Some people will no doubt go straight for old favourites like mince pies and pigs in blankets.
But this unconventional bag could be just what the doctor ordered.
The Flipz Gingerbread Flavour Coated Pretzel Share Bag offers a festive treat of a different variety.
A spokesperson said: “Bring festive flavour to your snacking with Flipz Gingerbread Flavour Coated Pretzels Share Bag.
“These special festive treats feature crunchy, sweet-and-salty pretzels coated in a smooth gingerbread flavoured layer, finished with a creamy drizzle, creating the perfect balance of sweetness and salty crunch.
“Packed in a larger 150g sharing pouch, this is the ultimate snack for winter movie nights with friends or to self-indulge.”
But it’s not the only treat to offer a Christmas-y flavour as the darker months await.
Those craving more gingerbread can enjoy the McVitie’s Gingerbread Flavour Milk Chocolate Digestives.
McVities fans slam discontinued biscuit as ‘so disappointing’ & cry ‘oh no’ after it returned to shelves with NEW recipe
Retailing for £2.25, these biscuits offer an old classic with a twist.
As spokesperson said: “Bring a festive twist to your celebrations with Gingerbread Flavour Milk Chocolate Digestives.
“Returning as a limited-edition treat for 2025, the rich, warming taste of gingerbread paired with creamy milk chocolate gives a new take on the nation’s favourite biscuit.
“If you did not manage to get your hands on this festive edition run from last year, you have been granted a second chance!”
Emma Johnson, Sweet Seasonal Brand Manager for McVitie’s, said: “The festive season is such a wonderful time, and McVitie’s is honoured to play a part in the nation’s celebrations each year.
“Whether you’re spending quality time with loved ones, looking to get-together with friends, or hunting down stocking fillers for the big day, our McVitie’s range promises something special for every moment.”
Cracker Barrel’s new logo reveal is MAGA’s latest manufactured crisis. But what if a biscuit really just is a biscuit and not an LGBTQ+ gateway drug?
Masked goons are terrorizing American cities. The U.S. inflation rate is the highest it has been in over four decades. Gaza is starving to death. The Cracker Barrel unveils a new logo.
If you guessed which crisis is not like the others, then you’ve spotted the latest source of outrage fueling the right-wing media universe, where trivial distractions from Trump’s failures and the Epstein files are the name of the game.
In a kerfuffle as layered as the eatery’s hash-brown casserole ($4.79 for a side dish, $15 and upward for an entree-sized portion), the folksy-themed establishment, which first opened its doors in 1969, is once again fodder in a one-sided culture war.
The crime? The chain’s classic gold and brown logo now features the chain’s name in a more minimalistic font. Gone is the eatery’s unofficial mascot, that folksy fellow in coveralls who enjoys leaning on a wooden barrel.
“WTF is wrong with @CrackerBarrel??!” said Cracker Barrel regular-in-spirit-only Donald Trump Jr. when responding to a post on X where the user shockingly blamed DEI for the restaurant’s monstrous decision.
“Cracker Barrel is done,” wrote the Federalist’s Sean Davis. “Woke executives killed it, wrapped the corpse in a rainbow flag, and then made it do a little puppet show in New York City for the entertainment of all their woke little friends.”
Not exactly a puppet show, but the Cracker Barrel did host its “A Taste of Country, Anytime” event Thursday in New York City with country music star Jordan Davis. The chain purported to bring a “country hospitality experience to the big city,” complete with “entertainment on the front porch, rocking chairs, classic Cracker Barrel games and crave-worthy food.”
Clearly a ruse for yet another Pride parade or Latin American gang invasion.
The deception started on Aug. 19, when the Tennessee-based chain in a press release announced changes to its logo and menu as part of a campaign titled “All the More.” The rebrand features new menu items, restaurant remodels and an “enhanced brand look and feel.”
“We believe in the goodness of country hospitality, a spirit that has always defined us. Our story hasn’t changed,” said Cracker Barrel Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Moore in a statement. “Our values haven’t changed.”
But their signage has changed, and that in itself signaled a threat to a way of life that we need to rediscover, you know, in order to make America great again.
Nostalgia for a time that most of us weren’t even alive to see is part of Cracker Barrel’s appeal. Renowned for its Southern comfort food and down-home appeal, generations of Americans have wandered through the establishment’s general store decor and dined on its Southern comfort food. But like any business, it needs to keep up with the tastes and demands of new generations, and apparently Gen Z, millennials and even Gen Xers aren’t buying black licorice and candy corn like their predecessors once did.
It’s hardly the first time the dubiously-named dining establishment has faced accusations that it’s going gay. As the Bulwark pointed out, there was 2023 e-outrage over Cracker Barrel’s acknowledgment of Pride month, which included a rainbow-themed rocking chair and some corporate-speak about “diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging at Cracker Barrel.”
“We take no pleasure in reporting that Cracker Barrel has fallen,” the organization Texas Family Project wrote at the time. “A once family friendly establishment has caved to the mob.”
When the country is in chaos and entangled in man-made catastrophes abroad, it’s easier to rail, risk-free, against a manufactured crisis. Fox Business News led its Friday news lineup with a Cracker Barrel report, but not about the logo redesign: “Cracker Barrel over the past decade has worked closely with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), changing its company culture to be more inclusive and LGBT-friendly ahead of its controversial store rebrand,” reads the lede.
It’s yet to be seen if a sizable swath of America will forgo the Signature Saucy Chicken Sandwich in protest, constituting another national crisis to chew on.
The home run swing-off to end Tuesday’s All-Star Game was great. Whether you embrace it as a revelation or dismiss it as a gimmick, baseball needs more of that kind of imagination on the national stage. On the morning after the game, it’s what you’re talking about.
But baseball cannot count on a tie score every summer.
The All-Star Game cannot live off old glories. The All-Star Game cannot thrive simply because the NFL turned the Pro Bowl into a flag football game and skills competition while the NBA turned its All-Star Game into a week of parties and 48 minutes of a defense-free scrimmages.
Baseball can say its All-Star Game is the best, but the bar is as low as the final round of a limbo competition. Baseball needs the best players, not the best available players, in the game. And, in an era dominated by social media and short attention spans, baseball needs innovation in the Home Run Derby — not just in an All-Star Game tiebreaker, but in the actual Home Run Derby that is its own Major Television Event on the night before the game.
The first suggestion, from Brent Rooker, the Athletics’ All-Star designated hitter: “I had the idea that we would just stick PCA (the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong) and (the Athletics’) Denzel Clarke in the outfield during the Home Run Derby and just let them run down balls. That’s a fun idea that popped into our clubhouse a few weeks ago.”
An all-in-one Home Run Derby and skills competition of outfielders contorting their bodies in all directions to make highlight-worthy catches? That’s a cool thought.
Bat flips would be better.
The bat flip, once scorned as an instrument of disrespect, is now celebrated by the league itself. It naturally lends itself to the “Did you see it?” reels young fans share on Instagram and Snapchat.
The first round of Monday’s Home Run Derby was exhausting. It took nearly two hours, and what little flash there was felt forced. Besides, the sluggers you most wanted to see — Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge — declined to participate.
“I already did it,” Judge said Tuesday. “I don’t know what else you want from me. I think it’s time for somebody else to step up and do their thing and have fun with it. I love seeing new faces in the game go out and do their thing.”
Said Dodgers pitcher and Hall-of-Famer-in-waiting Clayton Kershaw: “It’s a lot of swings, man. It’s not easy to do. When I used to hit, I was tired after taking six swings. I can’t imagine doing that for three straight hours.
“If Shohei and Aaron Judge and those guys, if they had them all in there, it would be awesome. You can’t expect those guys to do it every single year.”
So keep the eight-man field but split it into two groups: four players in the traditional format, and four players in a one-round competition judged not only by how many home runs you hit but with how much flair you toss your bat after each one.
Dodgers veteran pitcher Clayton Kershaw, tapping gloves with teammate Will Smith after pitching in the second inning during the All-Star Game.
(Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
The creative and outrageous dunks in the NBA‘s slam dunk competition go viral. The All-Star bat flips would too.
“With respect to an event like the Home Run Derby, we should continue to innovate,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “It’s fundamentally an entertainment product.”
There’s an idea, Rob. Run with it.
“The game piece of it? Fundamentally, I believe in the game,” Manfred said. “I think what we have to do is continue to work with our very best players to make sure that they’re here and showcasing themselves in front of a fan base that is really, really important to us over the long haul.”
Right now, all the very best players are not here. When MLB announced the All-Star rosters, the league selected 65 players. By game time, with all the replacements for players that withdrew, the All-Star count was up to 81.
That meant that, for every four players announced as an All-Star, one chose not to play.
“Usually, when you think All-Star Game, you think probably the best at the time in the game right now are going to be playing,” Phillies All-Star designated hitter Kyle Schwarber said.
Sometimes they are: On Tuesday, Schwarber was the most valuable player, with the winning swings in the swing-off.
Schwarber and Kershaw noted that, for the most part, the position players are here, and the pitchers dominated the list of missing stars. Pitchers throw harder these days. They need time to recover. Tony Clark, the executive director of the players’ union, talked about the need for players to find “opportunities on the calendar to take a breather.”
And, frankly, the All-Star Game does not mean nearly as much to players as it did before interleague play started 28 years ago. Winning one for the National League used to actually mean something.
“The All-Star Game then and the All-Star Game now are two completely different things,” Clark said. “The requirements for players, the travel and logistics for their family and support, the day to day of a 162-game season is more complex and it’s more challenging than it’s ever been.”
Yet in 1980, when the All-Star Game was played at Dodger Stadium, players had one free day before resuming the schedule. Today, players have two days.
And, in 1980, fans got to see the players they wanted to see. Should each team have an All-Star representative? Yes. Should managers feel compelled to use every one of those players? No way.
On Tuesday, the National League used 13 pitchers and the American League 11.
In 1980, each league used five pitchers. Steve Stone and Bob Welch each pitched (gasp) three innings. The top four batters in the American League lineup — Willie Randolph, Fred Lynn, Rod Carew and Reggie Jackson — each batted at least three times.
Today’s pitchers are reluctant to work even one inning in the All-Star Game if they pitched on the final weekend of the first half. So move the All-Star Game back one day to Wednesday, and move the Home Run Derby back one day to Tuesday. No longer would players have to scramble for Sunday night private jets to get to the All-Star Game by Monday morning.
As a bonus, MLB could play the Futures Game on Monday, when no other games are being played, instead of in relative invisibility because the league insists on putting what it says is a showcase event up against a full schedule of regular-season games.
“It would be great,” Clark said, “to just have a conversation around the All-Star Game and talk about the All-Star Game and the great players that we have, doing so in a way that truly highlights the Midsummer Classic and truly puts players in a position where they are sprinting to come to the game.”
July 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said a deal has been made with almost all the Republican House members who sank a procedural vote on his cryptocurrency bills Tuesday.
“I am in the Oval Office with 11 of the 12 congressmen/women necessary to pass the Genius Act and, after a short discussion, they have all agreed to vote tomorrow morning in favor of the rule,” Trump said via Truth Social Tuesday.
“Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was at the meeting via telephone, and looks forward to taking the vote as early as possible,” he added.
Two of the bills in question are the aforementioned Genius Act, which would regulate stablecoins and the Clarity Act, which would set rules to decide if an asset is to be regulated as either a security by the Securities and Exchange Commission or as a commodity supervised by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The third bill would stop the creation of a central bank digital currency by the Federal Reserve.
It is unclear what guarantees Trump made to lock in the 11 switched votes of support for the procedural rule.
“I’m thankful for President Trump getting involved tonight,” posted Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to X Tuesday, who then declared that the Genius Act will pass when the new vote happens Wednesday.
Shares of stablecoin companies Circle and Coinbase had both dropped Tuesday upon the failure of the procedural vote, as did shares of the digital asset firm MARA Holdings, but all three had upward-heading premarket numbers Wednesday.
