keep them from breaking, but the crackers are about 4 1/4 inches long and the tray has huge shoulders that make it about 6 3/4 inches long. It's in a bag that adds another ½ inch, and there's another ½ inch of empty space above it in the box.

HOW SMART IS IT?

When Mr. Tidbit noticed the surprisingly large (4- by 6- by 8 5/8-inch) box of Smartfood Popcorn Clusters, and saw that it contained just five 1-ounce bags, he wondered how much Smartfood -- as opposed to empty space -- there was in the box. The volume of the box is 14 cups, 3 ½ quarts, almost a gallon. How much of that is just air?

It's not obvious. There's a punch-out dispenser section at the bottom of one side. So you don't see how much space is on top when the box is ``full.'' Unless you pull the top open: There's about 4 cups of air up there (besides all the air surrounding the five bags).

Small bags make convenient servings, but packaging that way takes up what can be deceptively more room than the contents require: Of the 14 cups the box could hold, the total volume of clusters (poured out of the bags) is about 3 ½ cups.

YOW!

Speaking of stir-in packets, now you can buy Coffee-mate that way. A box of seven 0.1-ounce packets is 99 cents at one store, where a 15-ounce jar sells for $3.69. At the price of the packets, that jar would cost about $21!