Nilla Wafers

Nilla Wafers are a wafer-style cookies made by Nabisco, a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International.

Nilla Wafers

Product type	Cookie
Owner	Mondelez International
Country	U.S.
Introduced	1898; 127 years ago (1898)
Previous owners	Nabisco
Website	snackworks.com/nilla

Nabisco Vanilla Wafers box, prior to the 1967 name change

Banana pudding with Nilla wafers around the outside

The name is a shortened version of vanilla, the flavor profile common to all Nilla-branded products in previous years. Originally marketed as Nabisco Vanilla Wafers, the product's name was changed in 1967 to the abbreviated form, Nilla Wafer.^[1] Originally a round, thin, light wafer cookie made with flour, sugar, shortening, eggs^[2] and real vanilla, Nilla wafers have been primarily flavored with synthetic vanillin since at least 1994, a change which prompted criticism.^[3][4] Nilla wafers are described as having "natural and artificial flavor", according to the ingredients list on the box.^[5]

Nilla produced a variety of spin-off products, including pie crusts. The crusts were introduced in 1992 alongside pie crusts flavored like two other Nabisco cookie brands, Oreos and Honey Grahams.^[6]

History

The recipe for vanilla wafers or sugar wafers was invented in the late 19th century by German-American confectioner Gustav A. Mayer on Staten Island.^[7][8][9] He sold his recipe to Nabisco, and Nabisco began to produce the biscuits under the name Vanilla Wafers in 1898.^[1] By the 1940s, Vanilla Wafers had become a major ingredient in the Southern cuisine staple banana pudding, and Nabisco began printing a banana pudding recipe on the Vanilla Wafers box.^[10][11] The name of the product was not changed to "Nilla Wafers" until 1967.^[1][12]

In 2013, the brand launched an advertising campaign on Facebook and other social media websites targeted at mothers, a campaign noted by the New York Times as unique because Mondelez International, the company that Kraft created to own the brand, spent its advertising dollars on social media rather than a combination of advertising platforms. The campaign resulted in a 9% increase in sales for Nilla.^[13] Nabisco had previously used other marketing techniques to promote the brand, including in-person events such as sponsoring banana pudding pie eating contests at amusement parks.^[14]

Uses

Nilla wafers are a common ingredient in banana pudding and are consequently popular in the American South. In Atlanta and Houston, they are consistently in the five best-selling cookie brands.^[15]

The wafers themselves are commonly used to facilitate the oral administration of various compounds or medications to rats in testing.^[16] Nilla's branding has been used to study consumer preferences about variations in packaging.^[17]