Okay! Here’s what we’re gonna do. Without Googling or making any reference any any official history or source whatsoever, please leave your detailed personal definition of “Nabs” in the discussion below without reading any other comments. You are also free to describe what do not qualify as nabs. Go with your heart here, not your brain. Then—only after you have given your definition—do you have the right to angrily and bitterly tell everyone else how wrong they are about theirs. I grant you permission to die on this hill.
In the interest of transparency, here's the definition I gave Owen and his brother: My Going-With-My-Gut-and-not-Google answer here is that "Nabs" are 6-packs of Lance or Lance-adjacent crackers you carry around in your pocket and bust out at a weird time because you're hungry at a weird time, but this is the sort of thing that Our State would think about HARD.
Nabs are savory (never sweet) orange-colored, peanut butter crackers that come 4 or 6 to a pack. They are found primarily in Sunday-purses and the glove boxes of trucks. They are best enjoyed with either a Sundrop or R(o)C. Lance makes the best - all others are kindly pitiful.
Nabs are a packet of square cheese crackers with either peanut butter or cheese filling. They're made by Lance, but they're called Nabs because the Nabisco company made the first version of them. They're meant to be a portable, quick snack or small lunch, usually when working an hourly job or when you're doing an activity like fishing, when taking a break would be difficult.
Nabs are in the pure sense LANCE cheese crackers with PB. They may include other flavor combos or off brands, but the further away from the original company and flavor combo the less likely they are “Nabs.”
I’ll put it this way: I’ve never known anyone to say they’ll grab some Nabs and come back to the car or golf cart with Nekot cookies or Doritos Munchies crackers. But maybe they got the round LANCE crackers with PB.
I think they need to be either Lance crackers, or (OR!) clearly some other brand's knock-off attempt at manufacturing a product which *is* a Lance cracker. i.e. Anybody's orange-crackers-with-peanut-butter can be Nabs, because Lance makes that too, but if you're selling, like, rosemary-crackers-with-pickle-relish, 1. Please stop before a cruel god judges us all; and 2. That's not Nabs
Nabs are Lance, and only Lance, cheese crackers with peanut butter filling. Along with a drink (not a cocktail; in my little corner of northwestern NC, "drink" was what we called all sodas) part of my college breakfast routine too many times to count.
Growing up in Portsmouth, VA we called the standard Lance crackers “Nabs”, whether they were the orange crackers, the round peanut butter crackers, the yellow crackers with cheese, etc. only the Lance brand. Any others were considered knock-offs and substandard. I often guessed that “Nabs” was derived from Nabisco somehow, but never saw Nabisco brand crackers until later. Always the Lance brand, the others were crap!
This is the answer. Any standard pack of crackers with filling (even the round peanut butter ones) but NOT cookie packs. I also assumed "nabs" was short for Nabisco. But I haven't ever seen Nabisco brand cracker packs. They do make Saltines and Ritz, so maybe it's like a Kleenex - if people were eating saltines and started calling them "nabs" for the brand name, maybe they started applying that to any form of cracker. I have no idea there. (And I'm from Eastern NC.)
I beg to differ on cookie packs not being nabs. I don't know about the chocolate or vanilla cookies with cream filling, but I do know that "Nekot-nabs" is a compound word.
I am from Raleigh by way of Buies Creek and am currently sitting in a hotel in South Carolina...oops!....I meant Charlotte. I thought y'all called them snack crackers here.
Feb 9, 2023·edited Feb 9, 2023Liked by Jeremy Markovich
Pack a’ Nabs: crunchy, peanut-buttery, unnaturally, orange-colored, palm-sized, plastic-wrapped package of familiar, satisfying snack. Pairs naturally with a bottle of Coke and sometimes a chaw of tobacco. Erupts in showers of crumbs. Occurs naturally at gas stations, unless North Carolina gets too fancy.
Nabs are small crackers or cookies (about 2" x 2" in size) that come in a package of 6 typically and each nab (singular) is 2 crackers/cookies with some sort filling between two. The classic nabs: 1) Square, cheese-flavored crackers with peanut butter filling; 2) Square, cheese-flavored crackers with cheese filling; and 3) Round, crackers that taste and look like Ritz crackers with peanut butter filling.
Nabs are meant to hold you over between meals so you don't starve to death. They are available by the single pack in convenience stores and more recently can be bought at grocery stores with multiple packages to a box. They are usually one of the more economically priced snacks to go with your Diet Pepsi.
Nabs come in packs. You can only get a pack o’ nabs. Nabs usually have peanut butter or are a pack of salted peanuts. Nabs are usually (but not always) salty. Nabs are not chips. Nabs make a complete meal when paired with a soda (Pepsi, Coke, Cheerwine or Sundrop). Nabs are best when bought from a small convenience store that also sells bait and fishing licenses. Grandpas on the porch shooting the breeze eating nabs is a perfecto.
The Lance Orange crackers with Peanut Butter are the only one I ever specifically referred to as Nabs. My Driver's Ed teacher made us stop at the same convenience store in Grimesland, NC and always asked us if we wanted a Pepsi or a pack of Nabs when he wandered into the store. None of us ever took him up on the offer.
Not much I can add here. We all know it's gotta be Lance. I will tell you "Nabs" are in danger. I walked into a Quicky Mart, another NC term, not long ago and asked the young girl working there "where are the Nabs". She looked at me like I had 3 heads and said "what?" I had to explain.
Nabs are not just ANY Lance product. They must be orange and they must have peanut butter. No cheese. No sour cream and chives. They're best served with a Dr. Pepper.
Nabs are a pack of crackers (but, really, they need to be made by Lance) that can be eaten with a Sun-Drop. That's the Gaston County definition. Unofficial, obviously.
You're right, they don't have to be. I just don't trust anyone that eats another type of cracker in this area! If you REALLY want to get specific, nabs are usually thought of to be the orange Toast Chees, like you have in the photo. The important part, though, is they have to be washed down with the golden nectar of Sun-Drop
They appear blasphemous to me. Even I, an Alabaman, knew that the Golden Flake or Tom’s crackers were a fraud perpetrated on society. It has to be Lance.
I tend to see too many sides of most issues, so this is a new and thrilling feeling for me, knowing in my heart that I'm 100% correct -- especially about something that I didn't realize I felt strongly about until just this moment. (I'm from Greenville, but raised by Alabamans, if we start doing a food anthropology thing here.)
Trying now to avoid my natural tendency to start equivocating and all-nabs-ing.
Nabs are Lance snack crackers. Traditional Nabs have cheese crackers and peanut butter filling. I will accept other flavors of cracker with a peanut butter or cheese filling as Nabs, but they must be disclosed as non-traditional.
I do not accept sweet fillings (i.e. the lemon creme) as Nabs, though they are delicious.
Lance crackers, any flavor. In my mind they are really only nabs when purchased from a vending machine and washed down with a Diet Pepsi (and a cigarette tbh) instead of a proper lunch. Eastern NC native here!
Crackers! (Can be cookies, I guess.) But the ones that you get in convenience stores, packaged in packs of six. Good enough for a snack. As in: "Want anything from the convenience store? Coke, gum, pack of Nabs?" Can be any brand. The Nabisco folks just need to face that Nabs are to packaged crackers/cookies what Kleenex is to "facial tissue."
Feb 9, 2023·edited Feb 9, 2023Liked by Jeremy Markovich
Definitely nabs are the orange peanut butter crackers made by Lance. No generics allowed. I grew up in Mecklenburg county (Charlotte “countryside”). We had 2 old bachelor neighbors that worked for Lance cracker company and they would sometimes gift us with nabs.
Additional info: as I was laughing at reading the other remarks, my 89-yr-old mother chimed in. "The square, orange crackers with peanut butter are called Nabs, no matter who makes them." She grew up in Fuquay-Varina and always called them that. She moved to Greenville as a college student and stayed, and didn't know them by any other name.
Peanut butter or cheese filled crackers sold in packages of 6 or 8 crackers. Called NABS cause they were made by Nabisco. Lance also makes them but I still call them NABS.
If someone offered me a pack of “nabs”, I’d expect orange crackers filled with peanut butter. Pack of 6. I’d also expect them to be a Lance product. I’d probably choose the round ones with peanut butter. Or, controversially, Nekot. I wouldn’t even consider non-Lance offerings of this genre.
Looking back on it, I think North Carolina common law defined any orange cracker as a "Nab". At my grandfather's gas station in Randolph County in the 1950s, "Nabs" were little hexagonal orange crackers called Goldie Cheez, or something. No peanut butter, just salty crackers the size of a quarter, and they came in a bag. I haven't seen them in years. Cheezits are the same now, except square, and come in a box. The Lance Man also delivered salted peanuts in a little cellophane bag, and the approved way to eat them was to dump the bag down the neck of your Coke bottle, and then drink them. "Nabs" could also be the peanut butter crackers, but we usually just called them "peanut butter crackers."
You must have lived out of state with your parents and only visited Randolph County occasionally because otherwise you would know that Nabs don't come in bags or boxes. You are correct, however, that Lance salted peanuts come in little cellophane bags.
From my high school days at the turn of the '70s...at the Cadet Exchange (kind of an internal convenience store) at Oak Ridge Military Institute (now Academy), they sold cheese Nabs in a stack of 4 or 5 (not the 6-pack layout of today). Yes, they were Lance. And on the end of the cube where the plastic was sealed, they were stamped with a blue star. They were known to the students as "four-point, blue-star, square Nabs." So by definition the round peanut butter crackers were excluded. And they were best paired with an RC Cola, known to us as "R-O-T-C Co-cola." The fact that I remember those details after 55 years reflects what a transcendent snack they were. Good times!
Only toast-chee or toast-chee knock-offs. We also used to make our own by making little sammies with Cheez-its and peanut butter. The cheese cracker is what makes it a nab.
Nabs (as I learned to call them from my grandmother who was born in 1929 and ate them daily as long as I knew her) were individually packaged snack crackers -usually 6 to a package, sometimes 4. Lance was popular around here (Charlotte) but can’t say for sure what brand she ate in Virginia. Peanut butter filled (including the slightly sweeter Nekot crackers) counted, as did the cheese filled. Not sure if the Oreo knock-offs fell under Nab category, or if they were considered more of a dessert cookie. Looking forward to reading what the fuss is all about.
Live in Charlotte, but grew up in eastern NC. We called them Nabs, generic for snack crackers...usually the orange cracker/peanut butter ones. So my children, who are native to Charlotte, also call them Nabs, but get funny looks when they do so.
As someone who grew up in Charlotte, but whose family is not originally from North Carolina, I know we're part of the reason why Charlotteans don't call them nabs. I've always thought of them as the orange Lance crackers.
In the interest of transparency, here's the definition I gave Owen and his brother: My Going-With-My-Gut-and-not-Google answer here is that "Nabs" are 6-packs of Lance or Lance-adjacent crackers you carry around in your pocket and bust out at a weird time because you're hungry at a weird time, but this is the sort of thing that Our State would think about HARD.
Nabs are savory (never sweet) orange-colored, peanut butter crackers that come 4 or 6 to a pack. They are found primarily in Sunday-purses and the glove boxes of trucks. They are best enjoyed with either a Sundrop or R(o)C. Lance makes the best - all others are kindly pitiful.
Also good with Cheerwine
Nabs are a packet of square cheese crackers with either peanut butter or cheese filling. They're made by Lance, but they're called Nabs because the Nabisco company made the first version of them. They're meant to be a portable, quick snack or small lunch, usually when working an hourly job or when you're doing an activity like fishing, when taking a break would be difficult.
PURVIS HAS SPOKEN.
Nabs are in the pure sense LANCE cheese crackers with PB. They may include other flavor combos or off brands, but the further away from the original company and flavor combo the less likely they are “Nabs.”
Okay then, what do you call the unpure nabs?
I’ll put it this way: I’ve never known anyone to say they’ll grab some Nabs and come back to the car or golf cart with Nekot cookies or Doritos Munchies crackers. But maybe they got the round LANCE crackers with PB.
I read this the first time as "call them unpure nabs," then thought a: wow Jeremy's really talking "down home" on this, and b: makes sense
I think they need to be either Lance crackers, or (OR!) clearly some other brand's knock-off attempt at manufacturing a product which *is* a Lance cracker. i.e. Anybody's orange-crackers-with-peanut-butter can be Nabs, because Lance makes that too, but if you're selling, like, rosemary-crackers-with-pickle-relish, 1. Please stop before a cruel god judges us all; and 2. That's not Nabs
Nabs are Lance, and only Lance, cheese crackers with peanut butter filling. Along with a drink (not a cocktail; in my little corner of northwestern NC, "drink" was what we called all sodas) part of my college breakfast routine too many times to count.
Growing up in Portsmouth, VA we called the standard Lance crackers “Nabs”, whether they were the orange crackers, the round peanut butter crackers, the yellow crackers with cheese, etc. only the Lance brand. Any others were considered knock-offs and substandard. I often guessed that “Nabs” was derived from Nabisco somehow, but never saw Nabisco brand crackers until later. Always the Lance brand, the others were crap!
This is the answer. Any standard pack of crackers with filling (even the round peanut butter ones) but NOT cookie packs. I also assumed "nabs" was short for Nabisco. But I haven't ever seen Nabisco brand cracker packs. They do make Saltines and Ritz, so maybe it's like a Kleenex - if people were eating saltines and started calling them "nabs" for the brand name, maybe they started applying that to any form of cracker. I have no idea there. (And I'm from Eastern NC.)
I beg to differ on cookie packs not being nabs. I don't know about the chocolate or vanilla cookies with cream filling, but I do know that "Nekot-nabs" is a compound word.
I totally agree with you, though. Nekot gets a pass. Those are in the nabs category. It's just the true cookies that aren't.
I always carry 1-2 packs in my car, 1 Toast-chee (my fave these days) and 1 Captains wafers with chive cream cheese (my wife’s fave).
Orange Lance crackers. No doubt about it. And I’m from Charlotte (trying to keep Charlotte from being kicked out of NC)
Fellow Charlottean here - did you grow up calling them nabs or where they just the orange/cheese Lance crackers to you?
I am from Raleigh by way of Buies Creek and am currently sitting in a hotel in South Carolina...oops!....I meant Charlotte. I thought y'all called them snack crackers here.
Pack a’ Nabs: crunchy, peanut-buttery, unnaturally, orange-colored, palm-sized, plastic-wrapped package of familiar, satisfying snack. Pairs naturally with a bottle of Coke and sometimes a chaw of tobacco. Erupts in showers of crumbs. Occurs naturally at gas stations, unless North Carolina gets too fancy.
Appropriately reading this thread while stopped at Wilber's BBQ to pick up lunch
Nabs are small crackers or cookies (about 2" x 2" in size) that come in a package of 6 typically and each nab (singular) is 2 crackers/cookies with some sort filling between two. The classic nabs: 1) Square, cheese-flavored crackers with peanut butter filling; 2) Square, cheese-flavored crackers with cheese filling; and 3) Round, crackers that taste and look like Ritz crackers with peanut butter filling.
Nabs are meant to hold you over between meals so you don't starve to death. They are available by the single pack in convenience stores and more recently can be bought at grocery stores with multiple packages to a box. They are usually one of the more economically priced snacks to go with your Diet Pepsi.
Nabs come in packs. You can only get a pack o’ nabs. Nabs usually have peanut butter or are a pack of salted peanuts. Nabs are usually (but not always) salty. Nabs are not chips. Nabs make a complete meal when paired with a soda (Pepsi, Coke, Cheerwine or Sundrop). Nabs are best when bought from a small convenience store that also sells bait and fishing licenses. Grandpas on the porch shooting the breeze eating nabs is a perfecto.
The Lance Orange crackers with Peanut Butter are the only one I ever specifically referred to as Nabs. My Driver's Ed teacher made us stop at the same convenience store in Grimesland, NC and always asked us if we wanted a Pepsi or a pack of Nabs when he wandered into the store. None of us ever took him up on the offer.
Not much I can add here. We all know it's gotta be Lance. I will tell you "Nabs" are in danger. I walked into a Quicky Mart, another NC term, not long ago and asked the young girl working there "where are the Nabs". She looked at me like I had 3 heads and said "what?" I had to explain.
I am curious where "Nabs" came from.
Nabs are not just ANY Lance product. They must be orange and they must have peanut butter. No cheese. No sour cream and chives. They're best served with a Dr. Pepper.
Nabs are a pack of crackers (but, really, they need to be made by Lance) that can be eaten with a Sun-Drop. That's the Gaston County definition. Unofficial, obviously.
See, I don't think they HAVE to be made by Lance though.
You're right, they don't have to be. I just don't trust anyone that eats another type of cracker in this area! If you REALLY want to get specific, nabs are usually thought of to be the orange Toast Chees, like you have in the photo. The important part, though, is they have to be washed down with the golden nectar of Sun-Drop
Love me some Sun Drop, but rot-gut RC Cola was the OG Nabs wash-down.
This is a crucial question. My gut tells me they have to be Lance Toast-Chee. These from Walmart, for example, are Nabs-adjacent but I would not consider them Nabs: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Austin-Peanut-Butter-on-Toasty-Sandwich-Crackers-11-oz-8-Count/28442737
what the hell are those
They appear blasphemous to me. Even I, an Alabaman, knew that the Golden Flake or Tom’s crackers were a fraud perpetrated on society. It has to be Lance.
Nabs, as in “pack of nabs”, are the delicious orange sandwich crackers with peanut butter made by Lance. Accept no substitute!
-Lance
-6-pack
-any variety/combo of cracker and filling
-not cookies, but Nekots DO count
Nabs are Lance crackers - orange (cheese? cheez?) crackers with peanut butter inside. This is the only correct answer. What even is the discussion.
Really enjoy the clarity of a comment that calls the entire discussion into question because clearly there is only one true definition.
I tend to see too many sides of most issues, so this is a new and thrilling feeling for me, knowing in my heart that I'm 100% correct -- especially about something that I didn't realize I felt strongly about until just this moment. (I'm from Greenville, but raised by Alabamans, if we start doing a food anthropology thing here.)
Trying now to avoid my natural tendency to start equivocating and all-nabs-ing.
Writing this before I dive into the comments....
Nabs are Lance snack crackers. Traditional Nabs have cheese crackers and peanut butter filling. I will accept other flavors of cracker with a peanut butter or cheese filling as Nabs, but they must be disclosed as non-traditional.
I do not accept sweet fillings (i.e. the lemon creme) as Nabs, though they are delicious.
Lance crackers, any flavor. In my mind they are really only nabs when purchased from a vending machine and washed down with a Diet Pepsi (and a cigarette tbh) instead of a proper lunch. Eastern NC native here!
Also of all threads this is the one that turned me into a paid subscriber. Thank you for the rabbit hole!!
Crackers! (Can be cookies, I guess.) But the ones that you get in convenience stores, packaged in packs of six. Good enough for a snack. As in: "Want anything from the convenience store? Coke, gum, pack of Nabs?" Can be any brand. The Nabisco folks just need to face that Nabs are to packaged crackers/cookies what Kleenex is to "facial tissue."
Reconsider. Renounce your “cookie stance.” Do not make me Bless Your Heart.
Hehe, I think I just really like cookies. But in the name of Nab-veracity, I hereby renounce.
War adverted. Thank you ma’am.
(Mortal Kombat voice) FINISH HER
Lance Toastchee crackers, easy.
Definitely nabs are the orange peanut butter crackers made by Lance. No generics allowed. I grew up in Mecklenburg county (Charlotte “countryside”). We had 2 old bachelor neighbors that worked for Lance cracker company and they would sometimes gift us with nabs.
Additional info: as I was laughing at reading the other remarks, my 89-yr-old mother chimed in. "The square, orange crackers with peanut butter are called Nabs, no matter who makes them." She grew up in Fuquay-Varina and always called them that. She moved to Greenville as a college student and stayed, and didn't know them by any other name.
Peanut butter or cheese filled crackers sold in packages of 6 or 8 crackers. Called NABS cause they were made by Nabisco. Lance also makes them but I still call them NABS.
Lance Crackers. Anything from Toastchee to Captains Wafers but not the round ones. All squares.
P.S. I only like the Lance brand of nabs. The "Tom's" brand or any other off brand will only do in an emergency situation.
If someone offered me a pack of “nabs”, I’d expect orange crackers filled with peanut butter. Pack of 6. I’d also expect them to be a Lance product. I’d probably choose the round ones with peanut butter. Or, controversially, Nekot. I wouldn’t even consider non-Lance offerings of this genre.
Looking back on it, I think North Carolina common law defined any orange cracker as a "Nab". At my grandfather's gas station in Randolph County in the 1950s, "Nabs" were little hexagonal orange crackers called Goldie Cheez, or something. No peanut butter, just salty crackers the size of a quarter, and they came in a bag. I haven't seen them in years. Cheezits are the same now, except square, and come in a box. The Lance Man also delivered salted peanuts in a little cellophane bag, and the approved way to eat them was to dump the bag down the neck of your Coke bottle, and then drink them. "Nabs" could also be the peanut butter crackers, but we usually just called them "peanut butter crackers."
You must have lived out of state with your parents and only visited Randolph County occasionally because otherwise you would know that Nabs don't come in bags or boxes. You are correct, however, that Lance salted peanuts come in little cellophane bags.
Lived here all my life.
Came in bags and boxes then; Evidently still do.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lance-Gold-N-Cheese-Baked-Snack-Crackers-Single-Serve-1-25-Oz-60-Ct/441074647
https://www.cheezit.com/en_US/products/baked-snack-crackers.html
Bright orange Lance crackers only. Nothing else.
From my high school days at the turn of the '70s...at the Cadet Exchange (kind of an internal convenience store) at Oak Ridge Military Institute (now Academy), they sold cheese Nabs in a stack of 4 or 5 (not the 6-pack layout of today). Yes, they were Lance. And on the end of the cube where the plastic was sealed, they were stamped with a blue star. They were known to the students as "four-point, blue-star, square Nabs." So by definition the round peanut butter crackers were excluded. And they were best paired with an RC Cola, known to us as "R-O-T-C Co-cola." The fact that I remember those details after 55 years reflects what a transcendent snack they were. Good times!
Only toast-chee or toast-chee knock-offs. We also used to make our own by making little sammies with Cheez-its and peanut butter. The cheese cracker is what makes it a nab.
so no nekot, then
No. Those are delicious but not nabs.
Wrong. "Nekot Nabs" are definitely Nabs!
God, no!
Nabs (as I learned to call them from my grandmother who was born in 1929 and ate them daily as long as I knew her) were individually packaged snack crackers -usually 6 to a package, sometimes 4. Lance was popular around here (Charlotte) but can’t say for sure what brand she ate in Virginia. Peanut butter filled (including the slightly sweeter Nekot crackers) counted, as did the cheese filled. Not sure if the Oreo knock-offs fell under Nab category, or if they were considered more of a dessert cookie. Looking forward to reading what the fuss is all about.
Lived in Charlotte since 1992 (aside from 4 yrs in Chapel Hill) and I have no idea what you are talking about.
Adding this evidence to my "Actually, Charlotte isn't in North Carolina" pile.
Live in Charlotte, but grew up in eastern NC. We called them Nabs, generic for snack crackers...usually the orange cracker/peanut butter ones. So my children, who are native to Charlotte, also call them Nabs, but get funny looks when they do so.
As someone who grew up in Charlotte, but whose family is not originally from North Carolina, I know we're part of the reason why Charlotteans don't call them nabs. I've always thought of them as the orange Lance crackers.
Hopefully that pile's official title is "The Great State of Mecklenburg"
Lance Toast-Chee six pack. The others are pretenders. Keeblers can never be Nabs.